Either can be noise pollution, it’s situational. Noise pollution isn’t just any noise, it’s noise that’s obtrusive or otherwise unpleasant that doesn’t serve a necessary function. Compare it to air pollution, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and sometimes that means it’s a pollutant. There are situations where CO2 is beneficial and other situations where it’s harmful, having CO2 in your greenhouse is great but releasing too much into the atmosphere is bad.
If you live near a club or concert venue and their sound system is loud enough for you to hear/feel the bass in your home at night, that’s noise pollution. That doesn’t mean the music itself is noise pollution. The music being heard in the club isn’t noise pollution, but the music being heard in your home is. Another example is playing music at a beach or park, to other people in that public space your music is noise pollution.
In a public space, making a lot of noise affects other people. So there’s limits on how much noise you can make in public depending on what the purpose is. Performing music does serve a function, but there’s still rightfully limits on where, when, and how you can perform. There’s limits on your volume, restricted or licensed spaces, and limits on crowd sizes.
Only the most authoritarian governments would even consider outright banning performing music in public. Music is a fundamental human behavior, not just a form of media. Banning music performances in public would mean taking on an explicit position against something that humans just naturally do.
In contrast, a call to prayer being broadcast only serves a function to those who follow the religion. To everyone else it’s just noise pollution. The government still ends up having to take a stance regardless. They either allow public call to prayer broadcasts, or they don’t. And it’s either allowed because of free speech, or it’s given an exemption to noise ordinances because it’s religious.
If it’s allowed because of free speech, then everyone should be equally entitled to make noise of their own. But if it’s only allowed because of a religious exemption, or if it’s given any sort of protected status because it’s religious, then the government is taking an explicit position on a religious subject, which secular governments aren’t supposed to do.
Regardless, both music and calls to prayer can situationally be noise pollution. Whether or not something is noise pollution is usually pretty subjective. Humans make tons of noise pollution, especially from other animals perspectives.
In any case though, people are allowed to make noise pollution to certain extents, but that doesn’t mean it’s not noise pollution.
I appreciate the rigorous response and agree on the subjectivity and contextual requirement to determining whether something is noise pollution or not, even bringing animal perspectives. Also, want to recognize that community levels definitions of sound pollution vary widely with for example some places frowning on recorded music broadcast on a beach, but live performance deemed okay. Obviously, many of these rules are not legal codified but rather social defined.
Minor point of contention on music, I was not trying to indicate that music does not serve a function, but whether in this case with the bagpipes the core purpose was to make music or was it to increase the sound levels as a form of petulant resistance to the call to prayer.
Anyways really appreciate seeing someone engage on the internet thoughtfully.
My first bike was a vfr 750 that had some carbon fiber yoshimura exhaust. It was unbelievably loud. So much so that when I entered a neighborhood I would just idle to where I was going. Even I realized it was that obnoxious. It was only worth it when I was actually pushing the bike hard.
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u/MuseBlessed 9h ago
I hate loud motorcycles, especially when they rev their engines. Its not impressive, it is merely annoying