Weird Wet Snapping Sounds: The Rhythms of Radio Drama

Abstract

Some years ago, CBC Radio’s Morningside presented a sound puzzle to its audience. The tape played was a montage of noises and music without narration or dialogue. Listeners were challenged to identify the story being related by the collection of sounds. The tape begins with music and ends with waves washing up on a beach, after a sequence of sound effects, some eminently recognizable – a child crying, a dog barking – and some more mysterious – a clanking sound, an explosion of some sort. Even the familiar sounds are hard to contextualize: yes, that’s applause, but who is applauding and for what reason? A series of sounds seems clearly related to growing up: a woman gives birth, a boy plays with a dog, wedding bells ring. Another child cries. When the piece was played again with narration, the story assumed one simple shape: an astronaut in a shuttle recalls his life in the moments before the final blow-up. The Challenger disaster.