In to the Music

Streets are the sources of omnipresent sounds and noise: tone signals, conversations and the sounds of people, cars and vehicles, advertisements, media, music in shops, tones in the streets, or traffic noise compose the sphere of audio experiences of the city. In a sense, the street produces noise because it is a lively sphere, and it is a lively sphere because it produces noise. Street sounds create a physical domain from which a modern man cannot escape and he or she has nowhere to escape: man’s life usually runs in the city’s hustle and bustle. Nonetheless, is it evident that one cannot escape from the influence of street noise? Examining the streets, one can observe that many people choose to fend off themselves of the others and put the headphones on to cut off of the surroundings sounds. People try to build a sound barrier that gives them a sense of security and the ability to not integrate with the others: people listen to music while walking the streets, while shopping, jogging, travelling on the public transport, during a break in a school or university, etc.In the paper I discuss why music has such a seductive power that allows to separate ourselves from the world, to ‘forget’ and isolate ourselves, or become almost fully separated autonomous beings not disturbed by other people. Thus, music gives us not only aesthetic pleasure but also it helps to maintain the group identity, which is especially visible in the context of walking in the street and life in an urban environment.Moreover, escaping from the streets into music generates and reflects a certain paradox: trying to avoid the noise of the streets, we go into the noise provided by the headphones and players. While the street creates a sphere of sounds uncontrolled by a human being, music played on the headphones is intentionally controlled by a user. A man becomes a creator of the space of the audiosphere around him or her. In this context, people have substantial potency of shaping the sound environment that closely surrounds them.