As I sit on my flight back to Sierra Leone from a visit to Ghana, a Nigerian trader sitting next to me starts cursing about Freetown. “This place is such a noise! When I come to Freetown I cannot hear my own thoughts.” When I tell him that I am doing a study on popular music in Freetown, he laughs: “So, you are studying noise?”

By Michael Stasik, Freetown

The opinion the Nigerian trader had about the sounds of Freetown was not an exception. Most expatriates and visitors I talked to share similar perceptions. They perceive Freetown as loud and noisy. In their opinion, music is not making much a difference in Freetown’s sonic environment. Music is considered to be noise itself, to add noise to the noise.

A Canadian NGO-worker once said to me: “People here don’t know how to play with timbre and dynamics. No crescendo–decrescendo–crescendo, it is just always loud. Fortissimo forever. Just like the city.”

Urban ballet
During my first weeks in Freetown, I stayed in a cheap hotel right next to Freetown’s most bustling intersection, the so-called PZ. In terms of sounds, the area appeared to me as one big confusion of humans and animals, of trolleys, cars, motorbikes, busses and trucks; a spectacular urban ballet. As I joined in the performance myself, I could not keep with the rhythm, stumbled, bumped into people, and got hit by passing cars’ side-view mirrors.

At any time of the day or night, some two dozen music sellers frame PZ's central roundabout with their stalls full of dusty cassettes, pirated CDs, and movie collections. Each has his stall equipped with a stereo playing out latest hits. Despite their close proximity, some stalls stand right next to each other, everyone is nevertheless playing his music at full volume. Around PZ, Freetown’s urban symphony appears indeed to be played in steady fortissimo.

Outsiders, either short-term visitors, expatriates, or newly arrived research students, are prone to misunderstand, or just not to see – and hear –, the messages and meanings transmitted in a given expression or sound. However, soon my perception of the city began to change. I started to familiarise myself with the streets and places in downtown Freetown. I began to understand the basics of central Freetown’s urban ballet and learned to sidestep passing cars and people at the right moment. I also started to accustom myself to Freetown’s sounds.

Goat soup
The music’s loudness appears – at least to the newbie’s perception – to contradict the function of the place, to disturb rather than to attract potential guest or to please present ones. This struck me for the first time during a visit in a small bar in the West End of town, where I perceived the music to be particularly salient. The bar is famous for its goat soup. People come here to eat soup and to leave again after having eaten.The goat soup bar is about goat soup, and nothing indicates that somebody would come here to dance or listen to music.

At the goat soup bar music is nevertheless played at a deafening level. Two large speakers frame the small space while the cook serves simultaneously as a DJ. As I asked him why he played the music that loud, he replied with another question, asking me if I did not like the music. The other present customers, including my Freetonian companions, showed not a whiff of nuisance but ate and chatted apparently unhampered by the loud sounds.

Financial means
In the following weeks, I asked the same volume-question in several other places. All answers I received were tellingly vague, such as: “because we like it”, “for people to hear”, or “why not?” The loudness was not perceived as too loud, noisy or disturbing.

As Freetown’s music volume-phenomenon has no logical explanation, I came up with various possible theories for this: Music is played out at full volume because it attracts attention and creates curiosity. And the louder it is played, the clearer and further it sends out these messages. The connection of loud music to wealth, business and special occasions also points towards a possible explanation - either somebody can afford to pay for the loud sounds, that is, for the medium and the required electricity, because he or she has the financial means to do so, or somebody can afford it because his of her business requires electricity. Once one or several of these factors apply, the music is often, if not always, played in full volume. Furthermore, we might also speak of a sort of adjusted technological imperative – once the music technology and its prerequisites (mainly electricity) are available, people will inevitably make full use of it.

Read the full research: 'DISCOnnections - popular music audiences in Freetown, Sierra Leone'

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