Jim has spent nearly five decades documenting and sharing the sounds of the world, from immersive portraits of American cities to indelible moments with people and animals in places as diverse as Alaska, Australia, Japan, Greece, Cuba, Nepal and Morocco.
He told Morning Edition that his job is to listen to sounds, not capture them.
He says that sometimes people say, "You know, I captured this sound." I didn't feel like I was taking anything from the start. These things made me feel like a gift. The first thing you want to do is listen to what you received. I would like to share this with someone.
Over the years, those sounds have been shared with many people through radio programs, including his own nationally syndicated series, "Pulse of the Planet."
More people will be able to hear what's happening through the tapes. The full body of his work was recently acquired by the Library of Congress. There are over 30,000 items in the collection.
The Library of Congress says its digital preservation work is just getting started, but has released a finding aid to the paper portion of the collection that people can use as a general guide to the depth and breadth of the recordings that will eventually become available
Matt Barton is the curator of recorded sound at the library's National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. Metzner's recordings convey a full spectrum of human experience accompanied by the vast array of sounds from the natural world.
When he first arrived at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in the 70s, he had a stereo recorder, microphone and earphones. A couple walking and talking nearby, a bicycle riding through gravel, a bird flying overhead, and bells in the distance were just some of the things that Metzner heard when he pushed the red button.
I was amazed. He said that it was an extraordinary coincidence. I hadn't been paying attention to it and it wasn't a coincidence. Here it is, right? It was handed to me on a platter.
Even as the scope of his work expanded, he continued to focus on the sound rich moments. After producing You're Hearing Boston and You're Hearing San Francisco, he went on to produce You're Hearing America and Sounds of Science.
He turned his attention to producing a daily radio program called "pulse of the planet" that brought hundreds of public and commercial stations two-minute segments of sound and interviews focused on science, nature and culture. After more than 30 years and 8000 segments, it ended in June.
Whether it's a Japanese pottery village or the scene of cowboys herding cattle in the plains of Brazil, the things that took Metzner around the world are varied.
They were herding a steer. One of the steers did not like what he saw. He lowers his head and charges at me. I'm standing there with 14 pounds of equipment and I'm going to die. I thought for a second, "Maybe I'll take this and put it in front of me?" I thought that was not true. I'm not able to do that. I didn't want my equipment to get goRED.
One of the cowboys walks up to the cow at the last moment. He's carrying a stick, and he taps the steer to let it go. The cowboy runs off after tipping his hat. There is a great recording. There has never been a recording like that before.
More than 200 reels of 14-inch tapes, more than 2,000 audio cassettes, and more than 1,000 digital audio tapes and digital Minidiscs were recorded by the man.
He has tapes from the local and national programs as well as the recordings he made to make them.
He's going to New Zealand to record sounds and share knowledge as a Fulbright specialist in media and communication, even though he's in his 70s.
He says he's grateful to the Library of Congress for preserving his life's work. He wants to make sure that it's actually being heard.
The library has been talking about how to make those sounds. He's thinking about other ways to honor the sound. To create a global crowd-sourced archive, both professional recordists and ordinary citizens need to submit sounds that are important to their communities and culture.
He hopes more people will get to experience the sounds of nature, which he describes as a part of our natural heritage.
Diane Arbus has photographs in a museum. He says that you can see René Magritte's work. Is it not possible to have a sound system? They are just as good as an art form.
The audio portion of the story was edited by the two people who produced it.
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