Using Damon Krukowski’s ways of hearing space and a piece written by Ralph Ellison I will be able to identify the impact that our surrounding sounds have on our lives. We choose the sounds we want to listen to on a daily basis and the choices we make influence the culture around us. Although many may not agree living in New York city the sound and music we listen to help us flow through the busy streets. Traveling to other places you notice the difference in how others move throughout their life reflecting the sounds and music in their environment. Damon Krukowski shows how new Yorkers tend to use music to block out the noisy streets and are usually blind to the loud noise appose to a tourist coming in who is not use to the loud sounds of cars, people screaming, and music playing. Many of the individuals rushing past are likely to have headphones in and are in their own bubbles so they don’t have the time to greet you walking by unlike other places. Ralph Ellison tells how he began using music to block out all of the noise he didn’t want to hear but it was also used to help him create a bond between him and his neighbor. The sounds around us have a cultural impact.

There are songs that we have only heard once or twice some we haven’t even heard at all. The reason being that they are “The marginal-the rejected-the repressed is whatever the powerful have decided is no use at the moment”. The marginalized would be the songs that the popular society has casted aside and deemed inappropriate for the era. Eventually all music gets retired but the marginalized art get put away before its time. Music shows who the powerful and the marginalized are. The powerful would be the popular demand the ones society feels have more of an influence.

Forced Exposure is an independent music distributor. At Forced Exposure Jimmy Johnson and his employees encounter over fifty thousand titles each week one hundred new titles arrives. They take the time to listen to each new song, he feels that distribution has a responsibility to give attention to each artist and not just scan over the piece of work. Forced Exposure is like a “deceased magazine” giving 75,000 words a week describing each record listened to and full detail printed catalogue offering recommendations of the new songs they have heard that month.  Forced exposure in comparison to Spotify involves more of a human interaction.

With Spotify you are not left scrolling through music there’s an algorithm to recommend music based on what your mood is or what your believed interest are no one at the company is actually listening to the music being recommended to you. Most of the songs are overlooked the recommendations will more likely be the songs that are currently more popular so songs that you would like you would never hear, all because of the songs played during one mood you were in while looking for music to listen to or what may have been your interest that you are no longer interested in. The algorithm being used also present music with acoustics similarities so your left listening to music that almost sounds the same but just have different artist. This way of recommending ensures that you are not surprised by music.

Surprise is not very helpful to many corporations. The idea is to find you something that you are comfortable with not to surprise you with something you’ve never heard and you become disinterested. You want to hear something that you may like even just enough to keep it playing to the end. Discovering music with Spotify, Apple Music, Google Music, or similar applications the goal is find you new music that you have not heard, but are more likely to like because it sounds like the other songs that are in your collection.  The music is familiar so it’s not surprising. Since today era is so technical it makes it so much easier for ad trackers to tally what catches our attention.

As New Yorkers, we have fully become accustomed to the loud sounds of the street and the annoying neighbors. We are also used to hearing different songs playing extremely loud at every turn some we don’t mind and some we wish we could tell the person to turn off. Ralph Ellison stated in Living with Music “In those days it was either live with music or die with noise…” Music is our personal way of blocking out unwanted noise that we have no control over. As referred to in soundscape by Murray Schafer is creates our own personal bubble blocking out the sounds we do not want to hear. 

Living in New York City Ralph Ellison upstairs neighbor was a singer. The sounds of her song rang throughout his apartment as she sang. As Damon Krukowski believed the music reflected how he felt singing the words he wouldn’t say to her. He fought music with music the louder she sang the louder he played. The music his neighbor and he shared would go on to create a bond between them the music had “magic with mood and memory”.  Ellison thought he would never be able to get past his writers block but as much as the music tortured  him in the beginning, it reminded him of his love for his music as a child. Music has a way of “reminding us of what we were and of that toward which we aspire” the music Ellison heard in his building stayed with him even after he moved away from his New York City apartment and helped him with his writing.

In a single day an individual encounters thousands of sounds a day. Now how many of these sounds do we actually listen to? We may hear many different sounds, but we do not listen to all of them. To listen to sounds we must consciously give our attention and interact with the sounds around us. Hearing sounds takes little focus it’s like the sounds are just passing by. A person using their headphones, reading a booking, or having their face in a phone is a person choosing what they would like to block out and what they want to listen to. We maneuver through most of our day in a private bubble. Structural features influence what we choose to listen to. For instance, our cultural background can influence the sounds that catch our attention, if you are accustomed to hearing languages and phrases on a daily basis inside your home then when you’re out those sounds will grab your attention. David Kurkowski and Murray Schafer both believe that sounds play an important role in our environment. Kurkowski said that you would be able to identify the importance a place hold by the sounds that were shared in the space. Spaces that hold concerts and parties are usually remembered by the songs sang or played. Schafer views sound as a reflection of the events that are occurring around us if an individual is in an excited mood or is sad more than likely the music playing will reflect the happiness or the sadness. The sounds around us play different roles everyday.

Images captured of African Americans during the Civil Rights era shows them protesting and marching for their rights, but the portrayal was meant to depict them as weak and incapable of fighting for their rights. In the images the whites always had the upper hand Martin Berger explains the portrayal as a way to ease “white racial anxiety”. Although Martin also makes the point that images were also used to win over sympathy to get some whites on the side of blacks, I agree with Berger the images “ stuck to a restricted menu of narratives that performed reassuring symbolic work.” the media wanted to secure whites and ensure them that blacks were not a threat to their racial power.