The WFAE is delighted to announce that SVARAM has been accepted as its first Associate Member.

SVARAM, based at Auroville in Tamil Nadu, India, brings together the rich tradition of Indian Music and Craft and international ­academic musicology, sound studies and research, contemporary design and innovation with the unique spiritual, futuristic aspiration of Auroville and its experiment of Human Unity.

Having participated over the years in the World Listening Day and thematic sound events and walks, and a co-created performance between Aurelio, (Svaram’s founding executive) and WFAE President Eric Leonardson in the Chicago Arts Center a few years ago, SVARAM is looking forward  to create more awareness and activities in their local context in Tamil Nadu and South Asia about soundscape studies, bioacoustics and sonic activism.

​The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology is saddened at the loss of Raymond Murray Schafer, who died at his home in Southern Ontario on Saturday, August 14, 2021. He was 88 years of age and is survived by his wife and mezzo-soprano, Eleanor James. 

Schafer leaves us with many invaluable gifts, a legacy of music, ideas, and literature for us to examine and celebrate. He will be remembered as one of Canada’s most influential composers and ‘father of acoustic ecology’. 

​Obituraries have been published by the CBC, New York Times, Times Colonist, The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail.

Many friends and colleagues in the Acoustic Ecology community have shared their memories of Schafer:

• Sabine Breitsameter dedicated this opening of Hörweg Groß-Bieberau in the memory of Murray Schafer, on 29 August, 11 a.m., with the mayor, local bank director and the general public. On August 17, she spoke on Deutschlandradio and on SWR.de
• Claude Schryer shared his memories of Schafer for the Peterborough Currents: ...Some people call Schafer a ‘renaissance man’. He certainly was an exceptional artist, educator and a visionary. He not only opened our ears to the world but also expanded our minds about what it means to be here and now, in this place. I am grateful for Murray’s immeasurable contributions to the arts and sciences.​
• The Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology made a post entitled Celebrating The Legacy of R. Murray Schafer: Canadian Composer, Author, Music Educator and 'Father of Acoustic Ecology' Dies at 88
• Carol Ann Weaver: There are few people whose lives and impact have mattered so much to me as R. Murray Schafer.  When I was in my early 20s, teaching composition at a college in Virginia, his small books, including When Words Sing, gave me windows/avenues into sound that changed my life, and hopefully lives of all I was able to reach.  Since then, I met him in various places.  Many decades later, when I was in my final year of teaching at University of Waterloo/Conrad Grebel University College, I was able to invite him to the Sound in the Land — Music and the Environment conference/festival which I led.  We will all remember his presence — stately, presenting his truth in wisps, words and manners that transcended his being.  This was surely the last public presentation venue for him.  We are so grateful he graced us with his presence.  Eric Leonardson, Sabine Breitsameter, Rae Crossman, Wendalyn Bartley, Eric Powell, Matt Griffin, and so many others shared in this wonderful event.  Thank you Murray for changing our world;  thank you for helping us to listen!
  
  Carol also wrote to Eleanor James on behalf of CASE,
  
  Dear Eleanor,
  
  I am writing to you personally, and also on behalf of CASE (Canadian Association for Sonic Ecology), extending all of our most sincere condolences on the recent passing of Murray.  He was an original signatorie of the first legal CASE document, and likewise has inspired organizations such as ours to spring up all around the world. In our most recent CASE meeting on Wednesday, August 18, we went around the circle, each of us saying what we found so moving about Murray — his life and work.  I wish you could have been on that Zoom to hear all the lovely things said.
  
  This is your personal loss, but it is also an enormous loss for the entire sonic community around the world.  He has changed the world and the ways we listen to and think about the world.  A person like him comes around once every several centuries, and then leaves a large trail for the rest of us to follow.  I cannot begin to mention all the ways he has mattered to the sonic, musical and environmental worlds we all inhabit.
  
  His writings have profoundly shaped our outlook on life, and his projects (Wolf, and others) have focused our attention on the natural world.  His wealth of compositions continues to inspire, challenge, and fill us all with the beauties and mysteries of this amazing planet we call home.
  
  He has changed my life ever since I read his little books such as When Words Sing and then, later on, The Tuning of the World, plus his essays about sound and silence.  His stunning piece, Princess of the Stars, still has me totally transfixed since hearing it at a lake near Toronto in 1982.
  
  I had met him many times and been part of his workshops.  But it was his and your presence at the Sound in the Land Festival/Conference at University of Waterloo in 2014 that simply blew me away!  While he was not able to present all of his ideas verbally, you were there to assist him and allow his voice to be heard!  It felt like sacred ground where you and Murray walked among us.  We respected you so very much for the role you played in allowing him to grace our festival, and attend every single event!
  
  I thank you, personally, for helping him to continue his life work as you have done.  You, along with him, are some of the most inspiring persons I know!
  
  So, I send you my love, and the love of all of us at CASE, as we say goodbye to this man, Canada’s most prominent, most important, and most influential composer, who shaped us all immeasurably.
  
  Love,
  Carol (for CASE) 
  
  Carol has also been working a tribute piece to R. Murray Schafer entitled 'Silence to Silence — Remembering Murray' with texts by Rae Crossman, Canadian poet and close friend and colleague of Schafer in the Wolf Project.  The work will be performed by Inshallah, a unique, community-based choir in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, conducted by Debbie Lou Ludolph. The piece will start and end in silence, incorporating Carol’s field recordings from natural areas in Ontario, and will include whispered and spoken vocals, as well as singing.  Ludolph’s words about the choir describe the focus of the piece: “Inshallah seeks out songs that can un-make our human-centric ways and widen our view to see our deep connectedness to all of creation as a wholeness out of which we seek to live our lives.” A more fitting tribute to the life, work, spirit and impact of Schafer could hardly be found!  The work is tentatively planned for an April, 2022 premiere in Waterloo, Canada.

• Helen Dilkes: I am sad to hear the news of Murray's death. 
  
  What a presence he has been in our lives and work. We, the AFAE, brought him to Australia for Acoustic Ecology: An International Symposium, in Melbourne in 2003. It was so momentous to get him here. In his gentle but pointed way he let us know how reluctant he was to come all this way, and how he had had to shovel one metre of snow off his driveway to even leave his house! He walked through the education workshops I had organised at a Melbourne primary school, with material he had pioneered and was so familiar with. He walked and listened with us in our local bush environments.
  
  What a thrill it was for Nigel and I, and others, to be invited to his house after the Sound Escape: A conference on acoustic ecology, in Peterborough, Ontario, in 2000. Murray gave Nigel a copy of his 'Tuning of the World' with an inscription that included 'In memory or our time together at Indian River'. I know that he was then beginning to recognise the work Nigel was doing for the acoustic ecology community.
  
  My soundscape work with children at that time had Murray's principles in mind, and Nigel's whole professional life as a sound designer had a purist intent that was informed by Murray Schafer's approach to sound and listening. So much to say, about a life.... 
  
  
• Helmi Järviluoma: In the autumn of 1991, I heard from popular music scholar Philip Tagg that R. Murray Schafer is by no means a trembling old man – so often we assume of gurus in our fields – but he continues to be active around the world talking and holding Ear cleaning workshops. I also got my Schafer's address. This was the beginning of the correspondence, which has continued –  not very often, but nonetheless – until about 2013, when he fell ill, and there was no longer a reply to my letters. In 1991, however, the answer came, in a form I did not expect: I wrote a letter, and Schafer replied with a cassette to which he had dictated the answers aloud, in a beautiful calm style. I spelled out, pruned and translated the interview. Schafer was happy to give the impression of luddite. In the early 1990s, computers and emails didn’t interest him, and not really after that. He said: “you can also send me a fax: to the shop next door, where I can pick them up every now and then”. He practiced handwriting as an art, so letters were written in beautiful handwriting, usually with an ink pen, beneath which was a lavish autograph. Schafer revealed that he was unusually annoyed that people were calling or sending faxes (email was not common then) asking for a prompt response and only because they themselves were helplessly late with their requests. He should have interrupted what he himself was doing and taken action. Therefore, he did not easily reveal his landline number, and the cell phone had not yet been “invented”. So, he smiled at his beard and said that he deliberately maintained the image of himself that he could only be contacted by sending the right letters. In this case, he can read the letter in complete peace, think about the answer, reply within a week and the letter travels in different means of transport to the other side of the globe for a week. I have to admit that when I got into the stranglehold of email itself, I envied and admired that kind of attitude. I think this would be the cure for the torment of constant interruptions, inability to concentrate that torments many of us. The culmination of the visit of Schafer in 1992 – the first but definitely not the last that I organised – took place in Lapland, where I had taken him and his companion on holiday in the middle of the forest, to my brother's cottage. He writes about this in his memoirs, especially about the memorable car crash, The police wolf dog reportedly barked throughout our trip in the back of a police car, from Kemijärvi to Rovaniemi. The best of Schafer's courses in Finland  (he has indeed had several of them) were precisely these long, multi-day courses, which allowed time to delve into making drama with the help of mere sounds. Murray always remembered to be complaining and worried about the fact that after a good start, the soundscape people had not “produced proper research”. That would be sorely needed. This is when, with his genuine support, I started to draft the first plans of the large European project Acoustic Environments in Change. But that is a completely different story. The Finnish school of soundscape studies owes very, very much to the imaginative mind, friendliness, and constant support and help of Murray Schafer. He is greatly miss by the whole of Finnish soundscape community. We send our warmest condolences to Eleanor James, the rest of Murray’s family, and his closest ones. He will never be forgotten.
  

• Tadahiko Imada: 
  
  In memory of R. Murray Schafer: the only composer who pursued music for all:
  
  It's been a few years since composer Hildegard Westerkamp informed us about R. Murray Schafer's Alzheimer. On August 16, 2021, five days after receiving an email from Schafer's partner, mezzo-soprano Eleanor James, saying, "Murray seems to be on the last leg of his journey home to God – to the Love,” the CBC announced Schafer's death to the world.
  
  As a Canadian composer, Schafer understood better than anyone the negative effects of the so-called logo-centrism of Europe. Although visually perceived landscapes and scenery had already been verbalized and become part of the "world" since ancient times, auditory space did not exist until Schafer proposed the concept of soundscape in the 1960s. The miracle of music and language was generated from the sonic environment. The West, which has taken for granted the autonomy of "music," however, has silenced the auditory space and human ecology. In his book, "the Tuning of the World," Schafer made clear the closeness of soundscape to composers from Handel and Haydn to Debussy, Ives, and Messiaen, but he also urged music teachers not to train children to make silent surrenders in front of the great "works of art" of dying composers.i Schafer states that if all children begin to play the piano at the age of, say, six, then by the age of ten half of them will be playing. By the time they are ten, half of them have stopped...By the time they are twenty, it is only one percent. So in this case, what the teacher wants is not true music education, but for producing the next Glenn Gould. To Schafer, this is a bad kind of music education, and he thought that music education should be for everyone.ii Training a second Gould to play the "Goldberg Variations" is an important mission for conservatories and academies that train "performers." "No one will be left behind," which is the mantra of the recently popular SDGs, for example. However, the education here is rooted in the manners of "Only geniuses will be left behind.” There are composers who emphasized soundscape, such as Satie, who introduced "noise" into "music," Russolo, who made "noise" into "music," and Cage, who used Zen and the I Ching to give "noise" a "musical" time axis. They fought against the ghosts of the nineteenth century concepts, such as "genius," "originality," and "art," and their concern may have been to break away from "nineteenth-century music," but not music education for all. Schafer, on the other hand, was a rare composer who focused on the on-going work that children will create in the future and its public nature. The United Nations adopted the SDGs in 2015, more than 40 years before Schafer's perspective was directed toward all children.
  
  All of my private conversations with Schafer will never fade from my memory: In 1995, Schafer was invited to participate in the Suntory Hall International Composition Commission Series, produced by the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, He also gave a lecture at Keio University in Tokyo, and I returned temporarily from Canada, where I was studying, to serve as his interpreter. The following is a private conversation we had on that occasion: He said, “The Canada Council provides a large amount of money every year to the opera house. I do not understand why Canada should contribute to the Italian arts. If they gave me the same amount of money, I would compose a work that is unique to Canada.” Children's unique on-going works, magically created by the traffic of soundscape, may have a different direction than the accumulation of quantitative training. ​
  
  
• Molinari Quartet: It is with deep sorrow that the musicians of the Molinari Quartet learned about the passing of their dear friend and great composer R. Murray Schafer last August.
  
  The 25th season of the Molinari Quartet will therefore begin with a concert, entitled 'Tribute to Schafer' on October 15 at 7 :30 pm at the Montreal Conservatory of Music, 4750 Avenue Henri-Julien in Montreal. Given the great reputation of Schafer, the concert will also be live streamed.
  
  Since the foundation of the Molinari Quartet in 1997, Schafer’s music has always been at the heart of the repertoire of the Quartet. The Molinari has also largely contributed in the expansion of Schafer’s quartet cycle by commissioning or premiering no less than 5 new quartets. As soon as 1999, Schafer wrote his 7th quartet for the Molinari. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration, which ended with his 13th Quartet, Alzheimer’s Masterpiece that Schafer wrote for the Molinari after his diagnosis of the terrible sickness. It was to be his last composition.
  
  For the Tribute to Schafer concert, 4 of the 5 quartets that were written for Molinari will be performed: Quartets no.7, with soprano Aline Kutan, Quartet no.10 Winter Birds, no.12 and no.13 Alzheimer’s Masterpiece. The concert will also feature a short excerpt of Schafer’s Labyrinth, during which the musicians will play excerpts of 4 different quartets on beautiful cinematographic images produced by Barbara Willis-Sweete. Eventually, Schafer’s Labyrinth will be a live performance of all 13 quartets over the film.
  
  More information on the performance is available at https://quatuormolinari.qc.ca/en/event/a-tribute-to-r-murray-schafer/

​More tributes will be shared as they become available.

To contribute your own memories of Schafer's life and legacy, please contact WFAE Jesse Budel at [email protected]

Dear WFAE Affiliate and Individual Members,

As you may be aware, the WFAE is in the process of reviewing its Bylaws, which were last ratified in June 1998.

The next stage of this process, as per the current Bylaws, is to provide the WFAE membership with the opportunity to provide feedback on the current proposed amendments.  

Due to impracticalities in organising a meeting for this purpose as set out in the current Bylaws (whether in person or online, coordinating across multiple time zones for our worldwide organisation), the Board has agreed that an online forum is appropriate for this next stage of consultation.

As such, a publicly accessible Google Doc of the current Bylaws and proposed amendments has been developed, in which members can provide feedback via comments. This can be accessed here.

Amendments/Additions to the document are highlighted in green, with a comment box to the side of each proposed amendment for you to add commentary.  Any additional commentary is also welcome.

To allow for sufficient feedback from current WFAE Affiliate and Individual members, this consultation period will now close Monday 2 August 2021.

Thanks for your input, with kind regards,

Jesse Budel
WFAE Secretary 

The WFAE is delighted to endorse this year's World Listening Day activities facilitated by the World Listening Project.

Since its inception in 2010, thousands of people from six continents have participated in World Listening Day. July 18th is the birth date of renowned Canadian composer, music educator, and author, R. Murray Schafer. With the World Soundscape Project he developed the fundamental ideas and practices of acoustic ecology in the 1970s. These inform the current, burgeoning interest in our changing acoustic environment. Thus, World Listening Day honors Schafer’s contribution to understanding our world.

In 2020 we were forced to pause by an invisible virus. This brought countless consequences to the environment, and to the sonic environment in particular. New acoustic horizons emerged, signaling times of unquietness and global change, and requiring our listening awareness to evolve.
The theme for 2021 “The Unquiet Earth” is an invitation to reflect on and engage with the constant murmur of the Earth, sounds beyond the threshold of human hearing, to remind ourselves that we share this mysterious and awesome planet. Small, hidden, subterranean, aerial, underwater, infra and ultrasonic sounds, inaudible to the naked ear, can bring a new, potentially hopeful, perspective on the future of the planet and humanity. Listening as activism encourages us to question our attitudes as listeners as we aim to construct a more inclusive and empathetic new world. Join the unquiet revolution!
Listeners of all kinds are invited to host and participate in three activity types:

• 24-hour #WLD2021 streamed program hosted by the World Listening Projects. You are invited to submit audio and video works.
  
• Local events that are self-organized and led by groups or individuals for the public. Soundwalks, installations, workshops are examples. The WLP will help promote and celebrate your activities on their platforms.
  
• Personal celebrations. You are invited to share media and writing about private responses to the prompt of World Listening Day 2021: The Unquiet Earth.
  

Deadline for 24-hour Steamed event: June 19, 2021.
Deadline for local and personal events and celebrations: July 17, 2021.

The World Listening Project also welcomes everyone to share news, ideas, and questions about participation on their Facebook Page and Facebook Group.

​Visit the World Listening Day 2021 page on the World Listening Project website for more information. 

The WFAE Library is now live at https://wfae-library.librarika.com/, cataloguing a diverse range of acoustic ecology resources and activities!

​To make further submissions to the Library, please visit wfae.net/library or contact WFAE Secretary Jesse Budel at [email protected]

The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) is pleased to announce that its first online Annual General Meeting will take place on Friday 22:00 UK time / UTC 21:00 on 23 April, 2021 during BEAST FEaST 2021: Recalibration, a festival of phonography and sonic art with a focus on our changing global soundscape in pandemic.

Please register for access to the Zoom meeting at https://adelaide.zoom.us/.../tZYsf-igrj4oGdK9y8DwI...

We invite all WFAE Individual members, Affiliate Organization members and their representatives, and Associated Organizations to participate.

​We are honored to be partners with BEAST FEaST and UK and Ireland Soundscape Community (UKISC), our UK/Ireland affiliate. This international event will provide our membership and leadership of our Affiliate Organizations an opportunity to learn and inform one another of ongoing efforts, recent achievements and future planning.

The festival takes place online in partnership with the WFAE, BEAST and the UK/Ireland Soundscape Community (UKISC), 22 April - 24 April. Featured artists are Hildegard Westerkamp, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Chris Watson, Pete Stollery, and Yang Yeung.

Following COVID-19 lockdowns around the globe, there have been numerous observations made on the impact of reduced human activity in acoustic environments:

• In the May 2020 issue of The Monthly (AUS), Nicola Redhouse's article, 'Quiet Life', discussed the work of various acoustic ecologists during the pandemic.
• The interactive New York Times article, 'The Coronavirus Quieted City Noise. Listen to What’s Left' by Bui and Badger compares urban soundscapes pre- and post-lockdown.
• Tom Banse's article, 'The Pandemic Gives PNW Whales A Break From The Din Of Underwater Noise' for OPB investigates the impact of reduced ocean traffic during lockdown.
• Douglas Quan's 'Listen up: In these disquieting COVID-19 times, hushed cities are making a loud impression on our ears' for The Star (CAN), discusses pandemic soundscapes with input from acoustic ecology pioneers Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp, amongst others.
• Ian Sample's 'Wave of silence' spread around world during coronavirus pandemic' in The Guardian considers the seismological impacts of decreased traffic and machinery use.

Many podcasts, recordings and multimedia projects have also been released, including:

• Interiorities: Sonic Experiment and Documents from Lockdown, by Kate Carr
• Soundscapes Under Fear of COVID-19, a series of recordings made by Koji Nagahata in Japan's Tohoku region during the lockdown
• 'The Last Sound' on NPR's Invisibilia, hosted by Hanna Rosin and Alex Spiegil
• 'Human Life Is Literally Quieter Due To Coronavirus Lockdown', a short feature by NPR
• Cities and Memories' #stayhomesounds project, inviting people from around the globe to submit sound recordings from where they live during COVID-19.
• Window-Swap features 10-minute audiovisual snapshots from people's homes in isolation.
• Contributions of sounds in isolation on Radio Aporee

If you are aware of any further projects or pieces investigating our acoustic environments in the time of COVID-19, please email WFAE Secretary Jesse Budel at [email protected] to add to this resource.

Over the past year, many AFAE members have been involved in creative and research activities, Visit our blog post on the AFAE website to read about:

 - Ros Bandt, who received the Distinguished Services to Australian Music Award at the Art Music Awards
 - Vicki Hallett on her project Habitat, and collaboration with Ros Bandt on the Barwon Listening project
 - Tristan Louth Robins on his album Waves, the Fleurieu Sound Map, a new installation called Sternere in Angaston (SA), and new blog exploring ecoacoustic analyses.
 - Jesse Budel on his recent activities as WFAE Secretary and his new album, Cathedrals
 - A member profile on Clare Hall
 - An essay by Prithvi Varatharajan on his experience soundwalking through Melbourne with Anthony Magen.

In spite of the challenges of the pandemic, the AFAE was also involved in a variety of projects in 2020, including: 

• The Reveil 2020 broadcast on International Dawn Chorus Day (2 May Saturday 2020)
• Voices of Nature 2020, a national arts celebration in collaboration with the Australian Earth Arts Alliance and Arts Front.
• Share news of soundscapes observations around the globe during COVID-19 lockdowns

More recently, a new ecological sound art exhibition, Site and Sound, has launched at the McClelland Gallery in Victoria, featuring works by AFAE members Ros Bandt, Leah Barclay and Nigel Frayne, as well as sound artists Jana Winderen and Chris Watson and acoustic ecology pioneer Barry Truax.

Visit our recent post for more information on each project. 

The Finnish Society for Acoustic Ecology held its annual general meeting in late February 2021.  Upon the retirement of long serving WFAE board member Simo Alitalo, Ari Koivumäki was elected as the FSAE's new board representative.

The WFAE expresses its deep appreciation and thanks for the many years of service that it has enjoyed from Simo, and welcomes Ari to the Board.