In a hidden creek in the hard-knocks capital, Kinshasa, the river hears the screams of an unwanted girl.
"Aside from people paddling on the river, you hear only nature," Marant says.
When I rode my bike to the river, I heard tick tick tick.
"I live right next to the river and hear it creak and moan and groan when it's building up ice and then the other way around when it breaks up".
When we see raindrops making ripples on a river, we hear a quick plinking of the piano keys; a jittery version of the theme takes over as the umbrellas cross a busy city street.
(The Doctor: "When I was on the river I heard the strange babble of inhuman voices, didn't you, Romana?" Professor Chronotis: "Oh, probably undergraduates talking to each other, I expect").
Later, walking home on the opposite side of the river, I hear the "wap wap" cries of an unsettled gang of magpies, and see the fox again, this time pursued along the side of a boathouse.
"If you're walking along a river you hear the water, then in the forest you hear birds, but as night comes in, it becomes kind of weird, you can walk through a desert, a swamp, and the sounds merge and change with you".
An American academic writing for The Nation reported that "60,000 persons gathered on the bank of the river to hear Gandhi's call to arms.
Along particularly tricky stretches of the river, you can hear the recitation of river depths as crew members on the lower deck prod the river bed with long measuring sticks and relay the numbers in a meditative chant.
