For the love of loudspeakers

It's pre dawn and I am about to lose my cool.

I've been tossing and turning all night but the thing I've been really wrestling with this trip, a little frantically over the last 24 hours, is the call to prayer. Not the call itself but the volume.

And because I like to think of myself as someone who is open-minded, culturally sensitive and eternally curious about the spiritual side of things maybe I'm resisting the idea of how intolerant I'm being. 

My husband tells me not to worry, ignore the noise. I'm a light sleeper while he has a high tolerance for noise of all kinds. This is partly due to reduced hearing but also because he has tinnitus, a condition of constant ringing in his head. 

I wish I could be so zen. When the evening call sounded out on our first night in Jogja, travel weary and slightly delirious with a head cold, my first thought was that I wasn't going to be able to sleep here. At all. Ever.

Indonesia is over 85% Muslim, and is packed with 800,000 mosques that call out at prayer times five times a day and night. That call lasting a mere five minutes, has been ringing out for centuries. It's an ever present reminder of faith and a ritual to praise god throughout the Moslem world. 

Even distorted by modern amplification, it still has its own particular beauty. And as someone who struggles to maintain a regular morning meditation practice, I have the utmost respect for the diligence and discipline it would take to observe shalat (prayer) for a week, let alone a lifetime.

Call to prayer--or azan--can be heard everywhere, and that's as it should be. I just can't help wonder when it got to be so loud. 

On this topic a local Indonesian friend is pretty candid: "I know and am very sure it has become competition between traditions, between villages and in fact between mosques. Each of the mosque now showing off their ability to gain more followers. More follower means you can earn more money and furbish your mosque, you can have greater influence, and as a result you can join an election and become a mayor."

In our village there are two mosques close by - but at the appointed hour you can hear up to five or six from across the district blasting out at one time. During any of the five prayer times entire neighbourhoods in Jogjakarta and the surrounding villages are filled with dueling voices. Even the roosters are drowned out - and the overlapping reach between mosques surely means that no one azan is ever fully heard. 

Add to this scratchy sound systems and distortion from ancient loudspeakers, and it can be quite disorienting. 

The use of loudspeakers in Indonesia is not limited to calls to prayer, but also Quranic recitations and other religious gatherings. Five minute calls can last for almost an hour. 

It's amazing to me that on the majority of nights, I --and many others --sleep through the whole thing. These sorts of adjustments are all part of the interesting mix of living somewhere new. 

A quick bit of research and it's clear I'm not the first to wonder about this delicate issue. There are prominent Indonesians waging into the discussion. 

Vice President Boediono, triggered a national debate in 2012  by publicly calling on the Indonesian Mosque Council to issue a regulation on the noise levels for loudspeakers used by muezzins to belt out calls to prayer.

“We are all aware that the azan is a holy call for Muslims to perform their prayers, but I, and probably others, feel that the sounds of azan that are heard faintly from a distance resonate more in our hearts that those that are too loud and too close to our ears."

As the opening to the council’s annual conference it not surprisingly sparked a  ton of both positive and negative responses on social media.

According to an article from that time from the website South East Asia Real Time: "The cacophony blasting through loudspeakers from hundreds of mosques at the same time is a somewhat sensitive issue in Indonesia. Most people consider it part of life in a Muslim-majority country, but some complain about the persistent aural assault. While many Indonesians say in private that they would prefer more quiet, they are content to keep their discontent to themselves to avoid offending devout Muslims."

Modern technology has brought many blessings. But I can't help but wonder if it's yet another one of those issues where the change is gradual and people perhaps fail to notice it happening around them. Hundreds of years ago azan would have echoed out from a landcape that was noticeably quieter than that of today. 

For me it's not the disrupted sleep so much as the pervasiveness of the sound - the feeling that you cannot quite be alone with your thoughts or completely in nature. 

Having done most of my growing up in the leafy suburbia of small Australian cities, I realise silence is something I take for granted, as an almost pristine natural state. Even this is not entirely accurate because even an undisturbed environment contains the sounds of animals and the elements. But these are natural sounds that are sonorous and pleasing to the ear and the soul. 

Jogja as with cities the world over, is growing at a massive rate. Even kilometers out of the city, the roar of motorbikes, cars and trucks announce the daily commute at peak times throughout the day.  Honks, shouts, bells and engines jostle for our attention from all directions and our ability to tune them in and out is as much a reflection of our inner state than anything else.

As I contemplate all this from my little piece of paradise on the world's most populated island I realise that man-made sound is all around us. 

It strikes me too that silence is a quality that is gradually retreating with the inexorable expansion of human population and the march of industry over ever diminishing wilderness areas. 

This is something that is happening worldwide and with the growing reach of modern amplification systems this simply means more competing sounds demanding our attention. 

Is the decreasing opportunity for sustained silence inevitable or do we have some control over the intensity of sounds reaching us? 

As I wrestle with cultural distinctions around what constitutes a comfortable noise level I wonder whether do we as human beings realise the consequences of lost silence?

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Saturday morning arrives fully bathed in sunshine. At 8am on the dot a syncopated beat pounds out, transferring to my dreams. Its clearly not the azan, which isn't due till midday. Rhythmic, catchy, all enveloping it was the kind of thing I might have danced to in  a nightclub--but here is so completely out of context I can't do anything but jam the pillow over my head hoping it'll go away.

It doesn't. I shower and dress and set out across the lawns - the caricature of an agitated Westerner fully intending to march up and demand an explanation. From someone, anyone.

Luckily I meet one the unflappable local ladies on the path who smiles her serene smile as I blurt out:  'Ada disco hari ini? (There's a disco today?)

No, she explains patiently, it's the local cultural centre, holding an aerobics class for their staff.

Defeated, I turned back to the bungalow. This was clearly a debate for another day.

Postscript: It does seem there is change on the horizon.

Last week another former Vice President weighed in with some action on this issue.

According to the local news Jusuf Kalla, in his capacity as chairman of the Indonesian Mosque Council (DMI), has started a nationwide campaign on the issue of loudspeakers. Some 50 cars, manned by more than 150 technicians, have been dispatched to help mosque caretakers improve the sound quality of their amplification systems.

Kalla was reported to have said that other than reducing noise, the technical assistance would also help to ensure those attending mosque could hear Muslim preachers’ complete message.

It may take some time before this is any notable change to volume levels but at least the conversation has commenced. Issues are never one-dimensional especially where tradition, culture and religion coincide. Thinking about this issue has given me a deeper understanding of my new home. 

And I for one, no longer take silence for granted. 

I treasure it now that I have less. And that's a good thing.