By Maxwell Wilkens
When a courtroom session begins and adjourns, the judge loudly bangs a gavel. When a play opens and closes, the audience fills the theater with applause. Many familiar rituals use noises to indicate when they have started and when they have ended. Silence, on the other hand, is used much less frequently, says Robert Weller, an anthropology professor at Boston University. And Taiwanese religious rituals incorporate both, for their spiritual effects.
Robert Weller, anthropology professor at Boston University, spoke to a UC Santa Barbara audience about how Taiwanese religious rituals use both silence and noise to choreograph emotions.
“Noise commands our attention, as it fills the sonic – and, often, the mental – space,” Weller told a UC Santa Barbara audience. “Silence, on the other hand, is fragile.”
At a lecture last week, Weller talked about how Taiwanese religious events use noise and silence to mark transitions, to conduct the rhythm of a ritual, and to choreograph emotions.
The lecture was part of a workshop organized by the Center for Taiwan Studies, as well as the East Asia Center, and the departments of Asian American Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, Film and Media Studies, and History. The workshop, titled “Global Storytelling: Narrating Childhoods in Taiwan,” was a series of presentations, discussions, and training sessions that encouraged UC Santa Barbara scholars to engage with research about various walks of life in Taiwan.
Weller began by describing the use of noise and silence during a classical music concert. “We applaud when the musicians or the conductor come on stage, and at the end of the piece. We never applaud between movements,” he said. “We do so, because it shows that we accept a convention, which is, effectively, arbitrary.”
The noise of applause separates the concert ritual from everything surrounding it in time, in the same way that a picture frame separates a painting from the wallpaper around it, Weller said.
Taiwan hosts an annual pilgrimage celebrating the Chinese goddess Mazu. The deafening sound of the crowd and music are said to indicate the presence of the goddess herself.
Noise is used similarly during Taiwanese religious rituals. The country holds an elaborate annual pilgrimage celebrating the birthday of the Chinese goddess Mazu, where transitions are marked by the sounds of exploding firecrackers. The rituals are also filled with the cacophony of shouting participants, competing opera troupes, and booming percussion instruments. “The people themselves will say that a hot and noisy ritual is a direct index of the efficacy and presence of the goddess herself,” Weller said.
While noise is used frequently during Taiwanese rituals, silence is much more rare. “It breaks all too easily. A child cries at the wrong moment. Someone’s phone rings. People walk by too engrossed by their own conversation to notice the ritual.” Weller said. “Noise, in contrast, can simply absorb all of these interruptions.”
So Taiwanese rituals use silence very carefully. At an annual celebration of Confucius’ birthday, held at a temple in Taipei, a master of ceremonies commands participants to be silent while lighting incense and offering wine. “Here, the long silent moments alternate with speech and action, creating a slow pulse,” Weller said.
The sheet music for 4’33”, a piece by American composer John Cage which features four minutes and 33 seconds of uninterrupted silence.
Outside of Taiwan, some artists even use silence to unravel the boundaries of a ritual. American musician John Cage composed a piece titled 4’33’’ that features four minutes and 33 seconds of uninterrupted silence. Because of this, there is no noise that indicates when the piece has actually begun. “The point of the silence is to dissolve the boundary between ritual and ordinary life,” Weller said.
In the ‘70s, during field research, Weller visited a Taiwanese funeral, which was one of the only rituals he had attended that used both noise and silence. In one moment, priests chanted ritual texts while hired mourners and musicians provided a deafening accompaniment. In another moment, attendees offered incense to the deceased, while quiet hung in the air.
The silence and noise in this ritual helped create an emotional choreography, indicating when attendees should show or reserve their emotions. “It began with grief as the women loudly wailed and cried,” Weller said. “All the descendants may have felt sad in their own ways, of course, but in this moment they were ritually compelled to express their grief loudly and publicly.”
During the lighting of the incense, on the other hand, silence effectively stifled the emotions of attendees. “Outpourings of emotions like grief were no longer appropriate, no longer welcome,” Weller said.
Weller suggested that silence may be particularly useful for funerals because mourning does not stop after the ritual has ended. “Silence does not mark an end, but it’s just part of a changing rhythm, now that the dead person has been incorporated as an ancestor.”
Maxwell Wilkens is a third-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Communication and Music Studies. He is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.