THE NEW AGE

No, that was not a huge swarm of bees you heard if you were near San Francisco’s Bayside waterfront Sunday. What it was, was a “hum-in,” courtesy of Los Angeles performance artist Bonnie Barnett, who arranged the hum-together as a release for tightly wound city dwellers. Sunday’s informal monody, composed of 60 or so stressed urbanites, was the 25th group hum-in in seven years staged by Barnett. “These singing techniques are meditation techniques,” said Russ Jennings, a Berkeley radio producer who joined the hum-in. “Your brain is massaged by these vibrations.” As with most things beneficial, however, there was a price to be paid: $5 per hummer. Barnett is raising funds for a planned U.S.-Soviet hum by satellite, and then a global hum . . . in E-flat.