Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise
Do insects sing? Are they nature’s percussion section? Did musical bugs inspire humans to drum, strum, and hum? Professor of philosophy and music Rothenberg believes they do, they are, and they did. With their seemingly endless mathematical noisemaking, insects laid a foundation for human music making. Both tribal drummers and electronic-music composers have drawn from the rhythms of insects. In this report on his encounters with cicadas, crickets, and katydids, the author is both broadly philosophical and highly technical, alternately telling us what insects mean when they sing and, using sonograms and anatomical illustrations, describing in detail how they produce their remarkable sounds. Rothenberg also recounts his playing clarinet and saxophone with insects in the field, on the stage, and in his recording studio. Following Why Birds Sing and Thousand Mile Song (about whale songs), Bug Music completes Rothenberg’s trilogy of books about human interaction with nature’s musicians. --Rick Roche