Bug Music
How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In the spring of 2013 the cicadas in the Northeastern United States will yet again emerge from their seventeen-year cycle—the longest gestation period of any animal. Those who experience this great sonic invasion compare their sense of wonder to the arrival of a comet or a solar eclipse. This unending rhythmic cycle is just one unique example of how the pulse and noise of insects has taught humans the meaning of rhythm, from the whirr of a cricket's wings to this unfathomable and exact seventeen-year beat.
In listening to cicadas, as well as other humming, clicking, and thrumming insects, Bug Music is the first book to consider the radical notion that we humans got our idea of rhythm, synchronization, and dance from the world of insect sounds that surrounded our species over the millions of years over which we evolved. Completing the trilogy he began with Why Birds Sing and Thousand Mile Song, David Rothenberg explores a unique part of our relationship with nature and sound—the music of insects that has provided a soundtrack for humanity throughout the history of our species. Bug Music continues Rothenberg's in-depth research and spirited writing on the relationship between human and animal music, and it follows him as he explores insect influences in classical and modern music, plays his saxophone with crickets and other insects, and confers with researchers and scientists nationwide.
This engaging and thought-provoking book challenges our understanding of our place in nature and our relationship to the creatures surrounding us, and makes a passionate case for the interconnectedness of species.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following books about bird music (Why Birds Sing) and whale music (Thousand Mile Song), Rothenberg, a jazz musician and professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, proposes that the "wild percussion sounds" of insects were humans' original musical inspiration, the source of our interest in "the trill, the thrum, the resonant, the mangled, the mashed." Rothenberg researches and visits with scientists and musicians preoccupied with bug music, and intersperses stories of his musical adventures, philosophical musings, and charts of bug buzz patterns with poetry from the five-volume set of singing-insect literary references gathered by Montreal entomologist Keith Kevan. Most importantly, Rothenberg listens deeply to the insects and muses on what we need to know "to be musically attuned to and influenced by these six-legged singers." The book's climax is a concert where he collaborates with members of Brood XIX, "the largest of the thirteen-year cicada populations," which emerged in 2011. Despite occasional exuberant incoherence, Rothenberg raises thoughtful questions about the nature of music and our ability to communicate with other species. The author's wide-ranging musical interests from Renaissance madrigals and John Cage to electronica and katydids together with his playful, almost romantic approach to the subject helps engage general readers, balancing the book's more technical material. 56 b&w photos and illus.
