Terroir of Sound
While studying the word terroir in class, I started thinking about how the relationship that so many people experience with emotional terroir is, while true for me, much more prominent and almost interchangeable with music. When I hear a specific song, I can be transported to years that I hardly have memories of at all. Music evokes very distinct and personal feelings, just like a certain food may do. While in New Orleans I looked at the terroir of the food, but also the music. What I found is that the two are interchangeable. New Orleans is a city that turns suffering into art (which includes food in my opinion), and in the process creates a sense of community. From the origins of blues music (a genre that gave people a vessel of expression for common sufferings) to food that combines several cultures with the local resources to create extremely unique tastes, New Orleans emits “a good time”. While there is such a rocky history and present in New Orleans surrounding racial issues, wealth disparity and natural disasters, there is still more of a sense of the universal human-ness that we all have compared to other cities I’ve been to such as Seattle or New York. While I was there, a sinkhole appeared on one of the main streets in the city. Instead of fixing it right away, an event was created called “Sinkhole de Mayo” and people threw a party surrounding the mini disaster before repairing it (answer to my questions?).
I spoke for awhile with a man who was busking in the French Quarter. More than awhile, it turned out to be, because we had so much to discuss. I explained to him the basic idea of my project (he is actually featured in one of my videos playing guitar and singing) and he was very excited and intrigued. He told me stories of seeing bands like The Talking Heads at hole in the wall venues many years ago. He would tell me a story, and then sing a song. They always went together for him. Music provides pockets of nostalgia and transportation of mind from the present to a memory or feeling. Now I will forever associate the song “Carmelita” with him, because that moment and story of his meant so much to me. He was providing answers to my questions without even realizing it. He also forced me out of my comfort zone as we played music and sang together out in the middle of a very busy street. I also can’t forget the po-boy I ate right after the meeting, and I am sure if I ever taste it again I will fly back to the sidewalk with Angry Joey.
According to online research I’ve been doing, the relationship between sound and taste is actually something that is only just recently being looked at. A word that pops up a lot in relation to the subject is “synesthesia”. Dictionary.com defines it as “a sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied to another modality, as when the hearing of a certain sound induces the visualization of a certain color.” I remember reading a book called “A Mango Shaped Space” as a child, which centers around a young girl who lives with severe synesthesia. I remember relating to certain aspects of what she experienced, and didn’t find any of it to seem out of the ordinary. I was aware that my experience was much more subtle and less life-altering, but at the same time I found a little solace in that book. I wonder if being raised at a Waldorf inspired school or something to do with the environments that surrounded me affected that part of my brain/ ways of sensing and perceptions. Based on my research, every person may make these connections, but few people have the distinctly visual and vivid reactions. Interestingly enough, a researcher from Oxford University who has been looking at the relationship to sound and taste and the mind also works with Starbucks to find music that fits their coffee. A quote from an article discussing this same researchers studies stated: “Their other experiment found oysters presented in a shell and basket accompanied by sounds of the sea were rated as more pleasant than oysters served in a petri dish while farmyard noises played.” Another interesting point that this article brought up was the affect that this knowledge has on advertising. For example, the Kit-Kat commercial with the satisfying, snappy crunch sound (that is without a doubt not from the candy itself) creates a song that plays when one eats a Kit-Kat, and makes the food itself sound more appealing.
Restaurants in New Orleans seem to radiate satisfying sounds, colors and tastes. Particularly in the French Quarter, which, interestingly enough, is the main tourist destination. The relationship between taste and sound within our brains can be personal and intentional, but oftentimes is used as manipulation subconsciously. But, if that manipulation leads to great music and food, is it such a bad thing?