2. INTERVIEWING OLIM

Many generations of Anglo Jews have long-standing roots in the English-speaking countries to which their grandparents or great-grandparents migrated. Throughout their lives they have constructed their own diasporic identity, out of community narratives, their ‘migration routes and migration roots’ (Kuah-Pearce and Davidson Reference Kuah-Pearce and Davidson2008: 2). Jews moving to Israel come from many generations of diasporic identity. Though many Ashkenazi Anglo Jews have connections to vanished European communities, the places their grandparents left behind are far from forgotten (Levitt and Waters Reference Levitt and Waters2002: 2). Moving to Israel they are returning beyond that journey to a wider Jewish narrative, beyond statelessness, towards belonging.

What, sonically, does ‘becoming Israeli’ mean for these new immigrants? This is a question I hoped to inquire into. The interviewees had different reasons for making aliyah:Footnote ² from wanting to be part of the unfolding story of Israel, to living in/near places with familiar names from Jewish sacred texts, to experiencing a feeling of ‘home’ in a space that transforms you from minority to nation.Footnote ³ Moving to Israel involves various challenges for olim, many realising that their dream vision differs drastically from the actual experience (Milevsky Reference Milevsky2016). This project hoped to give a platform to the different sonic meanings of identity in Israel for Anglo olim. As Gottschalk (Reference Gottschalk2012: 106) comments: ‘While the sensory qualities of Zionism have long been ignored … they should be acknowledged as they have transformative and generative powers.’

During the project I lived in Baka, in southern Jerusalem. Baka is a diverse neighbourhood that includes both secular and religious residents and has a high percentage of English speakers (Borvick Reference Borvick2012). The interviewees included British, American, Canadian and South African olim, some who had moved recently, others some time ago or even as children. This gave the project diversity, not just in terms of the interviewees’ current age, but also with regards to their age when they made aliyah. There was also religious diversity in terms of denominational affiliation and religious observance. The research sought to inquire into the experiences of olim: ‘representing the subject’s own understandings of their world’ (Alexander Reference Alexander2006: 400). In particular, this project examines their sonic experiences of home as they ‘dwelt within a new landscape’ (Ingold Reference Ingold2000), as well as memories of their lives before moving to Israel, as the ‘simultaneity of [home] stories experienced thus far’ (Massey Reference Massey2005: 9).

My interviewing practice has been influenced by Lummis (Reference Lummis1988), Thompson (Reference Thompson2000) and Rogaly and Taylor (Reference Rogaly and Taylor2009). My open questions were focused on context, identity, sound, belonging and home. I pre-planned some questions, but otherwise let the conversation flow (see Grobel Reference Grobel2004).Footnote ⁴ I was initially concerned about sourcing interviewees, but gradually became involved in Anglo-Jewish Jerusalem, where I found project participants who would become ‘gate-keepers’ (Bryson, McConville and McClean Reference Bryson, McConville and McClean2014) of my project. This cascade method works by asking interviewees for further recommendations of other interviewees (see Rogaly and Taylor Reference Rogaly and Taylor2009). The interviews were held either in the interviewee’s homes, or a place of their choice, ‘the [interviewee] is then in command of the social situation and relaxed in the comfort of familiar surroundings’ (Lummis Reference Lummis1988: 66).

I wanted to include the optimum number of interviewees whose stories could be effectively told in a one-hour composition. Informed by previous projects, six interviewees seemed a good fit, predicting the dispersal of speech between soundscape and soundwalk sections. This project was intentionally partial and contingent, to quote Oz (Reference Oz1983: viii):

This research highlighted the matters that interviewees wanted to discuss most. These reflected some of the most important concerns of olim settling into Israeli life. A Hebrew teacher of mine, originally from Argentina, when hearing about my project, told me: ‘in Buenos Aires, I was always told, “you’re a Jew!” Then I come to Israel and I’m told, “You are Argentinian!”’ This frustration about having a dual identity still, even after making aliyah, is, I think, common among immigrants to Israel. From my interviews, however, it seemed that the younger the olim were when they moved to Israel, the less likely they were to feel this way. Hebrew was a major topic in these conversations, as a key sensory experience: ‘a shiver of joy ran through his body when he first arrived in Tel Aviv and encountered a Hebrew street sign’ (Helman Reference Helman2002: 370).

As children, diaspora Jews are often taught the Hebrew alphabet and how to read and say Jewish prayers. Some are also given opportunities to learn Modern Hebrew, to varying levels. However, the difference between those skills and being fluent in a language for everyday necessities is vast.Footnote ⁵ When recording in the local area, the snippets of conversation recorded showed the juxtaposition between, the predominantly, Hebrew of the streets and the English of the olim. One interviewee mentioned:

My younger interviewees, I noticed, had often changed their name to an Israeli one, indicating their identity transformation (Joseph, for instance, becoming Yosef), creating another sonic change in their new environment. I noticed that older interviewees, especially those who had retired to Israel, lived their whole lives in English. This was made possible via technology and community. They had, predominantly, English-speaking friends, they went to English-speaking synagogues and they watched and listened to the BBC. Many had tried to learn Hebrew but had given up. Some continued with lessons, while acknowledging the painfully slow progress. One of my interviewees mentioned:

3. RECORDING THE SOUNDSCAPE

After the initial interviews, I asked a selection of interviewees to share addresses, postcodes and walks in places of significance that they had mentioned (O’Rourke Reference O’Rourke2013). People had often forgotten the street names, which after examining a map, awoke other dormant memories of the area. Once people realised that I was not interested in a factual representation of their local area, interviewees became excited to explore their own ‘personal memory maps’ (Kuhn Reference Kuhn2002: 27). I created soundwalk routes around the nature reserves where my interviewees walked their dogs, or along routes they used to walk to school. All the sonic locations could be traced back to the interviewees’ mentioning these everyday locations. I had decided against walking with the olim and recording conversations en route on account of the technical difficulties incurred, particularly during windy weather. Additionally, I did not want to be guided, but rather, to walk around their areas (some of which I had never visited before) freely experiencing them, just as the olim had done when they had first arrived.

I reflected on my position(s) as the researcher at this point in the project: I was an Anglo Jew who was currently living in Jerusalem. Did I, therefore, record the soundscape from my own perspective as a fellow Anglo Jew who was experiencing living in Jerusalem for the first time? Or should I be recording from the perspective as a researcher, recording only the places offered by the olim? Could I do both? As I spent more time with my interviewees I could see my position in relation to them shifting, and some of them were becoming my friends. I was still an outsider, but with an experience close to theirs. As the Peruvian researcher Wilson Vasquez found:

Long-term habitation of a location might, somewhat counterintuitively, act as a barrier to what Truax (Reference Truax2001) termed ‘soundscape competence’. I had experienced this during previous projects recorded in London, where my ear automatically went into ‘background listening’ mode. Therefore, I had wanted to come to a different country so that my ears would be more aware of interesting and distinctive sounds. Having a ‘fresh ear’, where certain sounds were new,Footnote ⁶ was advantageous (Paquette Reference Paquette2004). I did, however, have concerns about ‘sonic tourism’ (Drever Reference Drever2002) and did not want to cross the line into the creation of a ‘tourist’ soundscape (Westerkamp Reference Westerkamp2002). Westerkamp (ibid.: 55) warns that if you are new to an environment, it is easy to create a ‘superficial, touristic sonic impression of a place’. In order to avoid this, I followed Drever’s (Reference Drever2002) suggestion of taking a reflective ethnographic approach throughout the process.

The outcome was this: I did make a few soundwalks around historically (and perhaps, touristy) significant places in Jerusalem such as the Old City, Mount Zion, the Mount of Olives and Jaffa road. I also spent vast amounts of time recording in residential streets, national parks, synagogues, concerts, festivals,Footnote ⁷ supermarkets and universities. By the end of the recording process, the majority of the recordings where of non-touristic areas, with a few, perhaps, more visitor-focused recordings of famous places. This reflected the short, early experiences of the olim when they first arrived, often visiting these touristy places, and the much longer periods living in their normal routines.

For the construction of the soundwalks, I used two methods of recording: 1) while still, at a fixed point, the microphone watching the world pass by; and 2) moving and taking part in the environment. As Lyonblum (Reference Lyonblum2017: 22) comments: ‘And while there are more ways to record than ever, the ethics surrounding the practice remain as ambiguous as ever.’ I was particularly concerned with the lack of ethical principles to guide the recording and composing process of my soundscape, as it was very important to me to truthfully and compassionately represent the interviewees’ stories and lives. Rennie acknowledges that further steps are needed, saying:

Drever (Reference Drever2002: 26) also concludes in his paper with a similar call for the ‘marriage of theory and practice’. These discussions were at the forefront of my mind throughout the project, balancing my roles as composer and researcher.

Several Jerusalem yeshivos (religious educational institutions) became sites for making recordings. I recorded some casual chatter at a yeshiva entrance that one of my interviewees attended. The people were speaking a mixture of English, Yiddish and Hebrew in American accents, which offered a good insight into the multilanguage world the olim lived in. The primary focus of a yeshiva is the study of the Talmud (oral religious law of Judaism and its commentaries). Some charedi Footnote ⁸ men study full-time in yeshivos for many years.Footnote ⁹ Students traditionally study the Talmud in pairs called chavrusos. The idea behind learning in pairs is to engage orally with the text (Holzer and Kent Reference Holzer and Kent2014). When you first walk into these large study halls, you are often struck immediately by the noise level. As I entered each yeshiva, I could hear the murmurings of chavrusos learning together. My microphone picked up the movement of furniture as people entered and left the study hall, the removal of books from shelves and the turning of pages, a student scribbling notes, a rabbi muttering in Aramaic, and the shuffling of feet as people congregated for the afternoon prayers.

I wanted to ensure that I was making informed decisions when recording, especially since I was using diverse sound locations and recording for an extensive period of time. I could not find an equivalent code of ethics from more traditional methods that applied to my sonic practice. Lyonblum notes:

At the outset, I believed soundscape recordings might help solve some thorny problems around subjectivity, when compared to written accounts. I have since, however, discovered that recordings are equally complex. Recordings are highly subjective in terms of editing, where they are made, and even the microphone placement. These considerations emphasised the importance of having clear sonic moments in my compositions where my presence as the recordist was evident to listeners. These moments acted as reminders of human subjectivity and that this was a human-made project. Questions flew at me throughout the recording process: Can I record in ‘open air’ environments without any restriction? Is it possible to ‘own’ a sound? (Silva Reference Silva2000) We acknowledge that music can be owned, but what about sound? I ensured that if I recorded a busker or a street artist’s music for any longer than 30 seconds, I asked for oral acceptance for the use and processing of their material in my composition.Footnote ¹⁰

The discussion and examples in this section and the next attempt to show some of the ethical and creative dilemmas throughout this project. Each decision (or lack of one) carries its own implications. This kind of human inquiry seems to be a constant ethical maze, which has become an important element of my research process. I would urge future sound scholars and composers to consider and problematise the difficult dilemmas they rubbed up against during their research. They need to openly discuss the ‘ethical cultural web’ (Andean Reference Andean2014) that they went through. As Andean says:

As a reflective practitioner I was careful to ensure my intentions were at the forefront of my mind throughout the recording and composing process, considering the cultural implications of the sounds I was working with and the implications of my choices as a researcher on the interviewees and future listeners. I make some further remarks on the complex issue of ethical deliberations later on in this article.

4. COMPOSING THE SOUNDSCAPE

Months after returning to the UK from Jerusalem, I sat at my computer and began to listen to the soundscape I had recorded over the previous year. Listening again to the sounds of the shuk (market), I was transported back among the vegetables, spices and halva. The sounds seemed to alert other senses and I could instantly see and, almost, smell Jerusalem’s busy market stalls. I heard an unfamiliar voice during the recording: ‘Ka-ma ze o-leh?’ (‘How much is it?’) A woman asks, before my microphones picked up another voice from the other direction, ‘RIMON! GEZER! GEZER! KHASA!!!’ (‘Pomegranate! Carrot! Carrot! Lettuce!!!’) a market seller screams at passers-by. I heard birds chirping in a nearby tree as I made my way out of the shuk. Suddenly my daydream was shattered and my senses returned back to London, as I heard a familiar voice on the recording: my voice. I am talking to my wife, as she returns with some olives: ‘When my head turns, so do the microphones. My recordings have captured me, my body, as much as my surroundings’ (Lyonblum Reference Lyonblum2017: 14).

I listened to the entire recordings of the soundscape and the interviews, and a structural idea for the piece began to emerge. I had been in Jerusalem for a year and had collected many sounds that entwined with the Israeli week and Jewish yearly cycle, as well as utilising other sounds that signify places and journeys from the interviewees’ lives. I wanted to sonically structure the work around these cycles. I meticulously grouped sounds together thematically and highlighted sounds that would have a prominent place in the composition. With regards to structuring the piece around the week and year, for instance, I grouped sounds connected to shabbat,Footnote ¹¹ as well as sounds that connected to the different annual Jewish festivals.

An internal conflict also began to develop. My researcher considerations sought to leave the structure of the interviews in its natural recording state: as close a reflection as possible of the original conversations. The composer side of me wished to render the structure as aesthetically pleasing as possible: chopping up the interviews and grouping them according to themes, thus placing them in a different order to the original conversations that took place. This way, I as the composer grouped moments together, allowing the olim to speak about similar topics at the same time as each other and giving listeners a chance for reflection. This thinking was also influenced by oral history interview texts that placed spoken words under themes, side by side on the page for the reader to compare (Smith Reference Smith, Gubrium and Holstein2001: 711). I resolved on a better (or ‘wiser’, Varela Reference Varela1999) balance between these two positions. I chose one interview, which provided the ‘organic’ structure of the piece and moved the rest of the material around this template. Thus, comparisons between the narratives could be made, yet the piece still formed around a natural structure. I did not intend one interview to dominate the others, so this structural interview was cut down significantly. It then became impossible to tell which was the original load-bearing narrative. As Gallagher comments:

When I first started to create the soundscape, I knew that I wanted to keep listeners alert by creating build-ups and breakdowns of highlighted sounds. The piece starts, for instance, with the sound of the Jerusalem tram. One interviewee had taken it the first time they had arrived in Jerusalem and remembered seeing the city for the first time while sitting on it. If I had transformed a sound, I often placed the original sounds underneath, to evoke a warmer feel. This is a similar technique to Harvey’s (Reference Harvey1998) Mortuos Plango Vivos Voco where he keeps the original, and processed, bell sounds throughout. Throughout the piece, the sounds of the tram return, simulating the way in which the tram winds its way, stopping and starting, through the city:

I made background textures, using low-pitched sounds such as motor traffic, as well as high-pitched birdsong, which I magnified into the mix. Creating this layered, textured background gave warmth and fullness to the composition. Building these layers, I cut out pitches, bands of frequencies and slices of time. At other times I duplicated or slowed down layers, stretching time or repeating events. To quote Westerkamp (Reference Westerkamp1996: 20): ‘I transform sound in order to highlight its original contours and meanings, similar to the manner in which a caricaturist sharpens the contours and our perception of a person’s face.’

This composition was totally constructed out of sounds connected to olim and wider Jewish life, even added reverb, which was recorded from natural sources in an English-speaking synagogue in Jerusalem. Occasionally, I employed time stretching and the freeze tool to create pulses on sounds. These acousmatic moments were only brief, and I used them to re-awaken the concentration of the listener. Several of the acousmatic moments of this composition were merely layered rather than processed. Many sounds were intriguing and required no editing whatsoever. The tahini-making machine, for instance, which ground sesame seeds freshly in front of passers-by, made a sticky sound and clicked at the same time.

The ethnomusicologist in me had recorded many snippets of music throughout my year in Jerusalem: from religious songs to buskers in the street, to outside music festivals. My microphones had captured them all. Sometimes, during a spoken segment of the piece, a small section of music enters into the soundscape. These moments of sonic collages aided the ‘mental digestion’ of the spoken words. One of my favourite examples of this is when a niggun Footnote ¹² enters the soundscape. Niggunim are particularly central to Chasidic Footnote ¹³ groups, who believe that the inner parts of your soul are most deeply expressed through melody. Rebbe Shneur Zalman of Lyady (cited in Rubin Reference Rubin2005: 145) said that ‘music is the pen of the soul’.

The effectiveness of soundscape composition to creatively evoke environments from any recorded material enables the creation of layers of history in dialogue with one another, as well as with contexts and environments. The building of these textures, through layers, calls to mind other dynamics of longing for, and belonging to, multiple places, and multifaceted discussions surrounding home. Salih (Reference Salih2003: 70) makes distinctions between home as the physical, inhabited space and home as ‘the symbolic conceptualization of where one belongs’. This tension between the layers of home connects strongly to diaspora identity and seems to stem from the experience of ‘living here, relating to there’ (Baumann Reference Baumann2000: 324). It is part of what Clifford (Reference Clifford1994: 322) calls the ‘empowering paradox of diaspora’. It was, therefore, important in the piece to have moments of the interviewees speaking about their previous homes, so that listeners could experience these multiple layers.

While the narratives were unfolding I had to ensure that the environmental sounds did not completely cancel out the voices. Though I predominantly removed my voice from the interview recordings, there are deliberately un-edited moments where I am audible as the recordist (through speech or movement sounds), which adds to the rhythm, perhaps knocking it slightly out of flow. This was important to include as an awareness of ‘ethnographic presence’ (Fetterman Reference Fetterman2005), which is crucial to the understanding of the soundscape process for listeners. The composer’s sonic presence in the soundwalk has been defined by Truax (Reference Truax1999) as soundmaking: ‘[to] become aware of one’s own sounds in the environmental context’. I had neither purposely made noise during my recordings, nor tried to hide my presence (Ferrari, Reference Ferrari1967; Westerkamp, Reference Westerkamp1989). I listened back, again, to some of my soundwalk recordings and tried to focus on my presence. I noticed my attention focusing on often-ignored events, such as my walking, my footsteps and even the movement of my clothes. The conversations of passers-by were included in the soundwalks, which added to the richness and warmth of the layering. Brief fragments of conversation had been given new musical meaning throughout the piece, as the sound of people talking is placed as a context-driven aesthetic in the manner that Lane (Reference Lane2006) would categorise as ‘narrative suggestion’.Footnote ¹⁴ These noises sometimes contrast with other sound material in the piece, but nonetheless, represent an important aspect of the environment: the public space (ibid.).

I wanted to include different soundmarksFootnote ¹⁵ throughout the composition, at various points along the soundscape. There are, for example, church bells in the piece, which accompanied one interviewee’s weekly walk to see her sister. Similarly, Jerusalem’s shabbat siren goes off every Friday to mark the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath. This sounds out as a marker in the composition, before a quieter moment in the piece, akin to the quieter experience on shabbat (and increasingly so on Yom Kippur Footnote ¹⁶). In the composition, there is another section, fundamental to the Jewish yearly cycle, where I had captured the Megilla reading (the scroll of Esther). This scroll is read during the festival of Purim, wherein traditionally the audience to the story try to drown out the name of Haman (the enemy of the Jews in the text) with vocal noises or with groggers (rattles/noisemakers). This was significant, as it is a central sonic moment in the Jewish yearly cycle.

Another example of the annual significance of sound is the blowing of the shofar (ram’s horn). A shofar is blown during the month of Ellul,Footnote ¹⁷ sonically signifying this holy time. The Shulchon Oruch (code of Jewish Law) states that to hear the shofar during this time is a mitzvah (positive commandment). It even goes so far to say that you cannot fulfil the mitzvah by hearing an echo as this may not be clearly recognisable (Heiman Reference Heiman2013). During the composition, listeners at first hear a processed shofar. They may be unaware of the source of this sound (being almost acousmatic and unrecognisable). By the end of the piece, when hearing the recognisable shofar, the composition is trying to emulate people fulfilling this mitzvah at the end of Yom Kippur.

5. REFLECTIONS

A theme running through this article has been that of the ethical implications regarding soundscape compositional projects. Gradually I have realised that my thinking was focused on a continuous interdisciplinary debate between ethics and aesthetics, which, instead of making the work stronger, was becoming a hindrance to the free-flowing progression of the project. I had boxed myself into a corner, by seeing these concepts as fixed diametrically opposed elements. Instead, I now see ethics and aesthetics as fluid, free-floating, connected processes borrowed from different disciplines. As Law states:

This sonic project, as with other non-traditional research practices, does not benefit from having traditional research evaluation criteria applied to it. Non-traditional research practices call for different ‘judgement calls’ (Sparkes Reference Sparkes2002), such as transparency, trustworthiness, reflexivity, accountability, contribution and transformation. As Gershon argues:

Throughout this study, my thinking and practice around the compositional process has become increasingly entangled. Thus mirroring the ‘diasporic identities’ theme of the project, whereby identities do not fit neatly into geographical, linguistic or cultural borders; instead diaspora inquiries overlap and are entangled and inhabit multiple borderlands. In reality, I would say that my research is made up of ‘the space of the in-between’:

In our environments, sound is not always as expected, and it is quite often ignored. Soundscape with its compositional approaches and techniques such as sound marks and sound signals (Truax Reference Truax1999) can create compositions that ‘focus and draw the listener’s attention to the sonic layers within a particular soundscape’ (Martin Reference Martin2018: 20). The effectiveness and distinctiveness of soundscape composition has been examined by Norman:

In interviews, people do not speak in perfect sentences. People leave things out, and then remember something and return back in a circle. Gershon (Reference Gershon2018: 128) comments: ‘After listening to people talk, the sounds that surrounded and contextualized their talk, and the tone and tenor of conversations, my written transcriptions felt somehow empty.’ When listening back to the piece, it becomes hard for me to imagine how to transcribe what has been recorded, since: ‘The authority comes not from the pen and written word of the historian, but directly from the voices of our interviewees as performers embody and recreate their pasts’ (Pollock Reference Pollock2005: 169). However, this ‘authority’ is not complete:

The creative decisions made by the researcher unavoidably influence the recordings gathered, and in turn will make an impact on the interpretive stages ahead. It is, however, important to remember that these ‘decipherings’ (Mazzei Reference Mazzei2007: 113–16) happen in all research: written or oral, quantitative or qualitative (Richardson, Reference Richardson and Van Maanen1995).

6. CLOSING THOUGHTS

This article has explored how interdisciplinary soundscape composition that incorporates social inquiry (Drever Reference Drever2002; Rennie Reference Rennie2014) is a valuable tool for investigating community change. Soundscapes are not only ideal for recording the sounds of a place but can also explore the relationship of those sounds within a community and a community’s experience of changing sound. This article furthers the legitimation of interdisciplinary soundscape compositions, not just as aural interviews or data, but also as sonic representations of sociocultural environments. Recording devices can record customs, traditions and ways of life, and therefore cross into the dimensions of place, language, memory, community and belonging (Bull and Mitchell Reference Bull and Mitchell2015).

As Shilling (Reference Shilling2012) claims, when a person moves to a new place, their memories and habits can be derailed by new sonic experiences. My sonic investigations show the fluidity of these relationships and identities with regards to place. The narratives recorded by the olim in this project highlight some of the complexities of affiliation, community and memory that shape the feeling of belonging to locations (King Reference King2000). My aural inquiries suggest that during the early stages after migration, relationships to a place will probably be created through comparisons between the current place and the places recently left. New sounds may startle migrants in unusual ways, or trigger their ‘imaginative hearing’ (Ihde Reference Ihde2007). After a period of time, the olim developed language and local knowledge, which gave feelings of security and stability. This is supported by Scannell and Gifford’s (Reference Scannell and Gifford2010) theory of place attachment in new migrants, together with Wilk’s (Reference Wilk and Miller1995) ‘learn to be a local’ concept.

These sonic experiences play a significant role in migration studies since diaspora identities can shift as a result of sonic experiences, as Marks argues:

The sound methods utilised throughout this study made space for these ‘newcomers’ to Israel to explore their sonic belonging and diaspora identities, and for wider reflections on the soundscape of Jerusalem. By incorporating interviews (and other creative elements) in these compositions, I believe that listeners can experience a wide perspective on place and identity, integrated with personal and community memories, as well as sounds from the local environment.

I am reminded of a time when I was hosting friends for a shabbat meal, singing traditional songs and prayers, and a non-Jewish guest asked: ‘How does everyone know which harmonies, melodies and rhythms to do?’ We hadn’t ever thought about it before. We just know them. This is the power of soundscapes, to invite listeners in to share in the experiences of others, and they are particularly potent in giving listeners access to aspects of Jewish identity that we cannot easily explain in the written word. Thus, I hope to have shown and shared in this article some of the ways in which soundscape compositions are uniquely positioned to explore diaspora identity and indeed experiences of migration, longing and belonging.