Małgorzata Czapiga - What are you hearing? Some comments about regional soundscapes

The paper is devoted to problems of contemporary soundscapes. To date, research has focused mainly on images/pictures rather than sound. Despite this, it is not only musicology or physics that considers aspects of sound. Contemporary anthropology includes soundscapes in discussions about culture. This paper presents examples of consciously organized soundscapes. First, a project from Gdańsk - Symfonia Gdańska - Dźwięki Miasta is discussed. Second, a map of Wrocław, which was prepared by blind people, is presented and third, an oral history project from Lublin which developed a sound map of the city is introduced. All these projects are analysed with reference to Raymond Murray Schafer`s ideas concerning soundscapes. The conclusion is that each place sounds individual and our regions are aurally-distinctive. Keywords: regionalism, soundscape, acoustic ecology, history of sound, sound art.