Why do markets feel alive but not loud?

The souk is wall-to-wall sound. Hammering, haggling, a radio playing Gnawa, a man shouting prices for oranges. But it doesn't feel like noise. It feels like a frequency — something coherent you could tune into rather than block out.

Markets are zoned by trade, and each trade has its own acoustic signature. The brass workers' hammering is rhythmic and localized. The leather dyers' section is quiet — the work is chemical, not mechanical. The spice merchants murmur. The textile sellers negotiate at conversation volume. You move through acoustic neighborhoods, each with its own sound profile, and the transitions between them give your brain time to recalibrate.

The architecture helps. Souk roofing — reed mats, corrugated metal, or wooden lattice — diffuses sound rather than reflecting it. Open-air sections vent noise upward. Covered sections create intimacy. The narrow streets prevent sound from traveling far laterally. You hear the stall in front of you and the stall behind you, but not the stall two aisles over. The sound field is local, not global.

The rhythm is human. Unlike a shopping mall, where muzak and air conditioning produce a constant ambient drone, a souk's sound rises and falls with activity. Morning is quiet. Midday peaks. Afternoon drops during the heat lull. Evening explodes. Your nervous system tracks these rhythms unconsciously, reading the market's energy the way you'd read a room. It feels alive because it is — the sound comes from people working, not from machines running.