In the process of trying to hash out a topic to research into I found myself reading an article called RELAX! THINK! ACT! – AMBIENT AS POLITICAL MUSIC. The text was enticing as it offered a new perspective into how music & sound can be used as a form of protest, focusing less on the typically loud and aggressive, but more on calmness as a source of power.
Using the Jasmine revolution in Tunisia in 2011 as an example, whereby large scale protesting and street demonstrations, borne from political unrest and the self-immolation of Bouazizi, led to the eventual ousting of long-time president Zine El Abedine Ben Ali and consequent democratisation of the country, comparisons are drawn between the various soundtracks of the revolution. While some protesters adorned their experience with powerful and politically driven songs, such as those by hip hop musicians El Général and Balti, it was found that others had chosen more minimal and meditational songs as the backdrop to their revolution, as opposed to brute musical force.
When on holiday in Tunisia, Hendrik Weber found that some of the protesters were using his album, Black Noise, as their personal soundtrack. An album sonically rich in field recordings, atonal noise, stray percussion and meditational bells, it does not adrenalise the listener, but rather carries you with it into a reverie of sorts. A strange choice for the soundtrack to a revolution.
Weber goes on to summarise that the over-arching ambience of Black Noise demonstrates a version of music that doesn’t offend anyone. While most other traditional forms of music are made up of formulaic structure, packed tightly with arrays of various instruments and their respective harmonies, melodies and rhythms all intertwining with purpose, ambient music, it can be inferred, has no intention and ‘neither leads the way nor tells others what to do’. It is rather ‘a sonic space with the largest possible latitude for the listener’. It has no hierarchy and no claim to leadership and allows the listener to enrich it with whatever they deem fit, whether that be the sounds of nature or the sounds of revolt.
The hard hitting, politically motivated albums of artists like Public Enemy, Rage Against The Machine or the The Clash, among many others, fill a very importance space in the world of protest, clinically mobilising its listeners to resist with a clear message and explicit lyrics to hold on to. Yet upon listening to the album I began to understand for myself the power of ambient music. Perhaps due to my personal battle for sanity against my neighbour’s relentless construction works, that definitely exceed legal noise limits, this discovery has been timely and I am maybe more able to empathise with the need for such an ‘enhanced silence’, as Weber describes it.
Parallels of solace in ambience can be drawn between my very personal experience of intrusive industrial noises and the sounds of rebellion and uprising in Tunisia. When surrounded by sounds that have imperative and demand to be heard, the liberation from authority that ambience offers and its mutability to be what we need it to be, I find, is increasingly important in retaining our humanity and remembering who we are individually in a world of pressure and expectation.