MYLAPORE / SANTHOME 

Mylapore is one of the oldest residential areas in Chennai. It intersects with Royapettah and Adyar, and contains part of the coast of the Bay of Bengal, as well as two incredibly important religious institutions in the city: Kapaleeshwarar Hindu Temple [around 1000 years old], and the Santhome Cathedral, which according to Catholic tradition, is built over the tomb of the Apostle Thomas, who was a missionary here, and got himself speared to death by one of the locals. The name of the neighborhood "Mylapore" is taken from the old Tamil expression "mayil arparikum oor," which roughly translates into English as "Land of the peacock scream."  

Mylapore / SanthomeCathedral / exterior walkabout / 15.3.15 / 7:16p [5:27]

The sounds of singing, and of a rickshaw motor on the other side of the parking lot.

“Evening Mass at the Santhome Cathedral. This is, supposedly…according to…Catholic tradition…the place where St. Thomas, doubting Thomas…um…is buried, is laid to rest.”

I take a walk around the building. There are people in the parking lot. There are people waiting outside the church [the inside was quite full], but the people outside seem to be doing little more than loitering. There are loudspeakers broadcasting the sound of the priest and choir out into the Cathedral’s campus. Some of the people wait by their cars or stand in small groups, as if at a sacred drive-in theater.

Regardless of whether or not God is an omnipresent reality in Chennai, I can hear the sound of horns honking along the road in front of the church, and the sounds of doors opening and closing, and of motorcycles, bicycles, and cars coming and going.

Crows.

“There are a LOT of Catholics here.”

“…I mean in Chennai. Obviously there are a lot of Catholics at the Catholic church [tongue pop].”

The sound of a fake waterfall in one corner of the parking lot blends in with the sounds of cars and with the general crowd sound.

Mylapore / Santhome Cathedral / Tomb of St. Thomas / 15.3.15 / 7:27p [5:33]

There are several people in the tomb, including children. Everyone is Indian except me. Women in Saris are kneeling down with their children in front of some fancy plastic simulacrum of St. Thomas, looking like one of the knights of King Arthur’s round table [St. Thomas, not the ladies].

A man does something halfway between belching and gagging for several seconds.

It actually takes me a moment to realize that people are singing in this recording. It almost sounds like it’s in my head, like a memory, and not coming from the Cathedral next door.

I hear a lot of whispering and movement, though at the time it seemed that everyone was still and silent.

Mylapore / SanthomeCathedral / Mass in Tamil / 15.3.15 / 6:15p [42:10]

I’m posting the whole recording [which is 42 minutes and some change long] just in case anyone wants to listen to the whole thing. Basically three things happen: a reading [I think], some singing [which is awesome, ~3:12 à 7:45, and 9:42 à 10:48], and a sermon [10:49 à 42:10].

With the singing, I was struck by how much it sounds like some hipster combination of karaoke, Jimmy Buffet, and Pink Floyd’s Brick in the Wall. I like it. It’s certainly better than “Shine Jesus Shine,” and the rest of the American Evangelical Contemporary Suburban Christian Elevator Pop Music Spectacle [AECSCEPMS]. The cantor’s voice has buttery, cheerful, intimate quality that reminds me of the sound of old Tamil movies. 

I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for the didactic, earnest, boredom and timbrally / temporally gorgeous sloppiness of congregational singing. The inexpertness, the false starts, and the difficulty with which the guy running the drum machine wordlessly negotiates where the beat is with the choir.  

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The priest begins his sermon and builds up into a crescendo and a rhythm. It’s a very strange experience that fills my head with thoughts. One the one hand this sermon is so much longer than most Catholic Church sermons I’ve seen in the West, which tend to last 15 minutes or so. This priest is luxuriating in a discourse like the Baptist and Pentecostal preachers I’m more familiar with. I don’t speak Tamil, so I don’t understand anything he’s saying of course, except in two spots where he suddenly shifts into English:

“It’s not by chance, but by choice…Tamiltamiltamiltamiltmailtmailtamil…”

…and at several points in the sermon, I hear him say:

“…unconditional love…”

 

He’s speaking into a microphone, and his voice is being amplified and broadcast from several rows of monitor speakers that are hung on the eaves lining the walls. His voice echoes through the room. It’s sound reminds me of the constantly too hot sound of old Tamil records. It also makes me think – now I realize – of the sound of Mao Tse Tung’s voice in the recording used by Peter Albinger for his Voices and Piano. Even the priest’s cadence reminds me of Mao.

It's is melodious. He elongates words, repeats melodic phrases, adds in dramatic moments of rest. It echoes for a moment in the packed church. It's extremely loud. The sound of a bird suddenly calls my attention.

His sermon has a long build.

“Yessa Christ-uh!”

“Yessa Christ-uh!”

“Yessa Christ-uh!”

The congregation echoes him as they raise their hands to testify. A few of them actually say “Amen.”

It really is something to hear, around 23 minutes in. He draws such vivid and slick shapes with the inflection of his voice, almost as if his is sword fighting with words.  

This is where he suddenly says the thing about chance and choice. I’m used to hearing Hindi-speaking Bollywood stars suddenly slip in a couple English words, or short phrases. I haven't noticed that kind of language mixing here in the south.

I love how he pronounces the word “love”: with a looong -o and a nearly inaudible v [which sounds closer to -w], and the way Tamil speakers pronounce the double-a [“aaaAHHH”] [~34:56]

…The Reverend Pastor Doctor Deacon Bishop Mao Tse Tung…

  

I’m super tired, nodding my head, wishing he would bring this one to a close.

Koyembedu

photo credit: Bernardo Ricci-Armani

Koyembedu [click to hear recordings]

Koyembedu is a pretty important part of town for locals and visitors alike. The two most important things located there are the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus [CMBT, the main bus hub in the city], and nearby, the Koyembedu flower, fruit, and vegetable markets. The markets get about 100,000 visitors per day, and supply foodstuffs for a great deal of the smaller markets, restaurants, and households of Chennai. They are typically insanely busy and crowded. The smells and sounds can be overwhelming for someone who isn't used to Indian public spaces. To state the obvious: there is nothing like it in the US.    

Koyembedu Flowermarket / 14.3.15 / 7:35a [10:16]

My steps up to the entrance

There is a lot of music here.

Music here [as everywhere] defines a space, marks a territory.

Can I hear when I stop to let others pass?

Can I hear when I turn?

These people know each other. A market is different than a “supermarket” in this way. It’s more conversational. Less private. There is so much more sound.  

The sound of crickets…

The sound – the incredibly nostalgic timbre – of old Tamil film music

The sounds of walking over dry grass

People want to talk to me or ask me what I’m doing, but there is a language barrier. They are used to people walking around with cameras, never buying anything.

Next time I need to remember to buy something.

Colorful flowers in mounds, baskets, and bags. Organized by kind.

Most of the people selling are men, most of the people buying are women.

I suppose that’s not surprising.

Whistling.

Hey! Hello! 

Birds.

Coughing.

A nun.

People approach me to ask what I’m doing:

“Hello”

“Saar!”

“What?”

 “Mic-ah?”

“Yeah-yeah. Say Hello…”

“Personal Recorder, um-ahhh.”

“Uh…yeah”

[I can't decipher]

“Yeah…records sounds.”

“Sounds saar…”

“Sounds saar, sounds ah.”

[I can't decipher]

“Loudspeaker, loudspeaker…”

“Uh…It’s recording now. Ok…uh…”

I stop to show them.

Koyembedu fruitmarket / 14.3.15 / 8:00a [14:55]

“So they wanted to listen. And I can’t…uh…record and play at the same time here. So I had to take a break.”

The people at the market have thin, high voices. They speak generally much more quickly than I do. Some of them almost sound like chipmunks.

The sound of spoken Tamil to me seems very fluid, rhythmic, really loose.

“…back inside”

The sound of birds and conversation crossing the way. They articulate a silent path in the middle.

There are animals inside the market. Birds and dogs mostly. Later on I recall seeing a cow.

The sounds from the outside often invade the inside, as does the animal life of the street. No one tries to shoo the dogs away. Nor do they try to steal fruit from anyone’s stall, almost as if by agreement.  

The space of the outside and the inside mingle and cross. The soundaries [1] [ugh…I know…] are permeable because the physical spaces themselves are permeated one by another.

“Now I’m outside. The flower market here is…usually less hectic than the food market, which is right next door. Um…Let’s see if that’s true today. In the mornings – it’s about 7:30 right now, a.m. – In the morning it is…it can be really intense, but the markets here in India start hopping at about 6am with lorries….and…uh merchants, housewives, all kinds of people. And of course, assholes like me coming to make recordings and take pictures.”

I cross through a stream of trucks that are carrying goods from the market into restaurants and other, smaller, markets in the city and surrounding area. I cross the street and encounter a sweeper who points me in the right direction [the way into the fruit market].

You can definitely hear where the building begins…its sounds wrap around to contain me.

More shouting across the path. I can’t be sure if they are talking to me. Everytime I hear “Hey” or “Hello” – which is often – I crane around to see if someone is addressing me. Sometimes they are, curious to see what I’m doing, or wanting to sell something to me.

“Things seem calmer than they usually are here.”

I usually don’t respond except to nod a hello and smile at them. I feel awkward a bit. I don’t know what I’m doing either. Later, I resolve that the next time I come to a space like this, I will try indulgently responding to every beck and call. Maybe I will be able to talk to some of these guys?

“People moving through with…um…big carts and on foot, holding boxes on their heads. Bananas. Everywhere.”

It occurs to me now that I have ceased doing “sound research” – whatever that means – and begun doing something like amateur ethnography or sound tourism, or something…  

There is a background that sounds like crowd chatter, and a middle ground, which sounds like events happening at some distance, but marked. I attend to them. Someone drops a bowl, or bumps into a cart. The foreground is populated almost entirely by things that are near me, most of all, human voices. I hear them pass by me. I hear them as they mark out the space I inhabit. I use them to locate myself. As far as I can tell, I don’t really hear or attend to anything behind me.

“Dust in the air. Smashed fruit on the ground.” 

“No music here.”

“Hello…saar…” [I smile and keep walking]

Someone horks to spit…probably my least favorite sound in the world.

“Anna [i.e., ~ “older brother”]…150 [2]!”

“And that’s the fruit market.”

Koyembedu vegmarket / 14.3.15 / 8:00a [23:31]

“And now we’re going to move to the vegetable market for about 15 minutes. We’re outside now.”

The space between each market is separated by a loading area where trucks, cars, and motorcycles carry goods away. Each recording begins with a moment of transit moving through these spaces.

I have to walk a ways to get past huge trucks full of potatoes and onions to get into the market building itself.

There is music in this market. Speaking is sparse at the beginning, but when it does happen, it is often more energetic. Some of the vendors argue with one another.

My favorite sounds are the sweeping sounds, and the sounds of our feet walking over the beds of vegetable matter and straw strewn all over the ground. I like their crispness.

“Hello saar.”

I’m not very interested in the crowd noise. Other noises are losing their meaning to me as well. What I called the “middleground” [the falling pots, the incidental sounds] – subconsciously depending on “Schenkerian” terminology – lose a lot of their interest for me as well. I hear no connection there. I simply hear sounds.

This is what John Cage was interested in convincing composers to do [let sounds be themselves]. Non-intentionality.

But I like intention. I need it in a way to understand what a piece [or in this case, a space] is communicating to me. Of course, the people who drop the pots and bump into the carts have intentions. And the sounds are a result of those intentions playing out. However, they are not intentions to me. Or they are not intentions addressed to me. So they lose meaning. I hear them only as arbitrary things happening, though in reality they are all moments flowing out from some achieved thing [however banal].

These sounds are the sound effects of a local economy.

“We’re outside now. I can smell mint. They are selling it and, uh…drying it out here on the curb.”

There is an argument between two vendors between 15:10 and 15:33.

“…photo…!”

“…uh…not a camera…”

“…not camera?”

“uh…no. What is your good name?”

“Veerapandi, my name’s.”

“Veerapandi. Veerapandi [3]? ”

“Veerapandi. Veerapandi. Ha ha ha ha.”

[can't decipher]

“My name…Jimmy.”

“Jimmy?”

“Jimmy. Nice to meet you.”

Why am I talking to these people as if they were cavemen?

“It’s interesting…everyone assumes that this weird contraption in my hand is a camera. And so about 5 or 6 people have asked me to take pictures of them. So…obviously it’s not a thing to walk into these markets and just record the sound. Here’s a giant cow.”

“And that was the veg market.”

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[1] [boundaries of sound…]

[2] A vendor offers to sell me a guava fruit for 150 INR, which is an insane price.

[3] It’s a common name of parts of Tamil cities around Coimbatore, Salem, and Theni. I also ask because it’s a song that my boss A.R. Rahman wrote for a 1993 Collywood “comic thriller” called Thiruda Thiruda.

More awesome pictures of Koyembedu Market by Shannon Lee Zirkle