Tokyo Listening examines how the sensory experience of the city informs how people listen to both music and everyday, ubiquitous sounds. Drawing on recent scholarship in the fields of sound studies, anthropology, and ethnomusicology and over fifteen years of ethnographic fieldwork in Japan, Lorraine Plourde traces the linkages between sound and urban space. She examines listening cultures via four main ethnographic sites in Tokyo—an experimental music venue, classical music cafes, office workspaces, and department stores—looking specifically at how such auditory sensibilities are cultivated. The book brings together two different types of spaces into the same frame of reference: places people go to specifically for the music, and spaces where the music comes to them. Tokyo Listening examines the sensory experience of urban listening as a planned and multifaceted dimension of everyday city life, ultimately exploring the relationship between sound, comfort, happiness, and productivity.

Plourde, Lorraine, author

United States, United States of America

Music / Culture, 2019

2, 20190717

1 online resource
Tokyo Listening examines how the sensory experience of the city informs how people listen to both music and everyday, ubiquitous sounds. Drawing on recent scholarship in the fields of sound studies, anthropology, and ethnomusicology and over fifteen years of ethnographic fieldwork in Japan, Lorraine Plourde traces the linkages between sound and urban space. She examines listening cultures via four main ethnographic sites in Tokyo--an experimental music venue, classical music cafes, office workspaces, and department stores--looking specifically at how such auditory sensibilities are cultivated. The book brings together two different types of spaces into the same frame of reference: places people go to specifically for the music, and spaces where the music comes to them. Tokyo Listening examines the sensory experience of urban listening as a planned and multifaceted dimension of everyday city life, ultimately exploring the relationship between sound, comfort, happiness, and productivity
Listening to the city : distraction, attention, and ubiquitous listening -- Learning to listen to Onkyō : ear training as sensory attunement -- City noise and the avant-garde -- "A place where time moves slowly" : analog listening in the music cafe -- New experiences in a new city for new women : ambient sound for refined women -- "Feeling uncomfortable without sound" : Muzak as affect management for office workers -- Retro shopping arcades Muzak -- Sonic air conditioning : ubiquitous listening as mundane comfort -- Tokyo listening, listening to Tokyo
Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on August 21, 2019)
Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-164) and index

2023-10-09