Sounds like riot of a time had by all

THERE is disquiet here at the Mahogany Ridge that the South African Police Service is buying “sound cannons” to combat looming violent service-delivery protests in the run-up to the 2016 local government election.

The US-made long-range acoustic device sends out painful sounds over longer distances than normal public address systems. Although they’ve been used against Somali pirates and Iraqi insurgents, the first stirrings of controversy came when American citizens were targeted at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh in September 2009.

Online footage of the incident suggest that the LRAD was perhaps not deployed to maximum effect that day. Protesters milled about, fingers in their ears, as what sounded like a car alarm blared incessantly. As reactions to police actions go, this was a far cry from the pandemonium usually associated with local crowd control.

This is not to suggest that the LRAD isn’t dangerous. According to The Economist, it’s designed for use in short bursts and will incapacitate anyone inside 300m with an “instant headache”. Longer bursts may result in permanent ear damage. At 100m, it is “extremely painful”.

Human rights activists say there is a risk of “collateral damage”. The LRAD emits sound in a 30° beam – think of a sonic blunderbuss – and the probability that innocent bystanders could be seriously injured is very high. Still, police agencies insist it’s non-lethal. More bizarrely, its manufacturers claim it’s not a weapon at all but a “directed sound communications system”.

If that is the case, then there may be concern at what is communicated. In other words, with what messages do you load it? Car alarm sounds are hardly ideal. They’re so common and so firmly rooted in our audio-social consciousness that we routinely ignore them. Even the jokes – “They’re playing our song, darling!”, “Hark, the Observatory loerie!” – have disappeared.

While the application of loud music in interrogations is considered a form of torture by both the UN and the European Court of Human Rights, no such ruling exists as far as the LRAD is concerned.

The use of hard rock, particularly by the US military, as a psychological weapon is well known. In 2003, it was claimed that Americans were using Metallica and snatches of children’s TV shows, like Barney and Sesame Street, to culturally offend and torture Iraqi POWs. Before that, in December 1989, US troops continually bombarded the Vatican embassy in Panama with Van Halen and extracts from a shock jock radio show to force the surrender of General Manuel Noriega.

Would it be an unconscionable human rights violation to blast Cape Talk at a service delivery protest? Would the rioters disperse, or would they be further enraged and thus destroy even more property?

Would authorities take a chance on something a little more nuanced and challenging? Classical music perhaps? In Britain, piped symphonies by Mozart and Vivaldi have proved to be effective in discouraging yobbish behaviour in shopping malls and railway stations.

What effect would Puccini have on a porta-potty protest? Perhaps the mayor, Patricia de Lille, would want to find out. Maybe it would be in our interests if she bullied up a study to determine the genre that has the most socially uplifting effect on Capetonians. Would it be reggae? Some trance, perhaps? A little lounge? Dubtronica? Something retro, like folk-rock or psychedelia? Acid jazz? Classic soul, or the Motown equivalent? What about that clatter where men in baggy trousers grab their testicles? Urban jungle, I think they call it.

One thing is certain, though. The masses are used to noise. It counts for nothing. To paraphrase one insane past president, it washes off their backs like duck’s water. Anyone who has been remotely near a taxi rank at rush hour and heard that doef-doef-doef thudding from mini-cab sound systems will tell you that the LRADs have a way to go when it comes to pumping up the volume.

Maybe it would be better if the LRADs didn’t compete at that level. According to a recent US study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, modest ambient noise is good for the imagination.

As the authors put it: “A moderate level of noise enhances creativity compared to both low and high levels of noise. Moderate background noise induces distraction which encourages individuals to think at a higher, abstract level, and consequently exhibit higher creativity.”

Admittedly, this is what the average riot and looting of Somali shops needs – some original thinking. Everything seems so been-there, done-to-death, gotthe-T-shirt (and-the-rest-of-the-goods) that we hardly care anymore.