Reviewed by:

• Tokyo Listening: Sound and Sense in a Contemporary City by Lorraine Plourde
• Po-Hsien Chu

In 1973, Canadian music composer and environmental activist Murray Schafer, in a groundbreaking project named The Vancouver Soundscape, employed the concept of soundscape as a theoretical lens to explore the critical role of auditory experience in the formation of an urban landscape. Schafer's experimental research has become a monumental work for academic scholars and sound designers enthralled by the [End Page 598] interplay between acoustic effect and city landscape. Lorraine Plourde's Tokyo Listening: Sound and Sense in a Contemporary City provides new insights in this field as the author engages in an interdisciplinary study of Tokyo's urban landscape using ethnomusicology, anthropology, cultural and performance studies.

In the introductory chapter, Plourde succinctly posits that the aim of Tokyo Listening is to investigate "a range of distinct listening cultures that all reveal something about how listeners attune themselves to the sounds and noises of the city" (p. 2). Traditionally the study of sound is often understood as something highly abstract or theoretical; the essence of sound is materially intangible and visually unrecognizable. However, in the twenty-first century, most urban spaces where people work, live, or relax are all filled with different sonic elements designed to be part of the city atmospheres. Therefore, sound as a form of immaterial presence in urban space should not be overlooked as it engenders an embodied mode of sensory experience which constitutes the metropolitan residents' quotidian behaviors and "orients people's movements, affect, labor practices, and consumption" (p. 132).

Framing her analysis of listening practices within the context of Tokyo's urban auditory cultures, Plourde meticulously examines four sites of semipublic and public space—experimental music venues, music cafés, white-collar offices, and commercial spaces like department stores and shopping centers—in which a set of orchestrated "music programming" (muzak in Japanese) informs the listeners of their embodied contact with the metropolitan center of Japan. Muzak, translated as "Background Music" (BGM) in English, is precisely the focal point of the author's analysis since it "bring[s] together two different types of listening spaces in the same frame of reference: spaces people go to specifically for the music, and places where the music comes to them" (p. 11, emphasis original). In the first chapter, Plourde discusses how the architectural design of an experimental music venue called Off Site creates a sensory fusion of live music and the quotidian sounds of Tokyo. Situated within a residential neighborhood, Off Site offers independent musicians and composers a space to experiment with sound. The experimental music genre, known as "onkyo" in Japanese refers to an improvised performance of electronic music emphasizing "sound texture, gaps, and silences rather than melody or rhythm" (p. 15). Experimenting with the rupture of music notes and the discontinuation of auditory harmony, the onkyo performance at Off Site constantly distracts the audience as unexpected moments of silence inside the performance venue paradoxically amplify the non-intentional urban sounds leaking into the enclosed space from the outside. The coexistence of instrumental sounds and urban noises (the BGM of [End Page 599] Tokyo) at Off Site blurs the boundary between intentional and non-intentional sounds.

The second chapter contextualizes the city's café culture in light with the author's ethnographic research. Plourde conducted fieldwork by visiting various music café shops and interviewing the owners and patrons. Plourde claims the listening culture of Tokyo's music cafés remains understudied because the consumer population is relatively small compared to those who favor chain coffee shops (e.g., Starbucks). Grounded in a nostalgic atmosphere, Tokyo'smusic cafés establish an exquisite mode of listening culture by requiring their patrons to follow a set of rules. For instance, prohibiting a customer from conversing with other people inside the café explicitly constitutes a form of social etiquette governed by the restraint of acoustic volume. This measure of auditory control directs the patron's attention to the ubiquitous analog sounds, non-digital music players, and old-fashioned acoustic devices...

审核人：

• 东京听力：洛林·普洛德（Lorraine Plourde）的当代城市中的声音和感官
• 朱宝贤

1973年，加拿大音乐作曲家和环境活动家默里·谢弗（Murray Schafer）在一个名为“温哥华音景”的开创性项目中，将音景的概念作为理论镜头，探讨了听觉体验在城市景观形成中的关键作用。Schafer的实验研究已成为声学学者和城市景观之间相互作用的[End Page 598]所吸引的学术学者和声音设计师的丰碑。洛林·普洛德（Lorraine Plourde）的《东京听力：当代城市中的声音和感官》提供了该领域的新见解，因为作者使用民族音乐学，人类学，文化和表演研究从事了东京城市景观的跨学科研究。

在介绍性章节中，Plourde简洁地提出东京聆听的目标旨在调查“一系列不同的听觉文化，这些文化都揭示了听众如何适应城市的声音和噪音”（第2页）。传统上，对声音的研究通常被理解为高度抽象或理论性的东西。声音的本质在物质上是无形的，在视觉上是无法识别的。但是，在二十一世纪，人们在其中工作，生活或休闲的大多数城市空间都充满了旨在成为城市大气的一部分的不同声音元素。因此，声音作为一种非物质性存在于城市空间中的形式不容忽视，因为它带来了一种体现感官体验的方式，这种方式构成了大都会居民的日常行为并``使人们的运动，影响，劳动习惯和消费定向''（p。 132）。

在对东京的听觉文化背景下的听觉练习进行分析的过程中，普洛德仔细检查了半公共和公共场所的四个场所-实验性音乐场所，音乐咖啡馆，白领办公室以及百货商店和购物中心等商业场所。一组精心策划的“音乐节目”（日语中的muzak）可以告知听众与日本大都会中心的具体联系。穆扎克（Muzak）英文译为“背景音乐”（BGM），正是作者分析的重点，因为它在同一参照系中将两种不同类型的聆听空间“集合在一起”：人们专门去的空间音乐，（第11页，强调原文）。在第一章中，Plourde讨论了名为Off Site的实验音乐场所的建筑设计如何将现场音乐和东京的quotidian声音感官融合。 ，Off Site为独立的音乐家和作曲家提供了进行声音实验的空间，实验音乐流派在日语中被称为“ onkyo ”，是指即兴演奏的电子音乐，强调“声音的质地，间隙和静音，而不是旋律或节奏”。 （第15页）。尝试音乐音符的破裂和听觉和声的中断，音桥场外的表演不断分散观众的注意力，因为表演场馆内的意外寂静时刻反常放大了从外面泄漏到封闭空间中的非故意城市声音。场外的工具声音和城市噪音（[End Page 599]东京的BGM）并存，模糊了有意和无意声音之间的界限。

第二章根据作者的人种志研究，将城市的咖啡馆文化背景化。普洛德通过参观各种音乐咖啡馆商店并采访业主和顾客来进行实地调查。普洛德（Plourde）声称，东京音乐咖啡馆的聆听文化仍未得到充分研究，因为与那些喜欢连锁咖啡店（例如星巴克）的消费者相比，消费者人群相对较小。东京的音乐咖啡馆以怀旧氛围为基础，要求顾客遵循一套规则，从而建立了一种精美的聆听文化模式。例如，禁止顾客在咖啡厅内与其他人交谈显然是一种社交礼节的形式，受礼仪音量的约束。听觉控制的这种措施指导顾客