4.1 Summary of the research Components

4.2 The Three Representative Locations and their Analysis

4.3 The Acoustic Community of Comm. Drive

4.3 The Acoustic Community of Commercial Drive

Commercial Drive is often described as a vivid community, in the sense that its inhabitants feel they belong to their neighbourhood and the population is involved in making the street not just a street, but also a communal, shared space. It therefore seemed natural in this case to extend the notion of community to encompass the sonic aspects of the Drive, in a way to explore how they create (or not) a sense of acoustic community. As Truax states, “the acoustic community may be defined as any soundscape in which acoustic information plays a pervasive role in the lives of the inhabitants (no matter how the commonality of such people is understood)” [emphasis his] (2001, p. 66). The extensive interview process realised in the framework of Amphoux’s methodological guide indeed revealed several aspects of the way in which sounds are being communally used and interpreted (consciously or not) on the Drive, therefore proving the existence of an acoustic community.

These in-depth accounts, especially those gathered through the recorded interviews (since they consisted of a general exploration of the Drive’s acoustic features based on long-term inhabitants’ daily experience), provide information about the community’s perception and understanding of the various signals and keynotes that would be hardly accessible to a researcher simply conducting sound counts, soundwalks or sound level measurements. While many of the features proposed by the WSP (Schafer, 1977b, 1977c, 1978) and Truax (2001) could be identified and assessed by an external observer through field observation and measurements (features such as sound signals, keynotes, the establishment of acoustic profiles, rhythm and cycles and the overall “balance” of the soundscape), their role and their reception by the actual community can only be addressed through a direct investigation of the inhabitants’ perceptions and interpretations of their sound environment. As we will see in section 4.4, the ethnographic and somewhat phenomenological approach proposed by Amphoux (1991, 1993a, 1993b) provides an analysis of the active interpretation (the listening component) made by participants in the shaping of an acoustic community, while the WSP and Truax’s emphasis on the soundscape itself (and the role of sounds and soundmaking practices) tend to produce a mapping, or a more generic description of the sound environment itself. Thus, these approaches are complementary, and may therefore reinforce each other in our quest to describe the “global” soundscape and the communicational processes that support it.

4.3.1 Acoustic Definition and Sound Signals

As Smith (1993) pointed out in his doctoral dissertation, throughout the large variety of sounds audible on the Drive, the one continuous and omnipresent element remains traffic noise. It is the most commonly mentioned sound element one expects to hear, although it does not in every case constitute a source of complaint for longer-term inhabitants. The mapping of the various large streets (including Commercial Drive, Victoria, First Avenue and Broadway) and smaller avenues creates a very strong contrast between the soundscape of the Drive and the one found in the surrounding neighbourhood. Sample weekday daytime level measurements have confirmed that the sound level on avenues remains, in accordance with Smith’s findings (1993), on average 10 dBA quieter than on Commercial Drive (see Table 2).

Table 2 - Average Weekday Daytime Sound Levels

The presence of broadband, heavy traffic noise reduces the acoustic definition of the soundscape by masking quieter sounds and making vocal interactions more difficult. A storeowner who established on the Drive in the early 80s witnessed the progressive masking of sounds coming from the harbour (located at the northern end of Commercial Drive are several factories and a railway track) and the increased dominance of car noise. While in quieter periods train whistles and even the O Canada! horn from Canada Place can be heard, notably in the northern portion of the Drive and in adjacent avenues, as soon as one approaches noisy intersections, any non-local sounds are quickly suppressed by the white noise of heavy traffic.

The acoustic dominance of traffic is counterbalanced by a heavy pedestrian flow and a very lively street life extending throughout the days and evenings. A walk up or down the Drive quickly reveals the continuous presence of human vocal interactions and an abundance and variety of acoustic and electroacoustic signals. As mentioned earlier (see Table 1), a car vs. pedestrian count has revealed that while traffic dominates acoustically, at times there are more pedestrians than cars in certain sections of the Drive. Interviews showed an active “backgrounding” of traffic by inhabitants who focus on particular visual and acoustic signals and express a mapping of the Drive in which traffic, in some cases, is almost non-existent. Josh, for instance, commented:
I probably block them out and just listen to everything else. But they can be very annoying if they beep. It sorts of upsets the whole mood of Commercial Drive, you know how the pedestrians kind of rule this place, and then a car gets in and beeps, and everybody’s like “chill out!”

This tendency to emphasise the pedestrian character of the Drive and deny the obvious presence of traffic can be read as an adaptation to rising levels of noise caused by traffic, which would therefore constitute a negative habituation. As a matter of fact, traffic is more commonly denounced by foreign listeners, and is more largely “accepted” by longer-term inhabitants. As Truax says, “at first, [people] notice an intruding sound, probably find it annoying but too much trouble to do anything about, and before long they grow accustomed to it and accept its presence” (2001, p. 99). In some cases, this noise even becomes valued, as it comes to represents the busyness of the city (what Amphoux calls metropolisation). When asked about the best sonic quality of the Drive, Jean replied:

I think it is the interaction of everything, the traffic and the people, because if you took one away, it wouldn’t be quite the same thing […] I like the hustle-bustle myself, I like the feeling of a big city. I like the interaction, the fullness, whether it is the traffic, street sounds or all the talking and yelling that goes on, it’s like a miniature version of New York.

The large variety of acoustic and electroacoustic sounds found on Commercial Drive must also be acknowledged, as it offers pedestrians a dynamic soundscape centered on social (vocal) interactions. In fact, the presence of voices in many different languages is often qualified as a soundmark of the Drive, in the sense that it is “a prominent feature of the soundscape, possessing properties of uniqueness, symbolic power or other qualities which make it conspicuous or affectionately regarded” (Schafer, 1978, p. 37). The multicultural nature of the neighbourhood (a consequence of historical movements of various populations inside Vancouver as well as from other countries) is expressed sonically through a continuous mix of languages and intonations described by Jean as the “musical language of the Drive”. Diane also expresses well this historical attachment to the musicality of intonations when commenting:

I think you would have heard, if you stepped back in time a little bit, less traffic and more, I don’t know how you call it, […] even though people would still speak English, a little bit more different accents. It’s just a bit odd because it’s now a diverse community, but I guess most people have been raised here now, so they don’t have an accent…

Another soundmark of the Drive is the presence of street musicians in various locations such as Grandview Park, facing the Liquor Store, in the Napier greenway facing Britannia Centre and at the Broadway intersection. Smith (1993) already pointed out their common perception by inhabitants and the way they tend to be linked to specific areas. In our study, they are mentioned and appreciated by most long-term inhabitants. Lucie said about their presence that it brings “colours, sounds, ambience, it civilises the place.” Jean also commented that

Even [when] you see those musicians playing, even though they’re not good, the fact that they’re just out there doing it creates a different feeling again in the street. You don’t really see that in the West End. I think it all adds up and adds its own prestige.
Other “representative” vocal interactions heard on the Drive include according to personal observations and participants’ comments, panhandlers, people selling a wide variety of items along the sidewalk on sunny days, and the “odd crazy person” as Lucie said, “ranting on, and talking to themselves…”

Along with the somewhat typical loud discussions across the street between two Italian males, these sound signals contribute in making the soundscape of the Drive an acoustic community, one which belongs, is used by and recognised by its inhabitants.
In terms of electroacoustic signals, the only significant sounds heard are music leaking out of stores and restaurants along the Drive, the electronic chirping of intersection lights and the occasional car horn. The #20 trolley bus, with its electrical sweeping sound, also appears in the account of numerous participants. Other than its commercial purpose, the music blasting outside of various stores and leaking out of cafés and restaurants give to the Drive, as Jean described it, “a holiday atmosphere.

At night, all the restaurants have music, live music, so if I’m walking in the evening at night, especially in the summer, every restaurant has all their own little ‘hoops’ playing. It feels like I’m on holiday, in the summer anyway.

4.3.2 Rhythms and Cycles

The changing flow of music, as Jean describes it, introduces along with other signals various daily and seasonal cycles: “One thing you notice more in the summer is all the restaurants play music a lot louder than in the winter time”. The first bus that comes daily at 5:30AM and then regularly throughout the day and evening, the weekly garbage truck and the rain brought by the winter season all contribute to the polyrhythmic play of the soundscape. Daily variations of sound intensity are linked to the level of activity on the Drive, with peaks during rush hours and an overall variation due to weather conditions. Sample sound level measurements taken during the month of March 2004 indicate that level averages remained somewhat similar to those taken ten years ago by Chris Smith (1993), with the exception of a slight increase in level at major intersections such as First/Commercial Dr. and Broadway/Commercial Dr (see Table 2). While the most dominant cycles are produced by transportation sounds (Car traffic, #20 bus, SkyTrain…), there also exists a general knowledge of other various cycles connected to institutional schedules (kids coming out of school after 3:00PM, grocery shopping rush on Sundays afternoon…) and seasonal changes affecting the flow of pedestrians and the vocal interactions on the Drive.

Particular moments of the year are also marked by important sonic manifestations. A significant number of participants in each step of the survey mentioned, for instance, the Parade of the Lost Souls (a large-scale costumed parade held around Halloween Day) as their favourite memory, and an event that they frequent every year. Sounds heard in this event (people chanting, drumming music, loud voices of the crowd) are also somewhat representative of the counterculture spirit and hipness of the Drive. Long-term inhabitants also remembered the Italian Days; Lucie described them:

It was sort of like a parade, a car parade, and so when they [Brazil] win the World Cup and do stuff like that there’s all car honking, people waving flags and yelling, Brazilian people. Those would be my favourite sound, gigantic sound explosion on the Drive. And so all traffic stops, First Avenue was closed, so that was great. Those kinds of events, all of those would be very memorable.

Again, the event expresses for the community more than a momentary festive reunion; it is, as Lucie said, “what makes the Drive, the Drive”, and in this sense, those cyclical events constitute temporal framework to the acoustic community. They are collectively lived, remembered and provide historical points of reference that become symbolic. A worker at the Commercial Drive Business Society, for instance, expressed a strong nostalgia about the Italian Days, “much bigger than the Parade of the Lost Souls”, and established a certain connection between the social changes that took place in the last few years and the disappearance of these large-scale cultural events on the Drive.

4.3.3 Indoor and Outdoor Communities

The selection of the three locations to be used in reactivated listening sessions was not only done in accordance to Amphoux’s C-V-S model, but also to illustrate the interesting mix of indoor and outdoor communities on Commercial Drive. Of particular interest is the actual relationship between these two types of spaces, the way they interact, communicate and together create an overall acoustic community in which the inside and the outside are often blurred.

Café Calabria, for instance, is definitely an indoor acoustic community characterised by unique acoustics and a set of signals and soundmarks aimed at a particular group of people who share similar experiences of the space. As Thomas told us when listening to the Calabria sequence,

There’s some kind of way in which conviviality, community created by vocalisation and recorded music and the way those work together, there’s a certain ambience that’s created that’s quite different than that created by other types of commercial establishment where the intent is more commercial. There’s a tendency here, to my ears, to a kind of community sensibility as opposed to a commercial sensibility.

The reverberant space, European music and male Italian voices all combine and contribute in the making of a shared space of interaction that addresses both Italians (who find in this space a representation of their Italian roots) and other inhabitants of the Drive (who experience the space as “tourist listeners” and for whom Calabria becomes another expression of the multiculturalism of the neighbourhood).

In the same way, most cafés and restaurants provide their own acoustic community, some being more commercially-oriented (generally those that provide almost no particular acoustic space or simply fill it with generic background music), and others like Italian cafés or exotic restaurants, providing a more unique, or perhaps more interactive soundscape. What seems unique to the Drive, however, is the way in which many of these spaces extend onto the sidewalk, both physically and acoustically, while being also invaded with external sounds through open doors, windows and terraces. When walking on the Drive, for instance, one can experience at the same time music coming out of restaurants and street musicians right on the sidewalk, conversations of people walking, sitting at a terrace or standing outside of a café to smoke, and even voices from the inside filtering out to the street. In the same way, cafés are never totally isolated from the outdoors; the low rumble of traffic is always getting through, and again, voices and footsteps of pedestrians become audible as soon as doors or windows are open (basically from April to September). For Josh, the soundscape of cafés even becomes indistinguishable from the one of the street itself: “I rarely ever go inside the cafés, only to buy… so it is probably pretty loud in there, but I prefer to just sit outside. And there’s probably less reverb outside.”
While the indoor spaces remain private and commercial ones, the acoustic blurring of the various spaces contribute in making the Drive a space much more communally experienced as a whole, rather than a set of separated, closed soundscapes. Thomas commented:

That’s where this sense of community first came from, for me, because I knew it to some extent from having lived in Europe, where people are more prone to establish a more village kind of feel then here, and there’s not this stark separation between what is public and what is private, that commercial culture tends to impose (...) This is one of the reasons why I wanted to live here, the multiethnic part and the neighbour part.

For some inhabitants, this blurring is expressed differently, and implies the establishment of an intimate relationship between the private space and the public space, a cyclical intrusion that re-confirms the existence and position of each (indoor and outdoor) soundscape, as Jean told us:

At night when I’m in bed, every morning at 1:30AM precisely the street cleaner comes by, with that truck […] I like it because it’s a form of sign, […] there’s still life going on, so you feel like comfort because you’re not in a strange place, you’re in your comfort zone and you hear external sounds.

Markets also represent a form of boundary-community, with its indoor component and its outdoor displays that becomes not simply a commercial space of shopping, but a social space that partly belongs to a public sphere and that is experienced by anyone who walks down the Drive, as Matthew commented:

Even if you’re not shopping, [because of] the way the Drive is set-up and the size of the sidewalks, you usually are involved in someone’s process or you’re trying to go around people that are shopping so you are in the sonic environment of the shopping district for at least a few seconds or a minute while you’re moving past, so it’s something you experience on a daily basis, unless you chose to go on a side street.

As we have seen, the important role of vocal interaction in markets is therefore on one hand a consequence of their outdoor setting, making them public and accessible, and on the other hand a cause of their role as symbolic icons of an urbanity where face-to-face interaction has not disappeared. Outdoor markets become sound environments in which many different cultures and social classes interact as part of their daily route or activities, something that would not be possible in an indoor, or more private space.

4.3.4 The Sonic Balance of Commercial Drive

In Acoustic Communication (2001), Truax states that three characteristics can be found in acoustic systems that are “functioning successfully” (p. 76): (a) A variety of sounds and types of sounds, (b) a complexity that provides both foreign listeners and inhabitants with various levels of signification and (c) balance, that is, “variety and complexity are constrained by balancing forces that keep the system in a functional equilibrium” (p. 78). These features, which are found for instance in natural environments and pre-industrial towns, are challenged by a burdening of the urban soundscape (notably with car and airplane traffic) and the introduction of redundancy and uniformity (both in the morphology and content of sounds) since the Industrial and Electric Revolutions. The impact of these major transformations of the soundscape can only be assessed in conjunction with an analysis of the changing role and perception of listeners. Acoustic communities therefore provide a basic structure of analysis, in which we can assess the impact of these changes on the deterioration, maintaining, or amelioration of a “well-functioning” acoustic system of communication.

Commercial Drive constitutes a definite urban acoustic community, since it presents a complex set of sound signals that are audible and meaningful for its inhabitants; in fact, the community orientation of the neighbourhood relies heavily, as we have seen, on the predominance of vocal interactions and the establishment of what we may call a public soundscape, one that is constructed and interpreted communally. We can therefore assess, based on Truax’s features of balanced systems of communication, the “quality” of this acoustic community and the role of various acoustic factors in the maintaining of this system. Of special interest to our case study is the level of complexity of the system, as it appears to be the connecting element between the various approaches we analysed and used in the current work. Truax uses the notion of complexity “to refer simultaneously to aspects of the sounds of an environment and to the information processing they undergo in the mind” (2001, p. 79). A complex system therefore implies not only the presence of a somewhat structured and rich soundscape, but also an active interpretation by listeners who can decode and interpret the various signals of the environment. Again, the emphasis of the WSP and Truax’s models on features of the soundscape itself can only gain from Amphoux’s perceptual approach, which deals mainly with listeners’ interpretations of the soundscape.

What we observed to be the most important signals, for inhabitants, of the acoustic community of Commercial Drive, those that express its ‘socialness’ and multiculturalism, are indeed omnipresent in the soundscape under various forms. In indoor spaces, they translate into particular acoustic features (the lively reverberation of Italian cafés or the warm ambience of places such as Turk’s café) and typical signals and background (ethnic music, voices in different languages always dominating—at least in the places described positively by participants). In outdoor spaces, soundmaking is also predominant, again with various layers of vocal interactions at markets, terraces or simply on street corners, the presence of street musicians, and the importance of large-scale social events in the historical definition of the soundscape of the Drive. These features are essential in the establishment of a sonic identity proper to the neighbourhood that can be understood by its inhabitants. Reactivated listening sessions have proved that such a complex sonic knowledge does exist, and can be expressed under many different types of relations to the soundscape (what Amphoux calls the qualitative criteria). The variety of criteria used by participants and their redundancy among participants have provided signs of the main processes at work, as described in the sonic identity charts. When considered globally, the neighbourhood provides a fair diversity of sounds, from the urban and human din of the Drive to quieter avenues and parks where various acoustic sounds, natural sounds (the usual birds, wind and rain), and external sounds (urban drones from other neighbourhoods, sound signals such as train whistles and boat horns) can be heard throughout the day.

On the other hand, the presence of heavy traffic in what is considered by many as a pedestrian street raises issues of sonic awareness about the potential consequences of a masking and a flattening of the soundscape. The general perceptual emphasis of listeners on visual clues (what is often described as the colourful character of the Drive) and spaces of human interaction can be interpreted as a reaction—somewhat paradoxical—to the omnipresence of traffic which quickly becomes backgrounded and perceived as a basic, inescapable component of the soundtrack of the Drive. Furthermore, when participants raised the issue of traffic noise, it would mainly concern major intersections in which a good portion of the noise is said to be created by commuters, what Lucie called “the invasion of the others”. There is a selection at play about what is noise, one that classifies internal noises as normal given the urban setting of Commercial Drive, and external noises as superficial, or avoidable.

In typical urban settings, the increase in traffic noise often results in the establishment of small, isolated indoor acoustic communities: shopping malls, cafés, indoor recreation centers, etc. The public space becomes a commercial space, fragmented and privately owned. As Truax (2001) explains, this may shift traditional acoustic communities into market communities, in which not only the space itself but also all significant sound signals become controlled by corporations, and therefore transform listeners into consumers. Outside, the same listeners may isolate themselves from the cacophonous soundscape through the use of personal stereos, preferring to be exposed to a chosen, surrogate environment that is also a commercial product . Historically, noise legislation has also, at early stages of development of the contemporary city, banished street criers and street musicians (Schafer, 1977c), leaving public spaces filled only with the technological noises of inescapable progress.

On Commercial Drive, however, the human soundmaking practices and the presence of a somewhat fused indoor-outdoor soundscape seems to maintain the existence of a larger acoustic community. While indoor spaces remain evidently private and commercially owned spaces, they tend to be perceived as belonging to a larger acoustic community; they are also smoothly linked to the outside soundscape, in which they tend to extend. Although street criers have definitely disappeared from Vancouver, the many street musicians and the omnipresence of loud vocal interactions throughout the Drive have helped in maintaining a sense of sonic involvement and interaction. Instead of turning their back from the urban noise introduced by traffic, inhabitants seem to have learned to deal with it while maintaining a certain degree of outdoor publicness (or publicity), notably at markets, parks and terraces.

The soundscape of Commercial Drive therefore retains a high level of complexity (both in terms of sound production and sound perception) and variety, in spite of the structural threat produced by traffic noise. However, one should not simply conclude that this acoustic community functions perfectly; the longer term consequences of a burdening of the soundscape on the various listening and soundmaking practices of inhabitants, for instance, has yet to be analysed. Furthermore, as Truax (2001) notes, “the soundscape by its very definition depends on people and their listening habits” (p. 83); a balanced soundscape therefore implies the active participation of inhabitants through a sonic awareness of the changes in their environment.

© David Paquette 2004