Rock in silence
You could hear a pin drop at this recent Bamboo and Ely Buendia concert
If it were the ’90s, and music icon Ely Buendia was on stage singing “Ang Huling El Bimbo” or “Magasin,” partygoers, hipsters, and music lovers would have been shouting at the top of their lungs, running around, jumping, unleashing their inner beast. There would have been boomboxes and heart-thumping noises. There would have been a riot.
But his latest concert costarring another music legend, Bamboo Mañalac, was tamer—no, not tamer, quieter, so quiet in fact you could hear a pin drop. Attendees were head bangin’ in unison and singing along to a song that they alone could hear. It was the country’s first silent concert, sans the noise and the chaos (no need for bouncers!) associated with a rock party such as this one.
Ely and Bamboo were enclosed in a soundproof glass booth, their music transmitted through Sony MDR headphones, like artists recording live music in a studio. “This feels so weird, I cannot hear you guys. I feel like I’m in quarantine,” Bamboo says into his mic before performing “214.” While Bamboo couldn’t hear his audience, but he could see everyone lip-synching, and could feel the energy permeating the glass case where he was confined.
A Breath of Fresh Air
In a country where loud rock concerts are held everywhere, anywhere, and anytime, in a city that never sleeps, in a city that is perennially in the middle of the hustle and bustle of jeepneys and crowds, it may be true that we do not know the sound of silence. Or if we ever encounter silence, we run from it, we make noise, we speak, we break something.
But there are times we crave for it—when in prayer, when reading an engaging book at the break of dawn, or when writing a piece of story that needs to be published immediately. Or in the most surprising of examples, in the middle of Ely and Bamboo’s concert dubbed “MDR Live,” which trended as #MusicDeservesRespect. If you hear a song you don’t like, or if only to test if it was indeed a hushed concert, you could turn down the volume of your headphone or completely take it off. Ah, the silence was refreshing. It was a novelty, a breath of fresh air. You could speak normally to your seatmate, who with his headphones on, was singing along to Bamboo’s “Tatsulok.”
Headphone Concerts and Hush Hush Parties
Headphone concerts, silent clubs, and hush-hush parties started in the early ’90s. In the heady days of the club era, eco-activists advocated the use of headphones and earphones at parties to lessen the noise pollution. But the first Aha! moment, according to Wordvia website, originated in 1997, from the creative mind of Parisian Erik Minkkinen when he live-streamed a concert over the Internet from the comforts of his home. Three people from Japan were believed to be his first listeners. Two years later, Erik initiated the Le Placard nomadic festival, again, right smack in the comfort of his apartment, where his bigger audience used headphones. This attracted a worldwide following with the novelty of conducting concerts anywhere they fancy. International bands like Metallica, Rocketgoldstar, and The Flaming Lips, to name a few, followed suit. In 2011, the Oxford Dictionary online added the term “silent disco,” a Brit phrase to mean “an event at which people dance to music that is transmitted through wireless headphones rather than played over a speaker system.”
Craving for More
Author Norton Juster in the book Phantom Tollbooth asks us, do we ever hear the silence before dawn? “Or perhaps, you know, the silence when you have no answer to a question you’ve been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re alone in the house?”
Do we know what silence means?
In between periods of calm at the concert, there were hoots and cheers and claps and clinks of wine bottles, with Ely and Bamboo in high spirits. Then there was none, there was silence again, as everybody went back to listening through headphones. While we cannot stop the music and the noise, what we need are extra servings of hush-hush parties and silent concerts. We want more! www.sony.com.ph
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