Lourdes Grotto - July 31, 2000

Lourdes Grotto - July 31, 2000

It's only week eight, and it looks like I will be able to record the mass after all. No rain. It's early yet, and about 50 people or so have gathered. Small, thin speakers are piping in popular type religious music. I am wondering if this is where the music comes from during the mass.

Lots of sounds of cars coming and going, including a very loud Paratranspo van (a bus for disabled people). While the driver is unloading people, he leaves the engine idling. It is very loud. So are the back-up beeps when he goes into reverse. The dispatcher on the walkie-talkie is also constant.

There are a few residents on the street who aren't coming to church - a couple of kids skateboarding. But for the most part, everybody else who lives in the neighbourhood is in the house. Which is surprising for a bright summer Sunday.

There is a medium wind blowing - my mike is picking up the sound. It comes across as a gentle hiss on the tape, but is not causing distortion. I think I'll work with the wind sound - it is difficult to capture the sound of the wind.

The mass has now begun. It is a surprisingly simple ceremony, a single priest and a single singer. There is no piped in music (except for the music before the mass); it is all live - - simple melodies, unaccompanied. The singer is very loud compared to the voice of the priest. Good voice, but they don't need to crank up her mike as much as they have -- she really carries. A powerful voice. The sound of the speakers is very thin and tinny - no bass end at all. Lots of treble. There is also a 60 cycle hum. The closest analogy I can think of is the sound of speakers at the drive in theatre way back in the '70's. I don't know why this comes to mind, but for some reason, that is the memory which this particular quality of sound triggers.

The sound of the traffic is constantly in the background, but except for an occasionally loud car or plane, it is still rather easy to block out the surrounding soundscape and concentrate on the immediate one, to forget the immediate world for a while and place oneself in the larger universe.

It is also a different experience listening to the mass in another language. I do not speak or understand French at all well. I know roughly what's going on because the order of the mass is the same in all languages. Because I am not able to understand the specific words, I find myself listening more to voice quality, inflections and rhythms.

The character of the sound of this mass is similar to the kind of sounds you would hear in most small parishes in Catholic Canada. It is simple. It's amplified, but it's not premium quality amplification equipment. It is thin. Likewise with the music. It is very basic, which is not to say it isn't good or appropriate to this time and place. It's just not as sophisticated as the sound at the cathedral. But in this way, it's very typical - only the really big churches with really big budgets pay much attention to sound anymore.

Maybe that's the way it's always been ... too bad nobody did recordings or wrote much about sounds in local churches a hundred years ago. I wonder how much has changed?

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