Here's the first of three excerpts about the initial reactions to early-20th-century experiments in avant-garde "noise music." While I think that Andy's comments in Culture Making about John Cage's most (in)famous work—that in the end it amounted to "a provocative but fruitless attempt to cut off the cultural tradition of music"—are certainly worth bearing in mind. Still, there is something thrilling about the passion evident on both sides of this particular audience dispute. In the next excerpts we'll from some of the more thoughtful (and less pugnacious) early listeners.

creation and cultivation, cultural worlds, horizons of the possible, modernity, music, noise

Nate

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The first public performance of the noise orchestra took place on 21 April 1914 at the Teatro dal Verme in Milan. According to Russolo, the audience of conservative critics and musicians came only “so that they could refuse to listen.” As soon as the orchestra began to play, the crowd broke into a violent uproar. The musicians continued undaunted while fellow Futurists hurled themselves into the audience and defended the Art of Noises with their fists. In the end, eleven people were sent to the hospital, none of them Futurists, as belligerence was a central component of the Futurist approach to art and life, and many were talented boxers.

The newly-appointed head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the richest privately endowed funding agency in the US, on how in terms of productive scientific creativity, small efforts of passion may contribute more than better-funded and -planned big projects. (Which is not to say, I'd assume, that a given passion project is more likely to succeed; just that the successful project is often one driven by passion).

creativity, funding, horizons of the possible, passion, research, science

Nate

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It’s hard to be sure whether the big science projects?—?which can take a significant percentage of the funding from the NIH, for example?—?are ultimately going to be as productive as typical investigator-initiated science projects. My own view is that what’s consistently propelled American scientific success has been individual, investigator-initiated science projects. I don’t imagine that will change too much. That’s not to say that the larger projects?—?for example, the genome-sequencing projects?—?are not worth it. Obviously, some of them are. Some people will be motivated by pursuing the X Prize to try things that they never would have done otherwise. A certain number of these catalytic events are really worth it. But I tend to favor the creative and individually masterminded, out-of-left-field kind of science, which often ends up being the most transformative. I’m confident that much of the truly original ideas come from people doing things that they are passionate about and then stumbling onto something completely unexpected. Certainly, the biological field is strewn with examples of great discoveries?—?absolutely revolutionary discoveries?—?that came out of seemingly trivial things. It’s not very often that big science leads you to true innovation in the sense of novel discoveries.

The sonic signature of a cultural (and culinary) world.

cultural worlds, food and drink, latin america, mexico, sound

Nate

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You hear it from a block away: an amplified, singsong call with an uncanny power to slice through the urban din. The tone is cheap and tinny—as kitschy as a sound can be. And it’s my favorite in Mexico City.

Listen now, as it nears, the nasal-toned male voice stretching out syllables and pauses, again and again, into a verse so familiar it could be the unofficial anthem of this vast city, a kind of culinary call to prayer. ”Ri-costa-ma-les oaxa-que-ños!” blares a loudspeaker on the vendor’s tamale cart. ”Tamales oaxaqueños!” ”Tamales calien-ti-tos!”

Go to any neighborhood in Mexico City, from gritty to grand, and at some point during the evening you might hear it. The recorded call, always in the same hypnotic voice, is pumped from countless speakers aboard countless tamalero pedal carts. Step up and order your delicious Oaxacan tamales.

What might be behind non-white medical students being proportionally less interested in studying contemporary alternative medicine? Perhaps the cultural leap of signing on to western/majority-culture medical orthodoxy inherently involves leaving minority-culture views and techniques behind. Or perhaps, too, there's just the fact that, for many minority-background med students, alternative medicine lacks the exotic allure it might hold, at least these days, for their white counterparts.

cultural worlds, education, horizons of the possible, medicine

Nate

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Non-white medical students are more likely to embrace orthodox medicine and reject therapies traditionally associated with their cultures. That is one finding from an international study that measures the attitudes of medical students toward complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). While seemingly counter-intuitive, white students view CAM more favorably than their non-white counterparts, the study authors say….

n the first study, U.S. medical students wanted more courses about CAM than students in Hong Kong, for example. (The Hong Kong school was not included in the 2nd survey of fourth year students.) The second study continued to support that trend with the least interest in CAM measured in Asian and black students.