The Sounds of Mina Zayed, Slowly Fading
In a record-breaking ten seconds on November 27, 2020, Abu Dhabi’s Mina Plaza was sent tumbling to the ground in an explosion that reverberated throughout the city—not only in its decibels, but also in the destabilization of long-held memories of the port.
The demolition of these four towers, comprising a total of 144 floors, awarded developer Modon Properties a spot in the Guinness World Records for the “Tallest building demolished using explosives.” The explosion is now famed as a destruction marvel—created with 6,000 kilos of explosives and 18,000 individually programmed detonators—and marks the second phase of the Abu Dhabi Department of Municipalities and Transport’s vision to regenerate the area into a bustling entertainment and shopping destination.
The rapid lightning before the anticipated economic boom.
Bill O’Regan, acting chief executive of Modon Properties, claimed that “the city of Abu Dhabi was not affected by the blast apart from waking up with a loud bang.” Indeed, to the many journalists, artists, and scholars stirred to action leading up to the looming day—myself included—the collapse resembled the final gunshots in a movie before fading to black.
Walking through the winding pathways from the plant souk through karak stalls to the Mina fish market, it’s hard not to notice the distinct voice, language, and rhythm of the port. The cacophony of bartering and bargaining, the melée of English, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Mandarin phonetics asking to negotiate prices or learn about the plant varieties. Vendors next to the fish market play upbeat Arabic music, while static white noise cuts through the clamor in a furniture souk with a vintage radio.
This is the soundscape we are accustomed to within our experience of Mina Zayed. These are the sounds of cultures mingling, of history in motion, and as one NYU Abu Dhabi student notes, of “knowledge transmission.”
But these are also the sounds of transaction, reminding us that this space is first and foremost an economic hub. We hear a fisherman publicizing the fresh catch of the day—the salmon, the unbelievably fresh salmon—and crabs and prawns too, all at the best price, only for you. We hear the swish of hands exchanging cash, the guttural laughter of workers on a smoke break, a salesman greeting potential customers with a “Hello, ma’am.”
As the food trucks with fairy lights inevitably begin to move in, as the shops become neatly separated and compartmentalized, it is visually difficult to miss the gentrification in action. More subtle, however, are the sonic changes. The dimming of colliding conversation in favor of polite, controlled exchanges, scrappy musical notes replaced with soft elevator jazz. With Mina Zayed essentially fated to become an open-air shopping plaza of sorts, the tangled, diverse noises of human labor are reified into a managed and controlled sound bubble.
Design and architecture critic Kate Wagner further unpacks the effects of shifting soundscapes in The Atlantic. She writes, “Silence and noise might seem like aesthetic matters. But resolving the conflict between them demands facing broader issues of environmental, social, and political power.” In her article, Wagner juxtaposes the quiet of lockdown with the rallying noise of political unrest amid the Black Lives Matter protests of June 2020. Through the clash of these opposite soundscapes, she observes the emergence of “sonic aesthetic moralism”—quietness seen as favorable, calming, or healing, and noisiness seen as raucous, disruptive, and threatening.
In the U.S., the fight for silent neighborhoods was initially led by wealthy urban dwellers tired of steamship whistles, construction, and freight trucks—in other words, the sounds of the working class. The coarse soundscape, coupled with the moral perception of danger and uncertainty within it, accelerated gentrification and gradually pushed the blue-collared workforce to the margins. The right to silence—or rather, the demand for it—Wagner asserts, is a privileged one, overlapping with the subdued volume of human labor and transaction.
Wagner’s article prompts us to ask: where does the majority of a community’s noise come from? Is it the spontaneity, chatter, and activity of its people? Is it nature—birds flapping their wings at sunset and the occasional yowl of a stray cat? Or is it the government-regulated machinery of guzzling engines and wailing police sirens, the celebratory fireworks punctuated by enforced silence and calls to disperse?
When it was reported that shops would be allowed to remain open during the redevelopment process of the port, it seemed as though the city took a breath of relief.
Perhaps, much like the nascence of Abu Dhabi, still growing into the edges of itself, the economic bustle of Mina Zayed is characterized by ever-changing, slippery identities— expertise and uncertainty, old and new, permanent and temporary. As participants in this economy, we facilitate and navigate its cultural intersections, convergences, and clashes. We resonate with Mina Zayed because, in a way, it is an echo of ourselves, an aching to just be heard.
A man at a kitchen accessories shop furtively asks about my marital status. Children laugh in an open pit of sand while their guardians finish the day’s sales. The rough toiling of men pushing wheelbarrows of wood, stacking cardboard boxes, snapping through the wired packaging, and swearing about the asshole who did it wrong the first time.
In the plant souk, one Bangladeshi man stands in front of his two-by-four-meter shop and narrates the origins of his offerings. A coconut tree stationed on the floor from Sri Lanka, some pebbles and soil from China, gardening tools from Saudi Arabia, and delicate porcelain vases from Malaysia. The world in a garden. After subtracting his daily operating fee of AED 400, the profit from these plants is his to keep. He explained that this shop was first owned by his brother and was passed on to him after his brother moved on to a different store. He speaks with the sentiment of taking over a family business.
When shopping here, we invest in this man’s oral history and that of many just like him across the globe. We engage in the heartbeat of the port. Disjointed sounds bumping into one another, clanging notes of disagreement, and secret asides make up the Mina marketplace’s natural rhythm. Economy and transaction can influence culture and opinion. But in the hungry pursuit of accelerated development, progress, or the latest “innovative solution,” capitalism marches forth. Ominous, discreet, silent.
The new plans for Mina Zayed promise cleanliness. They promise civility and the predictability of a controlled space. A neat “lifestyle destination,” seaside cafés, the fresh smell of grilled fish, a cute plant shop for the perfect Instagram shot. Also inherent in this plan is the dissolution of the port’s existing soundscape, among the last artifacts allowing workers the space to lay claim to their labor.
With the rise of e-commerce and shopping malls, the average marketplace today is characterized by light clicks adding vegetables to an online shopping cart, the silence of a quick credit card tap, and the expectation that no one will speak to you unless spoken to first. A striking contrast to the organic, sonic fluidity of Mina Zayed, this model further alienates, mutes, and dissociates labor from the bodies exerting the force.
We know that controlling noise is political. Who gets to make the noise is political. As the port prepares for its imminent transformation, perhaps the promise of economic boom following the celebrated demolition of Mina Plaza has also ushered in a prolonged ringing silence.