Name: Ruiqi Wang
Nationality: Chinese, Canada-and-Switzerland-based
Occupation: Vocalist, composer, improviser
Current release: Ruiqi Wang's Subduing The Silence is out via Orchard Of Pomegranates.
Recommendations: Kaleidoscope: Selected Poems of P.K. Page (edited by Zailig Pollock); Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music (Henry Threadgill, Brent Hayes Edwards)

If you enjoyed this Ruiqi Wang interview and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her official website. She is also on Instagram. For an even deeper dive, check out our earlier Ruiqi Wang interview.  



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I get urges to move whenever I listen to music. To me, music is closely connected with movement, in the sense that sound is something that is constantly vibrating and evolving in time and in space. Even when the music sounds very static, there is still something that is moving with a certain kind of momentum. My body really reacts to that.

When I allow myself to move with the music, I feel I can exist in the same dimension as the music, and it feels very soothing to my nervous system.

I do not have a preference between listening with eyes open or closed. I think it’s a choice. It’s like choosing between meditating with eyes open versus eyes closed.

Eyes open could be a distraction, but closing our eyes sometimes doesn’t necessarily stop our own mind from distracting us. Listening with our eyes open leads to interesting experience as well. What we see adds a different dimension to the music, which can be complementary or contrasting, or both at the same time.

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.

I get along without you very well (Ellen Arkbro & Johan Graden)



Rituels (Orchestre National De Jazz)



Beautiful Soop (Pauline Oliveros)



[Read our Ellen Arkbro interview]
[Read our Pauline Oliveros interview]

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

I think that a society’s acoustic health is reflective, and also one of the determinants of its overall health. It’s both a cause and a consequence.

We hear sounds all the time and everywhere, and we cannot not hear. Sounds easily creep into our subconscious and affect our mental state, energy level and physical health, and therefore affect a society’s overall health.

On the other hand, if a society is full of loud and chaotic machine sounds, I think that indicates something about its value as well as the quality of lives of its people.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

It’s both a fortunate and unfortunate fact that we don’t have a choice but to surround us with sound every second. Because of that, I think we need to be very mindful about the way we listen so that it can be “the ultimate delight” and not ultimate torture.

Keep our ears open and listen as mindful as we can. Try not to neglect or fight against the never-stopping sounds that surround us. If you don’t like the sound, try to listen even more, just listen to the way it is, be curious, and make peace with it.

I appreciate silence, but at the same time, I am aware that I can only experience silence in a relative sense. I see silence as a reduction of the density of the sound that already exists, or a change of focus. By saying change of focus, I mean, for example, when words are silenced, I naturally change my focus and start listening to the environment much more.

There is always something to listen to, and the relative silence makes space for that. It reminds ourselves there is always more to listen to.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

I think that in modern society, people heavily rely on vision, and there is something very beautiful about the times and societies where people rely on hearing more than vision. A lot of old cultures were passed down by oral tradition.

I don’t know if I agree that hearing is faster than our other senses. In fact, I think the reason why we rely on vision is partly because of the pursuit for productivity and efficiency. Vision gives a certain expectation within a second, and it helps us fast forward and jump to the conclusion, whereas hearing always means spending a certain amount of time to receive information.

I think it is a nice consideration to rely less on vision and pay more attention to hearing. That requires more patience, curiosity, and it might help us discover information that is more precise because we are hurrying to get a conclusion and misled by visual information that might not be complete.