Page 200 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

Soundscape 183

new technologies for the mediation of religious experience, authority, and
community intervene in these dynamics?
People “sound out” the ethical quality and efficiency of speech according
to its effects (i.e., by assessing its capacity to compel listeners into action).
Their stress on the special, moving power of speech and voice resonates
with the importance they attribute to aural perception: a person’s sound
sensation, her capacity to feel touched by sound, is considered a prerequisite
for moral being and action. In situations wherein religious leaders assert
authority through the medium of sermonizing and moral lessons, hearing
and speaking thus pair up in validating a moral lesson. Feeling touched or,
literally, “apprehended” by the sound of a voice is the principal marker of
compelling speech. A truly “touching” experience thus shows itself in the
effective blurring of hearing and heeding: whoever is genuinely touched by
a voice and truthful moral lesson will immediately move into action.
The spontaneous reactions by believers to male preachers whose charismatic
performances are broadcast in audio recordings and on local radio also reveal
the widespread perception that audio recording technologies, as diverse as
sermon tapes and radio broadcasts, allow this leader’s special powers to
become more palpable and effective. To listeners, engaging a radio preacher’s
“forceful speech” creates a new space for spiritual experience, one that is
mediated through an at once haptic and sonic sensation. Pervasive in many
accounts of personal “conversion” or of the decision to associate oneself
with a particular religious leader was the mention of an overwhelming,
almost cataclysmic sound experience: the experience of “feeling struck” by a
leader’s “poignant voice,” the “forceful” nature of which convinced listeners
of his “chosen” status as a mediator of God’s undeniable truth. Spontaneous
comments also reveal the perception of audio-broadcasting technologies’
potential to render his presence immediate and heighten the spiritual aura of
his voice. As these broadcasting technologies allow a leader’s voice to come
from everywhere and nowhere, they reinforce a totalizing, seemingly all-
encompassing hearing experience that envelopes listeners in a soundscape
of divine presence, moves them to tears and, as it is often described, purifies
their hearts and minds from evil intentions.
Notions of the tactile and the kinesthetic are prominent in these culturally
specific understandings of the touching, ethically moving dimensions of a
soundscape generated through sermonizing and mass-mediated speech.
These notions thus shed light on the larger cultural framework of sensual
perception in which these protocols and conventions for authenticating
religious experience and authority are embedded: a person’s capacity to
“touch” and “move” people indicates his or her special capacities to mediate
between the here-and-now and an invisible world. Technologies that