Boombox chorus spreads Christmas cheer

CARYN BROOKS; The Associated Press (from [l:http://www.thenewstribune.com/soundlife/story/5420633p-4896952c.html|The News Tribune]
NEW YORK – If you’re going to take part in an insta-boho-quasi-Christmasish parade, it helps to have a nice crisp night. Not too windy. Not too cold. Not too wet. Pink cheeks are welcome; purple fingers are discouraged.

Good? Mittens, scarfs and assorted woolens.

Bad? Subzero parkas, face masks and waders.

The evening of Dec. 18 was perfect weather-wise for an annual event that might be called precious by some, but deeply compelling by others.

“Unsilent Night” is an evening around the holidays where large groups of strangers gather to play the same song by composer Phil Kline on boomboxes held over their heads, Lloyd Dobler from “Say Anything”-style. The flock of avant-garde music fans strolls through the streets, serenading shopkeepers, restaurant workers, police officers and motorists stopped by the throng. It’s caroling, but without the treacle and the off-key kiddies.

Music in the air

We started in Washington Square Park in the heart of Greenwich Village. The crowd shouted – one, two, three – and everyone pushed play on their portable music machines. Thing is, the crowd was so big (several hundred, at least), unison was relative.

As we pushed on through the park, it was clear that some boomboxes were off a bit. This led to a nice sense of call and response, the tinkly notes talking back to each other. The other item that was relative: sound from the boomboxes. Some were set to high treble. Others to deep bass. One emitted a crackle over the sound of the symphony. All these elements changed the fabric of sound, depending on where you walked and where the crowd itself was walking.

Gregory Heller, an Internet developer, drove his tricked-out tiny police patrol vehicle (one of those little buggies ticket givers like to prowl parked cars in) that he bought in a government auction and outfitted with a 1,000-watt sound system. This is the second year he has joined the procession. Why? “It’s one of the most magical nights of the year.”

A whole family walking through the park asked what it was all about. With hardly a second of confab, they joined the pilgrimage, the toddlers balanced on their shoulders.

Mohammad Abdul Zaher stood outside a Middle Eastern bakery as the crowd passed, a bewildered look on his face. He only had questions. “Where did they get all these people? Is this a Christian thing?”

As the group crossed Broadway, the sheer number of people clogged the street. Most drivers, notoriously impatient in New York, waited it out for the few minutes it took for the crowd to pass. One woman in an SUV got upset, however, and frantically honked her horn. When it seemed as though she was trying to edge her car forward, a man hopped out of the crowd and stood in front of her hood while the rest of the group passed. Others in cars cheered the group on.

This is the kind of spontanous moment that drew Jennifer Harris to the parade.

“This is an incredible sonic experiment. Like, it’s really important in society to have unexpected things like this happen,” she said.

As the walkers reached Tompkins Square Park, the sounds of the symphony began to fade out, one boombox at a time. When the sounds fizzled from the boombox of the person who had last pushed play, the crowd cheered. Peace on earth, goodwill to men. Maybe that’s too mainstream of a reference for this conga line of cultural infidels, but that’s the overarching aura of Unsilent Night.

MASTER OF THE CEREMONY

Composer Phil Kline unleashed his paean to the holidays, a piece called “Unsilent Night,” on the streets of New York in 1992. The lush, jingly song is meant to be heard on boomboxes, so he asked friends to come out and walk around the city playing the cascading tune while holding portable tape players aloft.

This modern form of urban caroling caught on and has turned into an annual permitless parade attracting hundreds and migrating to other cities. This year welcomes Sydney, Australia; Tucson, Ariz., and our neighbors up north in Whitehorse, Yukon, into the Unsilent Night posse.

This man-and-machine-living-in-harmony thing gets a bit more complicated each year, says Kline. First he would just make a batch of tapes for people to play. But how many people do you know who still have tape recorders? Now he makes a batch of CDs. But even that’s growing obsolete.

“Next year we’ll have the mechanism in place to allow people to download the MP3s and burn them to CD or have them on their MP3 player,” he says.

He even wants to make it more interactive. “I’m toying with the idea of letting people change or edit the piece for themselves,” he says. “But that could be a little scary.”

Kline says the music is composed to be site-specific. That means that the music is meant to be a soundtrack for the exact parade route. So how does it work when another city adopts the event? “It’s not that hard to find a route that works,” he says. “You need a half-hour walk that begins and ends at an interesting place with a couple of entertaining things along the way.”

Kline, who jokingly refers to himself as “The Avant-Garde Father Christmas,” lists some of the ways geography changes the symphony: In Atlanta, the route takes paradegoers on an underground escalator. In San Francisco and Philadelphia, the parade goes through older sections of the city with interesting architecture and narrow streets. In Vancouver, B.C., the route starts on the street.

The Unsilent group has a way of taking over its environment. You’d think that this would cause friction with the unsuspecting bystanders. Kline says surprisingly, it’s mostly without conflict. In a city such as New York, the police are supportive. “I always hold my breath. I worry about motorists losing their patience when we cross the street,” he says.

“In all my 13 years of doing this in 14 countries, I’ve had one nasty comment. It was from this lady in England. She asked, “Why are you making all this racket?” They actually have those ladies from the Monty Python skits who are at home with their cats drinking tea, and they do not want to be disturbed.”
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