Infernal Noise

What I found most intriguing about the concept of infernal noise and art/music as a political statement was that the people who are performing the music and the people who are originally the onlookers often seem to become one in the same. At first, the performers are a separate entity, but when the onlookers start to dance to the music that is being preformed, they too became part of the spectacle. I thought that it was interesting that onlookers can become part of something larger without knowing it and without having practiced as the performers had for weeks.

Another thing that interested me about this idea was the power that music has to move people. It has an effect that inspires people in a way that speeches and rallies cannot. Depending on the music, people are moved in a different way. This was shown when the musicians that were at the WTO protest ended up playing a tribal warrior song, This act in some way triggered the police to tear gas them. It was interesting that there was probably a connection between the music that was being played and the reaction that the police had. Other music that was played provoked onlookers to start dancing, thus making the onlookers part of the spectacle.

The idea of performance just being something that is conducted in the sphere of a theater was pushed aside with these acts. I thought it was interesting that people could conduct an act of political protest without saying a word about the actual thing that they are protesting. I didn’t previously know that groups like the Infernal Noise Brigade existed. Music is something that can get past barriers that often keep people from understanding the same message. Often, a message can be lost due to language or cultural barriers, but when the message is being transmitted through music, many of those barriers disappear. People were able to know that at the WTO protest the music was a form of showing their opposition, even though no one said anything about being opposed to what was happening.

I thought that the idea of a political art movement was very interesting, especially when it was compared to actual political movements like Marxism. Performing music being compared to a political movement had never crossed my mind before. I was surprised that such a thing could cause such an impact.