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Argentinian Soundscapes

R. Murray Schafer

British Journal of Music Education / Volume 12 / Issue 02 / July 1995, pp 91 - 101

DOI: 10.1017/S0265051700002540, Published online: 18 December 2008

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0265051700002540

How to cite this article:

R. Murray Schafer (1995). Argentinian Soundscapes. British Journal of Music Education, 12, pp
91-101 doi:10.1017/S0265051700002540

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Argentinian Soundscapes
R. Murray S chafer

The author reflects on his work with music teachers and students during three weeks in
Buenos Aires in November 1994.

November 4, Buenos Aires. Spacious apartment thirteen stories up on the Avenida

Pueyrredon waiting to be taken to my first lecture. Subject: Elpaisaje sonoro. A good
display of it below the window. I counted 350 car horns over a one-hour period this
afternoon. Quite a variety too: one-tone cranky horns, two-tone strident ones,
occasionally a major second apart but usually a minor third, then regal horns tuned to
the interval of a major third. These seem the loudest. Sometimes there's a fancy horn.
I just heard one bugling this motif:

•—* i
Per sonare, to sound through: personality. Short toots. Bright colours. "Hello!"
"Nice day!" "Hey, watch it!" "I'm going first!" Nothing really nasty in the
Argentinian horn, even when a street blockage causes an eruption of them. The
cursing horns glitter vivaciously.
I recall the horns in Costa Rica before the presidential election last January,
cascades of passing vehicles punching out the candidates' names:

P 1 P
Fl — GU — RES

n
MIGUEL — AN — GEL
*\ P
One knew that inflections and accents are impossible on horns, yet one heard them.
The whole country participated in this frolicking bipartisan counterpoint.
The Argentinian horn is pure self-advertisement. The engine roar too. And the
engines are substantially louder than in North-American cars. There are few
automatics and few air conditioners: windows are open, but it is rare to hear a radio.
Cristian doesn't even have one in the Fiat he picked us up in at the airport. As soon
as summer hits Canada, half the cars turn into boom boxes for petulant rock-rap
fanatics. Here people dance on the gear shift instead of the radio dial.
The variety of sirens in B.A. is really astounding. There are two-tone oscillating
horns, electronic glissandi, and I even thought I heard one or two old disc sirens;
yelping sirens and blockbuster air horns are also popular as methods of torpedoeing

B. J. Music Ed. (1995) 12, 91-101. Copyright © 1995 Cambridge University Press

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 Argentinian Soundscapes R. Murray Schafer

traffic. But no standardization. One has the impression that sirens are chosen on whim
at some bloodthirsty toy store.
Lecture went well with over three hundred people present. Canadian Embassy's
contribution to the event, a couple of hundred dollars, just enough to pay the postage
for the invitations, says Cristian. Ambassador was to open the show. Couldn't come.
Sent a deputy. Somewhere in the crowd a woman arose just long enough to be
identified as our cultural attache, then vanished.
A nice touch at the reception afterwards. A young man entered with a large bouquet
of carnations and began handing them out to everyone. Said he thought it might be
nice to end a lecture on noise with flowers and everyone agreed.
The next day I hear that B.A. has been identified on the radio as the fourth noisiest
city in the world because I mentioned that my rough car horn count would place it
somewhere on a par with New York, and rather below Paris and Cairo in this respect.
How myths are started.
The way Latin-America women dash up to you at every meeting or departure for a kiss
on the cheek (and a confidence in the ear?) and then vanish immediately from your
presence.
The Argentinian convention of taking groups of dogs for a walk. Young people sell
this service to dog owners. They walk the dogs on leashes all bundled together, 10 or
15 dogs all trotting along in relative harmony until a cat crosses their path; then all
tonalities hit the air and the yawping, yapping, whooping, yelping, growling, snarling
multitude leaps off in reverberating chaos down the street.
The psychology of dog ownership. The people who like big dogs with rich baritone
voices, brusque as police sergeants. The people who like little dogs with shrill
hysterical voices like teenage girls. The dog as a reflection of the owner's fantasies and
desires.
A critic was asking me what differences I noticed in the B.A. soundscape since my last
visit two years ago. I answered that awareness of noise pollution was greater and
mentioned the large turnout for my first lecture as endorsement. "Is it true that
Buenos Aires is the fourth noisiest city in the world?" he queried. "Just a rumeur,"
I said, but I think he missed the double entendre.
One thing Argentines could do to reduce noise pollution in the streets is to ban alarm
systems on cars. They are always popping off and no one pays attention to them
anyway. One day one yelped continuously for two hours outside the place where I was
giving my workshop. I asked Cristian to phone the police. They came, made a note of
the license and went away. It turned out that the car belonged to one of the people
registered in the course who had gone off to lunch. She apologized and the next day
put her car in a garage, informing me that it would cost her ten pesos a day to have
it protected in this manner. She gave me her book, La multiplicion de los espejos
(mirrors). Borges disliked mirrors because they multiply people. Cars participate in
this same vicious practice.
In the U.S.A. one hears alarms in houses but rarely on vehicles. In Canada the
nuisance is almost unknown, thankfully.
Another thing that might be done to improve the soundscape in B.A. is to save the
money spent on painting traffic lanes, which are never observed anyway, and spend it
on quieter buses. Everyone agrees about the buses. Then there are the thundering
street cleaners that prowl after midnight doing the job that could be done by a few
silent brooms. I am only answering the questions posed by students and reporters.

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 Argentinian Soundscapes R. Murray Schafer

November 5. Forty-five bright, shining faces turn up to have their ears cleaned. We
begin with the Name Game. I have different people stand up and repeat their own
names, inflecting them differently each time while facing a group of others who echo
the name with the same inflection. The leaders are changed periodically until everyone
has had a chance to be introduced. The name repetition is often accompanied by
gestures and this is encouraged. Also, I try to get the echoing group to repeat the name
simultaneously with the speaker rather than after. I want to motivate impulsiveness
rather than reflection, which is distancing. With five or six groups working
simultaneously we build up a quite complex interactive dance-composition that
immediately breaks down inhibitions and social distance. At any rate, it's more
entertaining than the other encounters you've attended in which everyone around the
room introduces themselves and unloads the tonnage of their Ph.D thesis on you.
The room is empty. We have nothing to work with except our voices and our
imaginations. I begin to speak gibberish, an animated nonsense language of my own
invention, and invite others to dialogue with me. Soon the whole assembly is up on
their feet moving about, gesturing wildly and getting acquainted in gibberish
language.
This prepares us for the next exercise in which the voice, still speaking a language
of its own invention, is asked to illustrate:
an army general
a politician giving an election harangue
a famous and condescending opera singer
a sportscaster at the World Cup
a dumb athlete being interviewed by a mini-skirted TV lollypop
a child of 4
an old man of 90
a cat
a donkey
a snake
etc.
This leads to Aesop's fable of the Fox and the Crow. How do you modulate your
voice Mr. Fox to get Mrs. Crow to drop the cheese? The voice flatters, the voice
cajoles, the voice grovels, licks the dust, then rises wheedling in honeyed dipthongs,
sweetlies, fawning sycophantically until...Mrs. Crow surrenders and drops the
cheese. Sometimes the Fox succeeds, sometimes not.
All this is in preparation for telling a fairytale without using words. I divide the class
into groups (about 8 to a group) and give them all the assignment of " Cinderella " with
half an hour to work out a telling of the story in vocal sounds only. Afterwards we
listen to each presentation, comparing and criticizing. Which group had the nastiest
sounding step-sisters? Which group presented the sound of Cinderella's carriage most
effectively? Which ball was the most impressive? Which midnight clock the most
ominous? Which prince had the most charming voice? Would you marry him?
We laugh a lot as we work. Of course one learns nothing while laughing.
The next day we begin with some different warm-up exercises. Lying on the floor, we
listen to the sounds floating in through the window. Then, on the clap of my hands,
everyone rises and rushes about the room making as much noise as possible. A second
clap and they lie down again to hear the sounds of their own bodies' excitement. A long
calming period; the external soundscape gradually resumes focus. Then everyone rises

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Argentinian Soundscapes R. Murray Schafer

and moves as slowly as possible through the room, singing the sound of the movement.
Can you judge the time it will take to move from one end of the room to the other on
one singing breath?
Two people slowly pass one another in the centre of the room each singing a tone.
As they pass they exchange tones. Try singing a tone and making a gesture at the same
time and perform the same exchange...
One person is given the task of conducting another, eyes closed, through an obstacle
course using the voice alone to signal but without using words.
This leads naturally to the game in which groups of people build up a repertoire of
sounds by which they can direct any member of their own group to perform a simple
or even complex mechanical task. Each group sets the task for a different group. For
instance: "Enter the room, pick up a particular chair and replace it in a desired
position. Go to the window and open it. Come back and perform a waltz with
someone." etc. The signals needed: go forward, turn, go back, pick up, put down, etc.
Great hilarity performing some of the assignments. At the end I explain that we are
at the primeval threshold before music and speech separated. After the split, each
retained some of the ingredients of the other: onomatopoeia in speech, grammar in
music.
The day ends with some chanting of magic songs: Rain Chant, Mosquito Chant,
Wolf Chant... I explain that tone magic differs from music in that it is not merely
entertainment for the ears but attempts to influence the powers of nature in ways
beneficial to human beings. The Rain Chant, for instance, can bring rain or prevent
it. The Mosquito Chant, when its tricky rhythm is mastered, is an inoculation against
mosquito bites. The Wolf Chant is an admiration for Wolf and asks him to loan us his
strength and fortitude. I point out how today music and weather reporting both cost
a lot of money and accomplish little, while the Rain Chant costs nothing and can change
the weather patterns if one believes in it. Such was the power of tone magic.
November 6. First course over. We covered a lot in two days under sunny skies. The
students were almost all young, so we could move faster, without philosophizing,
without discussing methodology, without, in fact, discussing anything - just doing.
And that is the Schafer method: to keep doing one exercise after another in no
particular order except to maintain a balance between the physically active and the
mentally stimulating, so that the whole takes on the form of a mosaic or cluster rather
than a linear progression. It is perhaps a technique I learned from McLuhan.
November 7. The second course, this one in Acoustic Ecology, is being held in the
Museo Romulo Raggio, a vintage mansion in the Italian style surrounded by an
attractive garden which shelters it somewhat from the reverberant buses hurtling
down the street at the side, but not at all from the screaming jets taking off from the
airport.
The air inside the building is cool and somewhat stagnant. I notice that the
participants (about 20 in this course) are talking in hushed tones in the marble-floored
ballroom where the course is to be given - as if they're afraid to stir up the dead. I
decide to make this the excuse for our first investigation, divining the former life of the
building from its materials and the sounds they make.
First, doors.1 There are a great variety of these: pantry doors that squeak in alarm
and seem to be calling out "thief."-double doors to the ballroom that roll back
majestically like a snare drum announcement: "The Prince of...!"- large heavy
doors that seem to be saying "Leave me alone!"-glass doors that shake like
countesses loaded with jewellery... Even the windows had personalities: some creaked

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Argentinian Soundscapes R. Murray Schafer

and complained: " I need air!" - or shivered on their hinges and said, " Close me, it's
chilly outside!"
We determined the servants' quarters and listened to the way the doors here
groaned painfully. Between this area and the main household a thick-set door closed
quietly but emphatically reminding us that class distinction is also a sound.
The floors of every room yielded their personality too. Those of the halls and
ballroom were marble to take the spurred boots of cavaliers. Those of the library and
music room (or what we took to be these) were of inlaid wood, and ornate wood
panelling in the library produced a muted acoustic that gave the voice no
encouragement. We decided that a room with timbered flooring strung over wide-set
beams allowing it to boom under firm footsteps was the master's bedroom. The
adjacent room surely belonged to the mistress. It was smaller and though the floor was
also timbered it was strung on close-set beams so that while there was authority in the
sound as one walked across it, the stentorian punch of the master's room was missing.
Then we discovered a smaller room in which the door clicked open and shushed over
a thick carpet as it swung back to reveal two padded sofas. We decided this was "the
lovers' room."
We spent a good part of the morning tapping walls and cupboards, opening
everything that could be opened, touching all the materials and fabrics, measuring the
reverberation in each room (those with parabolic ceilings had an immediately
recognizable Eigenton). T h e whole palace, dead and deserted, revealed the intricacies
of its former life to the investigative ear. " I s this the bathtub of a prince?" I ask,
turning on a modest trickle of hot water in the principal bathroom. " N o . " And the
discussion turned to ways in which water sounds express character, concluding with
some remarks on Japanese water harps {suikinkutsu). These were resonant jars, buried
in the earth under wash-basins outside tea houses during the Edo period (1603-1867).
I have also encountered them in the washrooms of private houses. The water trickled
down into them through the stones at the base of the wash-basin, making little pinging
sounds, not loud but clearly audible. There would always be a slight delay before the
water harp would begin so that listeners had to wait to hear it. In the interval they
would hear the other sounds that were present.
The suikinkutsu is a beautiful example of designing for the ear and I want the
students in this course to begin to think of ways to initiate soundscape designs into
their own lives. We talk of how walking on different surfaces produces different
sounds (another subject well understood by the Japanese gardener) and I set a
homework assignment: Let's make a Sound Path down the corridors of the Palacio.
Let every footstep sound different. Bring all the resonant materials you can find to
class tomorrow, anything to transform walking into an interesting sonic experience.

The Argentinian habit of eating two large meals a day, one at noon and the other at
10 p.m. is hard on the inexperienced constitution. Our courses run for three hours in
the morning and three in the late afternoon or early evening. Between them I eat an
enormous lunch, usually with a lot of meat and some beer, then lie down and sleep for
a while, awaking with the dopey sensation of being drugged.
Right now I am in Eva's flat, situated next to a school, which seems to be in
perpetual turmoil. A piano plays intermittently and haphazardly. Now, at 4 p.m., I
hear the sudden rattling of spoons (are they eating then?) A tray just went flying with
a clatter. A teacher screams at the children. It takes a long time before they settle
down. Actually they never do; there is always the scraping of chairs and occasional
flings at the piano.

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 Argentinian Soundscapes R. Murray Schafer

The hysterical teacher will always have a hysterical class; ambient clamour always
underscores stridulation. The same schizophonic-schizophrenic effect can be heard
around microphones. I never use a microphone unless the crowd exceeds 5000 (advice
from Plato) and since it never does, I am free of this impediment. I pushed the
microphone away for my lecture the other day, and afterwards a student said, "We
knew you'd do that." I've always noticed that as soon as the microphone is introduced
the foot-shuffling, coughing and whispering doubles. "Can you hear me?" I always
ask, and if someone says " N o , " I am sometimes so bold as to even reduce my voice
by 10 decibels to bring the room noise down for more concentrated attention. But I
do try to speak slowly and clearly.
The microphone was unavoidable this afternoon. " She has an estimated audience of
150,000 viewers" whispers Cristian as we stand watching her reading the press release
about my work. Soon we find ourselves in armchairs before the cameras as the
talkshow introduction rolls on the monitor.
"Do you think I have a beautiful voice?" she asks, fluttering her green eyes at me
over a blouse that made her look breastless.
" I married my wife because I loved her voice," I reply, ducking the question.
We meander over the subject of noise; her questions are vague and my replies
floundering.
"Is Buenos Aires the noisiest city in the world?"
"Can't say. In terms of car horns I'd put it on a par with New York."
"New York." Her eyes light up and she gives a little pant so that I notice she has
breasts after all. "I looove New York. Eet is a great city."
And so it went. At the conclusion she invited me to kiss both cheeks. "You were not
very inspiring," said Cristian as we walked downstairs from the studio.

Tonight a siren in the street, totally idiosyncratic to my ear:

•4% r
7 6& \
~£Tc.

Could it be that someone has tampered with the circuitry to produce this
eccentricity or is it the first of a new line of devices about to roll off the assembly line
in multiples of a thousand? In any case it endorses my observation a few pages ago that
one selects sirens in Buenos Aires the way one chooses chocolates in Switzerland.
November 8. Every step was a miniature acoustic wonder as one walked over pebbles,
shells, wooden planks, chips, scraps of metal, plastic cups, sugar, pasta, snapping
twigs, dried leaves and the husks of nuts. Everyone got a chance to walk the Sound
Path. Some walked quickly - violently. Others walked slowly, bringing out the
richness of each texture. Some walked barefoot. One boy tried to walk silently, taking
10 minutes to crinkle his way from end to end.
I mentioned Rabindranath Tagore's school in India. Tagore wouldn't let the
children wear shoes so that they might always sense direct contact with the earth. We
all took our shoes off. I suggested a walk in the garden, eyes closed holding hands. I
thought it would be a good listening experience. I underestimated the nettles in the
grass. "Ei! Ei! Ei!" cried the Argentinians while I cried "Ow!" the exclamations of
pain differing between our two cultures. When I returned to the class I realized I'd
heard almost nothing. My hypersensitive feet had murdered my ears.

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 Argentinian Soundscapes R. Murray Schafer

I gave a student a few of the materials from the Sound Path and told him to
improvise a little piece with them: a couple of stones, two chunks of metal and some
dried branches. I asked the rest of the class to turn their backs and write a fantasy story
provoked by the sounds they heard. I had not expected the stories to be so fantastic
and surrealistic. With another class I had played them a tape of the entry into
Vancouver Harbour (from The Vancouver Soundscape) and asked them to describe
where they thought they were. To my surprise they fantasized extravagantly. Not even
all of them associated the sounds with the sea. They heard the fog horns as scolding
parents or torturing army generals, the buoys as church bells or the glittering lights
of fabled cities, and so on. The polysemousness of sounds has never been more evident
to me than in conducting these two experiments.
November 10. It is midnight and I have concluded the first set of courses. Now I have
two days off before I begin the next set. As recreation I am reading Faulkner's The
Sound and the Fury, a texture of words and sentences turning around on itself to
describe an unhinged society from which there was no escape. Each moment seems
like a detestable presence driving out another presence. Nobody can get back and
reflect long enough to sense where they are going. Even the sentences are hacked to
pieces, invading and violating each other. Some hang unfinished. Others pop up like
monstrous blobs out of someone else's consciousness. And as I listen to the endless
churning of the traffic below my window, a parallel presents itself. Here too is an
environment endlessly looping on itself, without centre or periphery, focus or
distance, the expression of a world urbanity throbbing with the pulsations of desperate
and inescapable circumlocution. And above the roofs, across the grey horizon,
television antennae and satellite discs crane up to dump more sounds into the little
rooms of the caged inmates. Tonight the whole world seems like Snopes' country.

Another siren never heard before: : L'JV

Another toy to deaden the pain.

MUl\ T I
November 12. A new group of 45 students but I don't want to repeat myself (at least
not completely) so we tack off in a different direction. I'd like to show how sound
exercises can overlap with the other arts. We begin with the well-known theatre game,
the Mirror. People pair off and as one person moves his or her arms and body in slow
motion the other person tries to mirror the postures and movement. Then I explain
that this is an exceptional mirror which also reflects any sounds placed in front of it.
Try to match exactly the vocal sounds produced by the initiator; then change leaders
and try again. Copying, matching, duplicating are techniques employed in all the arts
and to demonstrate this further we place a large piece of paper between each pair of
participants, seated now on the floor and ask one person to produce a line drawing
while the other makes a mirror copy of it.

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The emphasis is on exactitude. It doesn't matter whether the drawing is abstract or

representational. This too can become a vocal mirror in which the voices proceed
simultaneously with the image.
"Drawing," said Paul Klee, "is like taking a line for a walk." To demonstrate this
we take another sheet of paper and while I read a paraphrase of Klee's walk, each
participant makes a line drawing of it.
I begin at home (the point). At first I walk along a straight road. After a while I
turn to the right, then to the left.
I climb a hill. A friend joins me but soon we have an argument and I walk down
the hill alone.
I approach a river and cross it by means of a bridge with a big arch.
I begin to return home along a winding trail. It begins to rain. There is aflashof
lightning. But finally it stops. The clouds part to reveal a thousand stars.
I arrive back home very tired and go to bed (all motion ceases).
Now I ask the class to consider the drawings as musical scores and to vocalize them,
illustrating each turn of events with appropriate sounds. We do this together at first;
then we let a few solo performers do it; then we change papers and try to realize each
other's drawings with sound. I remind them of what we have accomplished. A story
becomes a drawing and then a musical composition. In twenty minutes we have
overlapped three art forms.
This reminds me of the Media Canon and I explain it to the class. First we make
a big circle. Every third person will be an artist. The artist draws short clear shapes
on paper which the person next in line will sing. The following person, ignoring the
drawing, will act out the song with movement. The artist then follows and draws the
movement, and so forth.
But my instructions are too diffuse. They take too long to translate. It is hot in the
room and we can't seem to get the exercise to work. In desperation I resort to a simpler
one. Write down the numbers 1 to 10 on a piece of paper. Circle any three of the
numbers; put squares around any other three.

CiJ 2 3 4 Cbj 6 7 8 C9J 10

Every circle will be a sound. Every square will be a gesture. I count out 1, 2, 3, 4,
5... and every one tries to perform this little improvisation. It's not as easy as it seems
and they ask me to go slower. After a few tries it flows better. Then we change papers
and try again. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 change 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 change 12 3 4 5... etc.
November 13. Yesterday's class ended on an upbeat but I am disturbed that the
Media Canon didn't work and so I try it again, this time by having a small group
demonstrate the sequence before the others. Finally they understand. We are ready to
undertake it with everyone. At first we just send a single motif around the circle to
observe its transformation. Then all singers start together and many motifs circulate.
Soon some people are lost; they aren't paying attention. "Concentrate," I insist.
"Don't talk, concentrate." Gradually it begins toflow.Everyone has to be really alert,
performing continuously, without stopping to analyse or think. And that, of course,
is the value of the exercise. I give a short whistle (by this time I have been given a
whistle to help maintain order) and everyone moves to the next position in the line, the
artists become singers, the singers actors and the actors artists. A few more
circulations, a whistle and everyone moves again. They are getting the hang of it now

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and we continue for some time. At the end they all applaud. They are applauding
themselves really, happy to have succeeded, and I join in.
Later to the Colon Theatre to hear another kind of music. Yehudi Menuhin is to
conduct a performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah. He kindly provided a box and we are
invited to visit him in his dressing room before the performance. He was smiling
benignly as we entered. I was surprised at how relaxed he seemed. Only his handlers
seemed fidgity. We talked about our film together and I mentioned how fresh it still
looked. Actually I had just seen the Spanish version of it at the University of Buenos
Aires where I spent a couple of hours working with students who hadn't the money
to attend my courses. We've both aged, but he showed little of this on the podium
where he swung his arms about with confidence and energy for the two-hour run of
this mighty oratorio. Not bad for a man of 78. The music came across beautifully in
the theatre, a sumptuously dilapidated edifice of tarnished gold and dirty carpets, but
retaining excellent acoustics.
November 14. Outside on the lawn of the Museo Raggio everyone, with eyes closed,
follows me about as I blow a whistle. Often I have done a related exercise by having
people following a moving sound about a room by pointing to it... but it is too nice to
sit inside, so this time everyone sharpens their ears by moving about the grass in
response to the whistle toots.
Then I tried out Raymond Filip's How Many Wolves exercise, substituting dogs for
wolves, since dogs are more plentiful here.2 It goes like this: the listeners are seated
in a circle, facing inward, eyes closed. The dogs move around the outside of the circle
barking in as many different ways as possible. The task is to determine how many
people are doing the barking: two? three? four? five?
One could play the same game imitating crickets, frogs, even birds.
Then we played a related game in which the class is divided into several groups with
each group making the sound of a particular animal: horses, cows, sheep, roosters.
The groups are mixed and with eyes closed everyone tries to find all the others making
the same animal sound, joining hands with them when they do until the groups are
reconstituted. We play the game again. This time the groups are Germans, Africans,
Russians, Chinese... A third time and I give each group a different interval to sing: a
falling fourth, a rising fifth, a rising minor second, a descending major third...
A lot of laughter. Of course no one is learning anything.
Now each group is asked to sit still and listen to the sounds of the environment for
five minutes. Then they are asked to create a little "Nature Concert" of all the sounds
they have heard. An old exercise I've used for 25 years or more. But there are a few
twists. For instance, let one group perform their piece with another group listening.
Each performer is assigned a listener. Now the listening group is asked to perform the
improvisation exactly as they heard it. Another way: the performing group is asked to
repeat the improvisation with each member performing what the person on his or her
right (or left) has performed previously.

© © 0© ©0
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This is difficult (but by no means impossible). I try what I think may be a simpler
variation. During one minute everyone makes only one environmental sound at
whatever point they wish. Repeat the performance with each person now making the
sound of the person on his or her right (or left) at the same moment it occurred in the
original performance. We make several circles and I stand in the centre of the room
ticking off the seconds.

It doesn't work. Maybe I didn't set it up properly. I'm disappointed but I recall my
own dictum: "Your failures are more important than your successes. There is nothing
so dismal as a success story." And I go on to relate how a Brazilian student once
reminded me of this dictum and then went on to say that everything I did with the
class seemed to be a success. "Then I failed," I said.
We end the day with an exercise which I hope might work better, though I've not
performed it for years: a musical football game. I've always dreamed of a musical
composition that was as exciting and as unpredictable as a good athletic event. This
is how to play the musical football game. Choose a referee and two opposing teams of
5 or 6 players each, one player functioning as goal tender. The referee gives the ball
to one team for the kickoff. The ball is a short musical motif or rhythm. The first
player initiates it, then must pass it succesfully to all the forwards, each player
repeating it accurately to receive the pass. During this the opposing team may make
as many contradictory noises as they wish to throw them off. If the team with the ball
fails, the opposing team takes the offensive and the game continues. A shot on goal is
awarded when one team succeeds in carrying the motif through all the players. The
last player then performs a phrase for the opposing goalie, who has to repeat it exactly
to save the goal. If he fails the player making the shot has to repeat his own phrase
exactly a second time for a goal to count. (This is in order to prevent him from singing
something impossible for anyone to remember.) It is a game of great energy and
swiftness and the referee has to be on his ears all the time. We played it enthusiastically
until it was time to leave.
"Unfortunately, a success," someone muttered, and we all laughed.
November 16. The courses are over. There was much more to record but much of
it has been mentioned elsewhere. Tomorrow we leave for San Carlos de Bariloche for
the first Argentinian conference on Acoustic Ecology - time now to relax and learn
from others.
November 25. From the snow-capped peaks of the Patagonian Andes we went to
Iguazu Falls where in 30 degree heat we experienced one of the great wonders of the
natural world in its magnificently tropical setting with lizards, ocelets and butterflies

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of the most indescribably rich markings. Then immediately back to Canada where,
with winter howling down the chimney and snow already on the ground, I edited these
notes. Reading them through I seem to have given the impression that my courses in
Buenos Aires consisted of little more than sound games. Certainly there were
discussions - also periods of contemplation - but my overall impression is that the
classes were filled with an immense amount of activity, including a lot of laughter.
Laughter is a strange sound. You can't fake it; nor can you actually hear it when it is
spontaneously produced. But you can remember it. And that is what I will remember
about Argentina: laughter that made the mind light up.

End Notes
1
The idea of speaking or singing doors comes from Nikolai Gogol's story "Old-World
Landowners," where he discussed the various voices of doors in a country house: "Thin
falsetto," "husky bass," etc.
2
The Argentinians are excellent mimics of dogs, cars, car horns and horses. Their imitations
of the latter are better than those of any North Americans I've heard. It is only later when
one leaves the city and travels the country to see the abundance of horses that one realizes
the reason for this. They are, on the other hand, rather puzzled when asked to howl like
wolves, an animal they do not know.

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