Musical Meditations: understanding Pauline Oliveros’ radical concept of ‘Deep Listening’
The world of avant-garde and experimental music is one which is hard to describe succinctly. Within the massive cultural sphere of experiential music, there are countless musicians all trying to achieve something vastly different. Generally speaking, experimental composition often exists in order to generate innovative new sounds and challenge the status quo of what music should be. In the case of avant-garde composer Pauline Oliveros, she was striving to change not just the sounds we listen to but how we listen to them.
As a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center during the 1960s, Oliveros was a vitally important figure within the world of experimental music. A gifted composer and tireless musical innovator, Oliveros is perhaps best remembered for her work in developing ‘deep listening’. The process, in essence, is the method of intently listening to any and every sound around you, mainly of day-to-day life and nature, reevaluating those overlooked sounds as being musical.
From a young age, Oliveros was fascinated by the everyday soundscapes of nature and ordinary life. So much so that, when she was gifted a cassette tape recorder at the age of 21, she immediately began recording the passing sounds of San Francisco. Upon listening back to the tape, Oliveros recalled hearing sounds that she had never previously noticed, thus forming the early foundations of deep listening.
Reportedly, Oliveros developed this method of deep listening as a means of political activism. While teaching at the University of California in San Diego, the composer was at the epicentre of the student anti-war movement, with countless protests against American action in Vietnam occurring over her time at the college. In fact, Oliveros was there to witness the self-immolation of George Winne Jr., who set himself alight to protest against the war in Vietnam.
With this backdrop of social unrest and widespread student activism, Oliveros devised her theory of deep listening as a means of escaping the horrors of war and conflict. The composer would often use deep listening as a means of meditation, focusing intently on one droning note played upon her accordion. In her incredible essay Quantum Listening, she expanded upon what the process of deep listening actually entails, describing it as “listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing,” expanding, “Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one’s own thoughts as well as musical sounds.”
In addition to establishing the meditative concept of deep listening, Oliveros was also noted for her distinguishing between hearing and listening. Hearing, according to the composer and theorist, is involuntary, happening in a sense akin to seeing. Listening, on the other hand, requires deep attention to be placed upon whatever it is that you are listening to. “All cultures develop through ways of listening,” argues Oliveros.
Through concepts of deep listening and, further, quantum listening, Oliveros has completely reinvented how we take in the world around us, with all the sounds that it brings. Upon reading her work, you will find yourself – voluntarily or involuntarily – listening much deeper to the sounds that you might have been overlooking before. A distant birdcall, the sound of a lorry reversing some streets over, even the sound of wind against a window. All sounds can be important, all sounds can be musical, but you have to listen.