Danger Music
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Danger music is an experimental form of
avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
20th and 21st century
music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
and performance art. It is based on the concept that some pieces of music can or will harm either the listener or the performer, understanding that the piece in question may or may not be performed.
Kyle Gann Kyle Eugene Gann (born November 21, 1955, in Dallas, Texas) is an American professor of music, critic, analyst, and composer who has worked primarily in the New York City area. As a music critic for ''The Village Voice'' (from 1986 to 2005) and ...
describes in his book ''Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice'' how
Takehisa Kosugi was a Japanese composer, violinist and artist associated with the Fluxus movement. Biography Kosugi studied musicology at the Tokyo University of the Arts and graduated in 1962. He first became drawn to music listening to his father play har ...
's composition ''Music for a Revolution'' directs the performer to " oop out one of your eyes 5 years from now and do the same with the other eye 5 years later". Works such as this are also sometimes referred to as anti-music because they seem to rebel against the concept of music itself. Danger music is often closely associated with the
Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...
school of composition, especially the work of
Dick Higgins Dick Higgins (15 March 1938 – 25 October 1998) was an American artist, composer, art theorist, poet, publisher, printmaker, and a co-founder of the Fluxus international artistic movement (and community). Inspired by John Cage, Higgins was a ...
who composed a series of works entitled ''Danger Music''.


In performance

As with many forms of concept music and performance art, the lines between "music", "art", "theater", and "social protest" are not always clear or apparent. Danger Music consequently has some things in common with the performance art of artists such as
Mark Pauline Mark Pauline (born December 14, 1953) is an American performance artist and inventor, best known as founder and director of Survival Research Laboratories. He is a 1977 graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. Pauline founded SR ...
and
Chris Burden Christopher Lee Burden (April 11, 1946 – May 10, 2015) was an American artist working in performance, sculpture and installation art. Burden became known in the 1970s for his performance art works, including ''Shoot'' (1971), where he arranged ...
. For instance, some extreme examples of danger music direct performers to use sounds so loud that they will deafen the participants, or ask performers to throw antipersonnel bombs into the audience.
Yamantaka Eye (born , 13 February 1964) is a Japanese vocalist and visual artist, best known as a member of Boredoms and Naked City. He has changed his stage name three times, from Yamatsuka Eye, to Yamantaka Eye, to Yamataka Eye, and sometimes calls hims ...
's
noise Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arise ...
project Hanatarash was notable for its dangerous live shows, the most famous instance being when the Japanese artist drove an excavator through the venue at the back of the stage. There were also reports of audience members being required to fill out waivers before shows to prevent the band or the venue being sued in case of any potential danger caused to them. Other pieces involve more symbolic forms of "danger", such as
Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super hi ...
's "Danger Music for Dick Higgins," which directs the performer to "creep into the vagina of a living whale", or a piece may direct that the volume of the music steadily increases causing the audience to fear that it will make them defecate (the hypothetical "
brown note The brown note, also sometimes called the brown frequency or brown noise, is a hypothetical infrasonic frequency capable of causing fecal incontinence by creating acoustic resonance in the human bowel. The name is a metonym for the common color ...
"), although it might never reach that point.


See also

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Sonic weapon Sonic and ultrasonic weapons (USW) are weapons of various types that use sound to injure or incapacitate an opponent. Some sonic weapons make a focused beam of sound or of ultrasound; others produce an area field of sound. military and police ...
*
20th-century classical music 20th-century classical music describes art music that was written nominally from 1901 to 2000, inclusive. Musical style diverged during the 20th century as it never had previously. So this century was without a dominant style. Modernism, impressio ...
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Contemporary music Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included serial ...
*
Experimental music Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, ...
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Noise music Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise within a musical context. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical ...
*
Chris Burden Christopher Lee Burden (April 11, 1946 – May 10, 2015) was an American artist working in performance, sculpture and installation art. Burden became known in the 1970s for his performance art works, including ''Shoot'' (1971), where he arranged ...


References


Further reading

*Cope, David ''Techniques of the Contemporary Composer'' () *Friedman, Ken ''The Fluxus Reader'' () *Higgins, Hannah ''Fluxus Experience'' () *Nyman, Michael ''Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond'' () {{Experimental music genres 20th-century music genres 21st-century music genres Noise music Experimental music genres Fluxus Power electronics (music)