Dakar / Rotterdam
Amara Diallo
Urban sound researcher
“Most of us wear headphones and call that privacy. Sometimes it is just refusal.”
Amara Diallo listens to cities the way other people read clocks. She can tell you when a neighbourhood changes pitch, and she can show you the measurement, which does not make it less strange.
Her current study follows night buses, tram brakes, and the private weather people build with headphones on a platform. She splits the year between Dakar and Rotterdam and refuses to say which one is quieter.
This conversation is about hum as company, and the duet a city offers only if you answer.
On the show
All guests-
02
How a City Hums
Amara Diallo measures the pitch of neighbourhoods, and the company people borrow from it.
Amara DialloUrban sound researcher
Cities / Night
44 min