The cicada symphony returns.
By Chris Conway Senior staff editor, Opinion |
Not everyone might describe the deafening cacophony of millions of 17-year cicadas as music. But then that depends on your definition of music. |
For its part, the Department of Health and Human Services warns that cicadas' "loud buzz can be a noisy nuisance" and "as loud as a lawn mower, dirt bike or tractor." The department adds, on a website about noise-induced hearing loss, that "cicadas don't bite, but if the noise bothers you when you're outdoors, wear hearing protectors, such as earplugs or earmuffs." |
That's certainly one point of view. |
Then there's the opinion of David Rothenberg. He's a professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He also plays the clarinet. To his ears, the mating sounds these cicadas make after 17 years spent underground is music — of a profound and celebratory sort. |
And particularly so in a year when both cicadas and humans are emerging from their own dark places into the light. For cicadas, it is time to crawl to the surface to unfurl their wings, make music and mate. For us, or at least some of us, it's time to step out gingerly from the confines of the pandemic and pick up our lives in a world, Rothenberg writes, "of wonder, of joy." |
That's why he and a group of musician friends plan to grab their instruments, head outside when the cicadas soon emerge and join the symphony. "Every musician should try at least once to add his or her own small voice to the millions," he writes. |
"It's a profound experience," he adds. "Far from crazy, it's necessary. Human sounds must fit into and around the callings of nature if we are ever to construct a surer, more promising way to survive on this complex and beautiful planet." |
Noise? Or music? You be the judge. You can read Rothenberg's paean to these 5-eyed bugs here and listen in on the music they make together. |
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