Infernal Noise Brigade Response

The northern western US loves their marching bands. Not too long ago I saw a marching band from Portland Oregon called the March 4th Marching band. Though they do not play in order to protest, they reminded me of the Infernal Noise Brigade.

I found it interesting in relating the Infernal Noise Brigade to our daily walks. Though we're not in protest, their is a definite power in walking. It allows you to experience the world outside yourself.

Jennifer Whitney said that the protest in NY was one of the first times they had ever felt that free. Free from the politics, free from the world, etc. They were free because they were breaking both the physical and social rules in the world. Their music, filled with trumpets, snare drums and bass drums, filled their natural auditorium. She stressed the importance of the disrupt. The importance of their presence.

Though it may have been stated, I wasn't sure exactly what it was that they were protesting to the WTO. The video and the article both vaguely stated the actual purpose of the march. I may be completely wrong. Was it to do with deforestation? Was it to entertain? In Wikipedia, it states, " Christopher Frizzelle, in an "obituary" for the band in the Seattle-based arts weekly The Stranger, remarked that their "most important and dramatic public events were standoffs with cops" and that they "can be credited for keeping WTO protestors energized, focused, and photogenic… What their parties and their protests had in common was intensity, vividness, and a fun, frightening sense that anything could happen. They were lessons in liberation."

I believe it is important to notice the combination of fear and excitement that the members were reportedly experiencing. She states, "all of us

wanted something meaningful and fun to do during the actions". I'm not trying to be facetious, or rude, but I've always been a skeptic when it comes to marches like this. Do the people involved find themselves feening off the energy like drug addicts? Why in the middle of the street? Do they think about the others who are affected who aren't involved in global politics? I've always thought that there were important questions to be raised when regarding work like this. I know in my own account that I become consumed by the energy and I loose myself in large groups like this. Maybe thats the point. Maybe its not. Is there a goal in mind? Is it to stop something? Is it to raise questions of their own that don't exist? Is the group looking for something that isn't there. I only ask this in complete sincerity because I find it very confusing.

I had a friend of mine the other day, a pretty successful rapper, signed with a major label and all (I will not disclose his name), tell me that he had a dream one night that he had seen a war in his mind. He then came down, floating or whatever, and stood in the middle of this war and started to play his music. The war stopped and it was all over. I remember, he started telling me that he felt like he could stop a war with his music. I thought he was crazy, and yet also engraved with the ideas of the past (John Lennon, etc). But then I started to think about his conviction and what he truly BELIEVED. It made sense in a perfect world, but the amount of extenuating circumstances makes it all that more unbelievable.

Just as much as one person, or one collective feels that they can bring control to the world, another collective comes in and does the same.

In the 2nd article, it states,"This is aesthetic politics—not necessarily because of the directly expressed content of the work—but because of the role it plays in drawing lines of flight away from staggering weight of everyday life, in hybridizing sounds and experiences to create space where other relations and possibilities can emerge." I guess you can say that this is where the collective, or the Infernal Noise Brigade was going. The Infernal Noise Brigade drew lines of physical and social awareness. News reporters and journalists frothing at the commotion, but what are they reporting? Business executives and the daily grinders halted before they go to work. All asking themselves probably the same questions I am asking myself. They came outside their daily desired lines and met in an ambiguous space where everyone could meet both socially and mentally.