The Politics of Sound and Urban Space in Joe Namy’s Cosmic Breath

The sonic presence of the ‘adhan’ (call to prayer) is ubiquitous to the soundscape of Muslim-majority countries, providing audible markers that structure prayers from the early morning fajr (فجر) to the late evening isha (عشاء). As a distinctive sound shaped by local musical histories and religious norms, the adhan is a reminder of how listening is tied up with debates over place and belonging amidst rising Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crimes in the UK.1 Joe Namy’s sound installation Cosmic Breath bears witness to the various geographies that struggle for recognition and audibility in public spaces while paying close attention to the sensitivity of this recitation practice in a contemporary art context.

Speakers are lined up in front of dark thick curtains recreating the anonymity of the ‘muezzin’ (person reciting the call to prayer), symbolic of the way recitation has shifted from analogue to digital in the 20th century. While muezzins would traditionally climb a spiral staircase to recite the adhan from a minaret, recitation now is often pre-recorded and amplified through speakers mounted high up alongside places of worship. The curtains evoke a similar uncanny atmosphere of the disembodied voice detached from its visible source. Soundscape scholar and composer R. Murray Schafer described this phenomenon pejoratively as ‘schizophonia’, the splitting of a sound from its origin source through recording and broadcasting technologies that emerged with hi-fi culture in the 1950s.2 However, sound studies scholars including Jonathan Sterne have long challenged this concept, pointing out that Schafer’s own soundscape compositions were designed to be listened to on hi-fi equipment.3 Beyond this critique, sound reproduction technologies have also expanded the ways sound can travel beyond its original context.4 Egypt offers an example of how these tensions become entangled with debates around urban noise pollution. Since 2010, the ‘Tawheed Al Adhan’ (Adhan Unification Project) replaced individual muezzins with a single pre-recorded broadcast, which also raised fears over the loss of a centuries-old oral tradition.

Namy’s installation inaugurates Ibraaz’ Musalla, a spiritual practice room on the top floor of the building and allows visitors to closely listen to archival recordings of this historic recitation practice. In reducing the speakers from 18 to 10 since its inaugural display at the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah in 2023, Namy creates an even more intimate encounter with the listener, who becomes an active participant of the installation. As an exhibition space, the room is open to anyone regardless of their faith but requires visitors to remove their shoes on entering the space. Beginning the listening experience this way preserves the functionality of the Musalla as a space for spiritual practice, contemplation and reflection, which becomes even more pronounced as the recordings become louder during prayer times.

Sat on the soft carpet, I absorbed the voices that appear to collectively take a breath, with bursts of adhan commencing simultaneously and then asynchronously tailing out as some muezzins linger and an electric humming begins to fill the space left behind. As the collective adhan pauses, muted city sounds from the nearby Oxford Street below the Musalla remind us that the urban environment is an integral part of the soundscape in which the adhan is experienced. Namy’s use of the recording from the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem demonstrates how the call to prayer has become inseparable from its political context, situated within an environment marked by the ongoing illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and Israel’s repeated violations of International Humanitarian Law.5 Establishing boundaries around physical and social space, the adhan acts as a reminder of how sound constructs what Brandon LaBelle calls ‘acoustic territories’.6

Identity, memory, and urban environments are subjects that run across Namy’s broader body of work, spanning performance, sculpture, sound, and video. Another work examining the social function of sound is Automobile (2012-ongoing), a variable channel sound performance for cars with modified stereo systems. Many of Namy’s works play with the concept of time, both in the evolution of his works across different exhibition spaces and in the arrangement of archival and field recordings across geographies. 

Amplification of the Islamic call to prayer is political, but so is its absence. Growing up in Germany, the adhan was largely inaudible in public spaces, only sounding from mobile phone apps and kitschy alarm clocks; confined to private spaces as a result of assimilation politics or secular activist groups advocating for a sonic environment free of specific religious sounds. While Christian sounds, such as church bells, are often seen as an integral part of urban soundscapes in European capitals, the call to prayer remains a divisive reminder of changing cityscapes as a result of forced migration and displacement.

Just three years ago, Cologne became the first German city to allow the amplification of the adhan on loudspeakers (the recording was part of the original exhibit in Jeddah) leading to a media backlash and protests against the decision by secular activist groups. In many cases, efforts to limit the adhan and Muslim worship have been inseparable from xenophobic discourse and far-right conspiracy narratives around the so-called ‘Great Replacement Theory’, a dangerous and unfounded claim that white populations in Western countries are being demographically replaced by migrants from Muslim-majority countries. In this context, the call to prayer has been part of conspiracy narratives on the right that seek to provoke fears about an Islamification of British society.

By adding a recording of the Waltham Forest Islamic Association in London since its first iteration in 2023, Cosmic Breath reminds us of the relational capacity of listening that can shape things in both material and imaginative ways.7 The inclusion of the adhan in the local soundscape can be a powerful tool to affirm commitment to inclusion of Muslim communities in public space. Yet, its inclusion also raises questions of what other sounds are rendered silent and why. Cosmic Breath shows how spaces such as the Musalla can enable our capacity to reflect, be present and care for sounds we are unable to encounter otherwise. It is a reminder how sound brings people together and how listening enables our capacity to build a more inclusive sonic environment.