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Hildegard Westerkamp's Kits Beach Soundwalk: shifting perspectives in real world music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2002

David Kolber
Affiliation:
Suite 204, 4655 Main Street, Vancouver, BC V5V 3R6, Canada 604.876.8844 E-mail: dkolber@sfu.ca

Abstract

Hildegard Westerkamp's Kits Beach Soundwalk challenges us as listeners to re-evaluate our acoustic soundscape. Juxtaposing the sounds of barnacles with the noise of the city, Westerkamp reveals an unbalanced world in which individual voices are silenced. Kits Beach Soundwalk allows Westerkamp to help rectify that imbalance. It provides her with the opportunity to create a place in which a listener can take pleasure in simply being. She reveals the metaphors, the hidden entrances, within sounds that take us into other spaces. A listener travels with Westerkamp into worlds of tiny sounds and tiny voices, dreams, and places of fantasy and the imagination. She challenges us as listeners to re-establish our place within the world around us. By designing the piece to reach the audience on a number of levels - intellectual, physiological, metaphorical - Westerkamp effectively promotes the changing of listening habits; the distancing of individuals from oppressive sonic environments; and the regaining of an individual's inner voice.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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