From cheers at the Brier to songs for the Raptors, this MUN researcher is studying the sounds of sports

Bouncing balls, blowing whistles and roaring crowds are all sounds you may hear at a sporting event.

For Jordan Zalis, a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Memorial University, it's music to his researching ears.

Along with being a music lover, he's also a huge fan of sports. What we hear while watching sports says a lot about who we are as a society, he says.

"One of the the really interesting ideas has to do with sports ability to reproduce ideas from romantic nationalism," told CBC News.

"You have a team you're a fan of. You wear the same colours. You have your turf, you have away games, but you celebrate."

For Zalis, it's not just sport — he sees it as theatre.

"What sport teaches us is that it's totally normal and totally acceptable to get along with perfect strangers and wear the same colours and cheer for people we don't know in a simulated battle at Centre Court."

When the crowd is cheering, Zalis said, there can be a visceral sense of oneness in a room uniting complete strangers. It's something he says is almost like a religion, as in the French sociologist Émile Durkheim's theory of collective effervescence.

"People being together in close proximity, believing the same thought, participating in the same actions. And it gets you to this point of almost ecstasy," said Zalis.

His interest in the sound of sports started as an undergraduate student at Carleton University, when the school got a new pep band for its new football team. From there, he says, he started looking into the history of marching bands and the military, and was fascinated by the group solidarity that music created.

He sees stadium anthems like We Are the Champions as having those same effects.

In 2017, he and fellow researcher Diego Pani studied the sounds of the Tim Hortons Brier in St. John's. Zalis remembers the moment when he, along with thousands of people in the crowd, were yelling at the final rock being thrown by curler Brad Gushue.

"Isn't this one of the only times in our lives where this completely irrational behavior [is justified]? I'm screaming at an inanimate object to do something. But I really, really believe it will help," said Zalis. "The Brier was an incredible experience and study object."

These days, he's researching the sounds of one of the biggest sports teams in North America — the Toronto Raptors. The lead question for his latest work is, "What does basketball sound like?"

While the answer can be different for everyone, Zalis says, ultimately the sound of the Raptors is a choreographed theatrical experience.

"If you look at everything that goes into this carefully curated spectacle with brilliant media and communications, people and artists and brand managers, graphic designers, sound designers — there really is a coherent branding and a coherent experience."  said Zalis. 

"The moment you set foot in the arena, it's like Disney World," said Zalis "From the sounds, to the sights, to the smells of everything that you're going to experience the moment you engage in this massive world of pro sports."

And Zalis says it's not just the pro leagues that play into this sensory experience either.

"If you go to a a kids' basketball game, you're going to hear music in the arena now, or in the community centre too."

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