Yet the dominant vision of ambient music today is the cartoonish reversal of these aspirations. In a billion-dollar healthcare industry, streaming platforms and meditation apps frame the medium as background music – something for independent listening and consumption. Spa and yoga music or field recordings for uninterrupted, restful sleep. Rather than embracing the potential of the medium – its capacity to soften barriers and loosen ideas of sound, politics, temporality and space – music was instrumentalized, reduced to sound as a backdrop.
It’s funny to think of ambient music as utility, as if it were something that allowed selective participation. Like the musician Lawrence English Wrote“Ignoring music is not listening to it.” Rather, experiencing ambient music – allowing its political, philosophical, and oppositional knowledge to come into view – requires full use of the senses. It means harnessing the sensory vitality of life: the tactile, spatial, vibrational and auditory experiences that being human provides us.
Experimental music pioneer Pauline Oliveros envisioned how a sensory approach to music and listening could foster politically dynamic thinking. She spent her life developing a theory of deep listening, a practice that encourages radical attention. In this approach, there is a distinction between hearing and listening; the first is the surface level awareness of space and temporality, and the second is an immersive act of focusing. “Deep Listening takes us below the surface of our consciousness and helps change or dissolve limiting boundaries,” she said. Wrote in 1999. “Listening is directing attention to what is heard, gathering meaning, interpreting, and deciding for action.”
In 1974, in response to the turmoil of the Vietnam War, Oliveros published a series of text notes called “Sonic Meditations,” a precursor to deep listening theory. The project explores how body-centered vocal exercises can improve focused perception. Oliveros developed “Sonic Meditations” from women’s meetings he held at his home. The group that emerged in the context of the women’s liberation movement at these meetings was doing breathing exercises every week, writing articles for magazines and doing kinetic awareness exercises. The experience was designed to be collective, using intimacy and introspection to nurture a sense of healing.
I practiced deep listening, especially with the innovator of the new age Laraaji’s composition “Being Here” and my “if you need you breath” playlist. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when “Being Here” clicked: maybe at the 10-minute mark, or the 15-minute mark, or even at its benevolent, 25-minute close. Laraaji, who has been releasing music since the late 1970s, produces auditory glossolalia – divine, luminescent melodic debris. While listening to his music, the notes breaking like sunlight caressing the deep blue waters of the ocean, I am held in an unspoken embrace with his vision of today. This is music that curls into the ears, becomes an imaginary Elysium, stopping time and space. It’s not just scenery, it’s not just a balm for immeasurable pain.