Friday, January 1, 2010

sounds of İzmir

Sounds of Izmir - car horns, music playing from numerous street and shopfront systems, muezzin calls from mosques near and far punctuating the day and leaving langorous vapour trails of blurred background polyphonies. It's all music, isn't it? And now from inside the hotel room the muffled sounds of voices and indistinct bass lines filtering down from the restaurant above.

Is the plethora of overlapping sound systems or the solos and choruses of car horns the more musical? It would be tempting to suggest that the calls from the mosques are more obviously musical than either. But what if the intention of the caller is to deliver a message - to recite - and not to make music at all? Do intentions make a difference? And if so, whose intentions should we be interested in?

And is music just a concept for distracting us from the play of intentions...?