Religious Soundscape and Intercultural Identity: A Study of the Sound of the Adhan, Church Bells, and Gamelan in Bandung, West Java

Abstract

This study analyzes how Bandung's religious soundscape—the call to prayer, church bells, and gamelan—shapes spatial identity, religious experience, and intercultural relations in a pluralistic urban environment. Religious sounds here function beyond ritual: they generate social meaning and mediate everyday interfaith interactions. Using a qualitative case study design, the researchers collected data through soundscape observations, audio documentation, and in-depth interviews with diverse city residents. The analysis employed thematic analysis grounded in a posthuman acoustic framework. The findings suggest that religious soundscapes function as shared markers of time, space, and social identity. The call to prayer serves as a collective temporal marker; church bells reinforce historical spatial identity; gamelan embodies a sense of belonging to a local culture. Together, these auditory elements create a collective acoustic environment that fosters intercultural identification in urban space. The study also reveals shifts in sonic meaning driven by technological mediation: digital amplification, recording, and circulation can diminish perceptions of sacredness, transforming some sounds into functional rather than purely sacred sounds. By situating sound as a site of encounter, this research advances contemporary religious studies and the study of everyday religiosity. Its originality lies in integrating post-human soundscape and acoustic perspectives into the study of Indonesian Islam and in centering sound as a medium of religious-cultural interaction in a pluralistic urban context.