On July 18, World Listening Day is celebrated worldwide.
At first glance, this sounds unusual. We are accustomed to celebrating music.
Art. Creativity. But listening separately?
And perhaps, it is precisely in this that the main meaning of this day lies.
The modern world is filled with voices, music, notifications, and an endless stream of information. We hear more and more. But do we always truly listen?
A Day Born from Attention
World Listening Day was established in 2010 on the initiative of the World Listening Project.
The date of July 18 was chosen to honor the birthday of Canadian composer and sound researcher R. Murray Schafer—a person considered the founder of modern acoustic ecology.
As early as the late 1960s, he created the World Soundscape Project—an international research initiative that studied the soundscapes of cities and nature.
Schafer proposed an amazing idea. Sound is not just the background of our lives.
It is the living memory of a space. He recorded the sounds of streets, the voices of nature, the breath of cities, and asked a simple question:
What does the world we live in sound like?
Not just music. But also the wind. The forest. The ocean. The rain. The pause between two words.
Every sound becomes part of a place's history. And each can tell more about it than it seems at first glance.
Hearing Is Not the Same as Listening
Hearing happens on its own. Sounds reach our ears regardless of whether we pay attention to them. Listening begins later. At the moment when a person chooses to be present.
When they stop waiting for their turn to speak. When they try not to answer… but to understand.
It was precisely this difference that American composer Pauline Oliveros explored, creating the practice of Deep Listening.
For her, listening was never just a musical technique. It was a way of being in the world.
Listening to space. Nature. Another person. Oneself.
The World Is Always Sounding
Today, more and more projects are dedicated not to creating new music, but to exploring the art of listening itself.
One of them is the international project Cities and Memory, which collects sounds from all over the world and transforms them into a space of memory, attention, and human perception.
In honor of World Listening Day, the world-renowned Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the creator of the Cities and Memory project, Stuart Fowkes, proposed reflecting on a simple question:
What does it mean to truly listen?
It is particularly symbolic that Evelyn Glennie poses this question.
Having almost completely lost her hearing in childhood, she learned to perceive music not only with her ears but with her entire body—through vibration, movement, and space—and became one of the most outstanding percussionists in the world. Her life seems to remind us: listening is born not only in hearing. It is born in presence.
In their conversation, Evelyn and Stuart name four qualities without which true listening is impossible: attention, openness, connection, and honesty.
Perhaps not only music begins with them. But also encountering life.
The Space Between Sounds
Perhaps this is why World Listening Day extends far beyond music.
It reminds us that the world is constantly talking to us.
Through the rustling of leaves. Through the breath of the ocean. Through the singing of birds. Through the voice of a loved one.
Through the silence that is born between words.
And perhaps, true listening begins precisely here.
Not with the ears. But with attention.
From the moment we stop rushing to give the world our explanation…
and allow it to sound.
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And what if listening is not just something we do…
But who we become when we truly hear? 🤍
