Sexual harassment, or the fear of experiencing it, has become part and parcel of the female experience within public spaces. This fear is exacerbated in a moving space because there is a level of control that one secedes when in a public vehicle. This sense of vulnerability places spatial constraints on women, leading to an altered relationship with the sound marks present within such a space. It also brings to the fore a heightened sense of placeness and fear that one will be targeted and sexually harassed because they are a woman. “Aware” interrogates the vulnerability of being within such a space as a woman, and is based on my subjective experience as a commuter in Nairobi, Kenya. 

“Aware” draws on previous journeys that I have taken throughout my lifetime, as well as a soundscape fieldwork undertaken in 2019. Here, I applied an ethnographical emplaced lens and took a closer look at the vulnerability of being within a fast-paced, enclosed, moving space as a woman. Taking an in situ approach, I acknowledged that my placeness within such a space intersects on multiple levels. Here, I utilised the recorded soundscapes as perceptual constructs in dialogue with my femininity and socio-cultural background. 

Additionally, I considered how a heightened sense of placeness can be replicated sonically, acknowledging that such a musical interpretation cannot fully embody the effects of such experiences. In utilising these soundscapes to create music, I also embrace the socio-cultural influences in my creative voice.

Aware (Soundscape |Electroacoustic Composition)

Still Waters Run Deep (2023) is a stereo composition that is part of a PhD portfolio of electroacoustic compositions exploring women’s fear of sexual harassment in buses in Nairobi, Kenya. The composition explores the distinct uniqueness of the soundscape of a bus in Nairobi, highlighting the complex duality of retreating within oneself, triggered by internalized fear of being sexually harassed, while at the same time, remaining aware and vigilant of the external world. The composition contains snippets of in-situ soundscape field recordings that I captured in 2019, pre-COVID-19 pandemic.

Still Waters Run Deep (Soundscape |Electroacoustic Composition)

Mashine* (2023) is a composition that is part of a PhD context-based portfolio of music. The aesthetic direction and foundations of the composition explore soundscape experiences and expectations through a feminist lens, particularly women’s fear of sexual harassment in buses in Nairobi, Kenya. 

Mashine focuses on the bus engine as a key transient sonic marker and how it interplays with the rest of the soundscape (external) and internal emotions arising due to fear of being sexually harassed (internal). In addition to narration, the composition contains snippets of in-situ soundscape field recordings that I captured in 2019, pre-COVID-19 pandemic.

*Mashine is a Swahili word meaning “machine”.
**For the best experience, listen using headphones.

Mashine (Soundscape |Electroacoustic Composition)

In-situ (2023) is a composition that is part of a PhD context-based portfolio of compositions. The aesthetic direction and foundations of the composition explore soundscape experiences and expectations through a feminist lens, particularly women’s fear of sexual harassment in buses in Nairobi, Kenya. Centring my own experiences, using narrative, and using in-situ soundscape field recordings, In-situ highlights what I refer to as transient sonic markers – sound events within the bus environment that can be used as anchors to navigate this triggering space.

*For the best experience, listen through headphones.

In-Situ (Soundscape |Electroacoustic Composition)

Sound shapes and forms our experiences and has the ability to tighten our connection with a place. Listen and Let’s Do Something About It (2024) situates the connection between lived experience and present-moment in-situ experience, further embroiling interview responses, fieldwork notes, and soundscape recordings. Narration plays a critical role in providing context to the piece.

Listen and Let's Do Something About It (Soundscape |Electroacoustic Composition)

Sound shapes and forms our experiences and has the ability to tighten our connection with a place. Listen and Let’s Talk About It (2023) situates the connection between lived experience and present-moment in-situ experience, further embroiling interview responses, fieldwork notes, and soundscape recordings. Narration plays a critical role in providing context to the piece.

Listen And Let's Talk About It (Soundscape |Electroacoustic Composition)

Commotion in motion This piece of music is inspired by the works of Francis Dhomont especially his blend of soundscape with electronic music in ‘Chamber D’efnants’ and his concept of denied reality in ‘Citadelle Interiure’. 

Motion is the most important concept in this composition as the growth and development of the piece depends on the interaction between motion and commotion. The composition almost entirely utilises soundscape sounds that elude to movement be it physically, verbally or melodically.  I blended the transformation of source sounds, soundscape sounds and musical composition from synths so as to create the commotion space that the composition exists in. 

For the listener, expect abrupt endings and unsatisfying exits as this feeds into the concept of commotion. For some sounds the background is clear so as to give the listener the source of the sound. My intention with the sweeps of gradual growing atmospheres and repetitive sounds was to provide the illusion of a non-realistic world with interruptions with announcements bringing the listener in and out of reality.  

The composition blends the transformations of source-sounds with the use of synths so as to create the space of the composition. It has no strict ‘ABA’ format but is fluid in nature. However, it has somewhat interludes so as to allow the composition to breathe. Towards the end, there is a focus on the natural soundscape, which gradually brings back the listener to reality.

'Commotion In Motion' ; Stereo Electro-acoustic/Soundscape Composition

‘Waridi’, a Swahili word-meaning flower, is an electroacoustic soundscape composition for tape and grand piano. The composition combines elements of electro-acoustic music and soundscape composition and uses the broad spectral map of the grand piano, to further link the two. Just like a flower, the composition blossoms and unfolds revealing a journey through the lush and tropical environmental soundscape of my hometown Nairobi coupled with sweeps of gestural and electronically generated and manipulated sounds. A reverse odyssey of a typical day in my life when I went back for my December Holiday, the composition takes you on a somewhat sound walk of my experiences supported by other environmental sounds and generated technological sounds that further amplify this and give the listener a sense of my reactions and perspective of that particular day.

The composition is in three movements with each movement representing a different time of day and different emotional experience; a fluid structural development from evening to day to morning in reverse order of a normal day. Evening represented a grateful ending to an otherwise busy and at times dark day and the morning represents a calm and fresh emotion. Some of the environment sounds have also been reversed which adds to the whole concept of the composition and also surprisingly enough the intended sound world. 

Each movement embraces some of the fundamental principles of a soundscape composition as learnt in class and discussed by Barry Truax in his 2008 article, Soundscape composition as global music: electroacoustic music as soundscape. Recognizability of the environmental sounds was a major factor that I tried to emphasize and further enhance by ‘applying electroacoustic techniques towards processing the recorded sounds, creating a composition that ranges from those sounds that are transparently manipulated to those that are much more transformed.’ (2008; 105). My knowledge of the psychological and environmental context of the soundscape material influenced the shape of the composition and allowed for me to explore ‘my vision, experiences and attitudes towards the soundscape’ (Westerkamp, 2002) 

Each movement gradually developed into the other creating a continuous flow from beginning to end. For the piano, my main concern was not on the musicality of the piano but on the large spectral map of the sounds that the piano can make. Its purpose was to enhance and in some instances link both the electro-acoustic and soundscape parts of the composition. 

The work is inspired firstly by Hildergard Westerkamp’s 1979 composition Fantasie for Horns II whose main concept was to use sounds that were ‘modulated and shaped by their surrounding landscape which resulted in them acquiring a unique sound from the landscape it inhabits’ (album linear notes 1996). Secondly, her 1989 composition Kits Beach Sound Walk, that explored ‘the tiny acoustic realm of barnacles at the Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver Canada, the world of high frequencies, inner space and dreams.’ (album linear notes 1996) And thirdly, Francis Dhomont’s third movement of Cycle Du Son, “Novars”, that uses a moving and fixed perspective as its main structural concept.


Bibliography. 
Truax, B. (2008). Soundscape composition as global music: electroacoustic music as soundscape. Organised Sound, 13(2), 103-109.

Westerkamp, H., 2002. Linking soundscape composition and acoustic ecology. Organised Sound, 7(01), pp.51-56.

'Waridi' -A conversation between the environment and technology; for Tape and Grand Piano

The two primary aims for this composition was to simultaneously create a piece that constantly created a push and pull between sound shapes and the space they occupy, and to explore the boundaries of aural imagination and acoustic experience. The primary organizational parameters of this piece are shape and space. The piece uses a combination of the shape that original recorded sound eludes and the resulting shape of a combination of different sounds and/or focusing on a particular fundamental quality of a sound. This piece is motivated by François Bayles’ Toupie Dans Le Ciel and Karlheinz Stockhausens’ Oktophonie. 

Toupie Dans Le Ciel inspires various ideas behind the shapes of the resulting sounds; most of which still retain their original sound shapes. Two prominent ideas constantly came to mind when listening to this piece. Firstly, the use of sound like a ‘sound nest’ that is constantly in motion. The composer turns the various sound material into something almost virtually living; moving in and out of different shapes as if its constantly reaffirming itself. The sounds could be the same but almost felt renewed and fresh to the ear. Secondly, the composer uses waves of expanding and contrasting sounds; modulating them into infinite number of frequencies so as to create virtual spaces within the composition.

Oktophonie inspires the structure of the composition as it uses layers of transforming sounds that seem to move at their own time and pace. The piece almost feels like it has a rhythm but a rhythm that never repeats owing to the different layers of sound material working together. The piece also utilizes panning quite often with a left-to-right sort of communication between the sound materials. In addition, the composer incorporates moments of long sustained phrasing that felt almost like silence; a way for the composition to breathe.

The strategy behind the structure of Shifting Contours is primarily the use of long sustained phrasing. As a compositional style, the composition has benefitted from this approach to composing as the sound material has evolved and developed on a bed of ambient and shifting textures. The composition is in two movements with each movement focusing on one of the two parameters mentioned above more than the other. The reason behind this is so as to create compositional interest plus this approach allowed the acousmatic piece to extend various properties of short and long sounds.

Shifting Contours

Spatio-Synthergy is originally a composition that includes visuals, however due to copyright issues, the visuals are not included.

The composition combines aspects of sound design, electroacoustic composition and digital acoustic composition so as to create a supporting sound world that not only embellishes the environmental concept of the visuals but can also stand alone as an electroacoustic composition.

Spatio - Synthergy

Esther Kiburi is an upcoming electroacoustic composer with feminist leanings. Her current research focuses on soundscape experiences and expectations through a feminist lens. Her pieces have been played at Sound/Image Festival (2023), Sharing Feminist Research and Practice Conference (2020), rediscoveries xi (2019), The Sound of Memory Symposium: Sound-track/Sound-scape (2017), and Noisefloor (2017). She is in her final year and is currently pursuing a practice-as-research PhD in Music at the University of Kent. She enjoys pushing the boundaries and expectations of captured sound with the goal of inviting the listener into her interpretation of “things” sonically.

#Electroacoustic music #SoundArt

Esther W Kiburi

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