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RSSThe Art of Listening: vuvuzelas
On the sound of the 2010 World Cup.
By Daniel Trilling Published 14 June 2010 18:25
A couple of mornings ago, I awoke from a dream about being chased by a bee. I might have thought nothing of it, but in the days since, friends have reported similar occurrences. It would seem that the likely culprit is a long plastic horn which non-African football audiences are only now familiar with as the vuvuzela.
Many people do not like the cumulative and enveloping buzz produced by thousands of spectators blowing the horn in unison. Some have complained that it ruins the tournament atmosphere; others that it puts players off their game. RW Johnson, the South African historian unfavourably compares the sound to that of a chainsaw and says the instrument should be banned. (He's not alone in this, but the World Cup organisers have refused to do so.)
I beg to differ. For devotees of pure sound, as followers of the Art of Listening must surely be, massed vuvuzelas are a fascinating thing: more than simply the aural equivalent of a Mexican wave, the constant, tiny variations in volume and tone turn the crowd into a single, responsive entity. When a goal is scored, or a foul committed, there is no change as such, merely an intensification of the sound already there. The usual noises - cheers, chanting, insults, a brass band playing the theme from The Great Escape if it's an England match - are all subsumed into the drone emitted by the horns.
While the drone may be a new discovery for football fans, it has an extensive musical history. Perhaps one or more of the following clips will serve as a good alternative soundtrack to viewers who tire of the vuvuzela.
"De natura sonoris No. 2" by Krzysztof Penderecki. Readers may recognise this from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining - film being an area in which mass audiences have long been conditioned to accept sounds that would otherwise be dismissed as avant-garde or "unlistenable". (Hat-tip here to Zone Styx Travelcard.)
L Subramaniam, live at the Royal Albert Hall. An excellent example of how a drone - used extensively in Indian classical music - can act as a springboard for a virtuoso performer, in this case the violinist Subramaniam.
Sunn 0))), live in Berlin. Distorted guitars played in low tunings and at high volume.
The late guitarist Jack Rose. His reinterpretations of American folk and blues were anything but traditional - which brings us to a final point about the vuvuzela. The South African tourist board claims it is derived from the ancient kudu horn. But beware the authenticity trap! The vuvzela's manufacturers say instead that the prototype came from America, while they have traced its use to a Chinese women's basketball game. A true child of globalisation, then - and a reminder that what you hear is never less than the product of its circumstances.
You can read more from The Art of Listening column here.
Tags: World Cup 2010 music
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Daniel Trilling is an assistant editor of the New Statesman
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30 comments
Bloody irritating racket. Ban them I say!
I clearly remember having a blue one and plowing it at the Gator bowl in the early '70's so that for it being a new thing.
Ummm, that's "blowing it at the Gator bowl." They sold them in toy stores then. When I couldn't get anything like music out of it I put it down and forgot about it.
Vuvuzelas? As James Corrigan so pithily puts it, we should be more offended by the deafening 'keeerrrCHING' of FIFA's World Cup cash tills...
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/james-corri...
Ban all this piped music nonsense and musical pipes, and lets hear the crowds singing cheering or groaning, for a change.
The stadiums are full. We don't need these drones thank you.
It is part of the South African tribal culure, and requires a 'when in Rome' approach. We are stuck with it.
But funny how the brain gets used to noise drones after a while - it eventually compensates for it, and suddenly it is as if it is not there anymore. Just ask anyone that lives next to the north/south circular, or underneath Gatwick/Heathrow.
Furthermore, early techno music had these sort of acceptance problems, as demonstrated here by The Human League from about 1977/78 with one of their early concept tracks, 'Interface',
http://ex-rental.com/blindyouth/THEHUMANLEAGUEInterface.mp3
Thank goodness we've just got one more week to suffer these drones. Should Scotland get the rights to stage 2018 then we would have to put up with the bagpipes, but thats no hardship since you can get a good tune out of them., like Amazing Grace and Speed Bonny Boat.
To those boring sceptics out there, over it people. This is how Africa does football, yes its noisy but creates an atmosphere unlike anything the tournament has ever seen and it wont get any quieter in 4 yrs time when Brazil host it either! I would rather have the noise than all the football louts you get in europe!
this is the girl to ask for a calming down on versullarse, who-whoo-whhoo-who whooooo...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqleJaPRdig
that reminds me, blimey apart from Denmarkish, there is nom Scandanavians north of there in South Africa. That is not right, Every world cuo without scandanavians turns out bad, one way or the other.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SreCQSmXD34 : )
A Scandanavian/Greek relationship of some sorts, Marsheaux,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DASUZwQk_eM
Conservatives. http://sportingdeviance.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/in-celebration-of-the-v...
Africa, take note... if the powers that be in world footy (Europe + South America) find this 'cultural symbol' tiresome... African nations will have to wait another 70 years to host the tournament !
Do us all a favour... shhh !
The latest offering by The Knife contains it's own fair use of droning - not entirely sure how listenable that is either!
What a fantastic piece. Well done for linking vuvuzelas to drones in music - something I have been interested in for years, as a fan of Sun 0))), Tibetan chanting et al.
Good article, nice selection of videos. You may be interested to know that the composer Stuart MacRae tweeted that the vuvuzela is "teaching the world the beauty of microtone"."
Stockhausen's monotonal drone.
SA has the opportunity to take on board the expression '...as others see us' and maybe tone it down a bit for the unaccustomed.
Cultural? More a plastic overloud capitlist novelty...
I'm afraid I find all these sounds, including drones and distorted guitars, unlistenable after about 5 seconds, and that goes for the vuvuzelas as well. Singing, occasional drumming, cheering, booing - these sounds would be much more welcome as background noise at the Cup. And has anyone worked out just how much saliva drips out of these things after 90 minutes of continual blowing into them? Imagine sitting below one!
Excellent post. May I also recommend two other pieces for their proto-vuvuzela qualities:
One by La Monte Young: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArO-vtKMCbM
Another by AMM's Keith Rowe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb-GPdnfbyI
Scotland should join Wales and Ireland in trying to co-host 2018 WC - I can see it now, Tom Jones singing Danny Boy with the full accompliement of a massed band of bag-pipes in kilts, Mull of Kyntyre style That should get the African newspapers whinging....
OMD incredibly went far with this load of droning shite, their excellent Dazzle Ships album, first track, side b,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaXQP2V8z4A
Ban football from vuvuzela concerts!
That group of blokes kicking a ball around in the middle keep distracting me from the far more interesting mass collective horn improvisation.
I have just been blowing my vuvuzela on my Essex Estate, my pet elephants have stormed across my Essex Estate! African Elephants must be going storming mad in South Africa!
The usual noises - cheers, chanting, insults, a brass band playing the theme from The Great Escape if it's an England match - are all subsumed into the drone emitted by the horns.
----
It's indefensible then, on these grounds. It is not an African 'thing', in fact to claim that it's African is pretty much an insult, which is not what over-sensitive liberals are aiming at when they defend that racket.
Good try but no cigar. Despite many South Africans saying 'it's our culture', it's also fairly ubiquitious human culture to be considerate towards guests.
If it was just the drone (and played only at Bufana Bufana games) then maybe I'd say live and let live. But this (and I can say nothing else) infernal racket drowns out any sense of ebb and flow, light and shade, tension and release at an incredible sound level. It also stops the viewer (and I'd wager the attendees) from hearing anything at all happening on the pitch. Sure, some small changes in the noise can be heard throughout the game but the general decibel level is so high that the reported noise induced temporary threshold shift (many claim to 'get used' to the sound) will quickly turn to permanent. Musicians have been forced to turn down their instruments and amplifiers over the last decade for noise levels much lower than that put out by this unsubtle, boring piece of plastic crap. I have stopped watching games due to the constant anxiety levels induced by this particularly nasty noise, which was frankly designed to be like that.
BTW, I loved all of the examples of drone music, especially the guitars.
we are used to dance to our own tunes and marvel at our colonial history and our success at capitalism. however ideas and power are fluid. we must admit that we have been ambushed in day light. we have lost just as much we will loose coming matches. friends this is how the world around us will change in years to come. what right have we got to campaign against vuvuzelas. it is said in the bible that the trumpets brought down the walls of Jericho. just imagine that? anyway 'vuvuzela' means to add a spice/taste, a bit of flare to something. traditionally the instrument was and is still known as 'Uphondo' meaning 'horn'. It was used to send messages. Sounds familiar? in army parade drills the horn or trumpet is used as such and dates back to history as above. It would appear that many are too patriotic and too close to the picture that nothing exists outside our borders. Take no offense my friends. Come 2018, let us not hold back and pretend to be too British which we are not, we have got our own problems and are divided on tribal lines.The story is known world over now and may be too late to play games. AAAHHH least i forget, we have not heard any football hooligans out there!!! i think we are not a match to those guys when it comes to street fighting and kicking doors. WE will come back and unfold our tails soon!!!!!!! enjoy the world cup guys!!!!!!!!!!
Can someone please stop that infernal din. Its difficult to concentrate on the football.
Music is the combination of rhythm and melody. As far as I can tell, the average vuvuzela blower uses neither. If only they did, it wouldn't be nearly so annoying.