on noise music (2022)

Where music is the mathematical order and organization of sound to please our ears, noise is all that stands against it. In the contemporary or modern English language, noise is often described as “a sound or sounds, especially when it is unpleasant, unwanted or loud” according to the Cambridge Dictionary. For a long time, the terms music and noise were both entirely separated from each other, music wasn’t noise and noise wasn’t music, up until Italian Futurists began to question the role of noise within art and the musical world. The first to be interested in such topics was Luigi Russolo with his manifesto “The Art of Noises” (L’arte Dei Rumori) in 1913, in his book - Russolo explains that as [western] society begin to be more industrialized due to the aftereffects of capitalism and Fordism - our ears become at ease with the noises of cars, machinery. Thus, he encourages [Futurist] musicians to take advantage of these technological advancements to add a variety of timbres to classical orchestras at the time. He demonstrated this argument by creating the Intonarumori, which could be one of the first experimental family of musical instruments ever invented.

While the instruments consist of large scaled acoustic resonators attached to boxes that each amplify unique noises, they were also incredibly complex and difficult to manipulate. And till this day, modern musicologists and musicians still cannot recreate the same exact sounds these Inatonarumori’s made, this again relates to the question of reproduction of art within the rise of consumerism.

From these observations we can conclude that, one - noise music cannot be perfectly reproduced (unlike music) and are unique in frequency, arrangement, and tone due to its specificity of being random. Secondly, noise music serves a very specific audience as seen in the example with Russolo performing his first noise orchestra on the evening of April 21 1914, that ended up in violence and uproar from the general public and classically trained musicians, this means that noise is a cultural concept that could only be truly understood by those who are willing to understand or push the boundaries of western music theory and its conventions.  

Noise is cultural and its negative connotations appeal to certain audiences, especially as it seems to appeal and attract more non-western communities (Paul Hegarty, 2007). When we look back at the definition of noise, it’s described as unwanted sounds that do not follow a structure or organization. And the problem arises whenever we talk about music theory, most likely we would think of western music theory, where that specific world was dominated by white European male musicians and composers like Ludvig van Beethoven and Johann Sebastian Bach. A word that refers to an entire concept is engraved in people’s minds in a hierarchical racial complex that western music theory is the default. Must we remember that when Luigi Russolo played his Intonarumori , it caused an uproar within classical musicians and musicologists because it was different, in the words of musicologist Phillip A. Ewell - that western music theory “lacked diversity” and was structured upon institutionalized racism.

Meanwhile, middle eastern countries and Asian countries do not have a concept of “correct harmony” like western music theory do, they were (and still are) much more explorative with structure, with the example of Vietnamese music and the vọng cổ structure. While I understand that noise music comes in many different forms like being random, loud, or even quiet as seen through John Cage’s 4:33”, I believe that the definition of noise music took a different turn within the 1980s. The similarity between Asian/non-western music structures and the definition of noise came into a clash when German band Einstürzende Neubauten incorporated both the industrial nature of noise music and tribal/world music to redefine what noise means within the 90s. This would also greatly influence the Japanese punk scene as they really push it beyond just incorporating noises into music, they wrote songs with actual white noise, signals, and feedback from electronic amplifiers to create what is called “Harsh-Noise wall”. Noise has turned into a genre of its own and broke free from stigmatization of western music conventions to become its own respectable genre of music and art form. In the words of a well-known Japanese noise musician: “If noise means an uncomfortable sound, then pop music is noise to me.” (Masami Akira aka. Merzbow, in Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music)

Noise music has de-stigmatized itself as being undesirable and has found its way into the hands of different communities who are willing to embrace its technical complexities. Nowadays if we talk about noise music to a classical musician, it wouldn’t be as much of a taboo subject like in the 1910s. The music world openly embraces noise music as a form of progress within the way we perceive, arrange, and think about sound.