NJIT's David Rothenberg Joins the Cicada Musical Reunion Tour, 17-Years in the Making
The date is May 11, 2004.
The TV sitcom Friends just aired the finale of its 10th and final season, Usher’s hit single "Yeah!" is giving way to Maroon 5’s “This Love” atop the Billboard Top 100 and Massachusetts is about to become the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage.
But lurking under the ground, a seismic event in the insect world was also happening.
Hundreds of millions of buzzing, red-eyed “Brood X” cicadas were staging a mass takeover of the U.S. East Coast after living underground and feeding off of tree roots for 17 years, bringing with them a very short list of things to do and just a few weeks to do them in:
Molt, sing their deafening songs from the treetops, mate as much as possible, lay eggs and die.
But now, in case you hadn’t heard, they’re back.
The next generation of Brood X cicadas has been sprouting from the ground this summer, repeating the 17-year cycle all over again while spreading their unmistakable maraca-like buzzing across 15 states since early May.
For a nature-inspired musician like NJIT Humanities Professor David Rothenberg, it’s been an occasion not to be missed, akin to a Rolling Stones or Grateful Dead reunion tour for classic rock fans.
“I’ve been waiting 17 years, of course!” said Rothenberg. “I’ve wanted to bring different musicians into the mix for this and hear what they all do when confronted with millions of screaming cicadas for the very first time. We’ve had a great crew of saxophonists, drummers, bass players, and more TV crews than one could ever imagine.”
Rothenberg has spent early June playing jazz clarinet in-and-among the thick swarms of cicadas in Princeton’s Battlefield Park and Mountain Lakes Preserve for what many consider the Woodstock of NJ’s cicada festivities this month.
The Brood X cicadas, comprised of three species — Magicicada septendecim, Magicicada cassinii and Magicicada septendecula — are among the largest of the 15 cicada populations found around the world, dominating the Eastern U.S. exclusively at more than one million cicadas per acre since their synchronized emergence.
Swarms of cicada males are known to be able to drown out the sound of everything from passing cars to lawnmowers with their mating calls, which are created by vibrating drum-like organs (tymbals) in their abdomen and can be heard by females up to a mile away. Image credit: David Rothenberg
Rothenberg has made a name chronicling his jam sessions with everything from Arctic whales to park nightingales in Germany, but he also considers himself a “cicada groupie.” He has previously traveled across the U.S. to play with various other broods since 2011, recounting those experiences in his book Bug Music, and the films, Song of the Cicadasand Cicada Music in Ohio.
And just like any digital age superfan would do to find out where the party is at this summer, he and his fellow musicians are using a special app to find out where the thickest cicada swarms are making the biggest buzz.
“We’ve found ourselves in some pretty surprising situations [tracking these swarms], but some beautiful music has been played nevertheless,” Rothenberg said. “The sound has transported us all to another world. It feels like we are all emerging, we feel the end of this pandemic coming soon, and are so happy to be outside celebrating in song … just like the cicadas.”
Video Credit: David Rothenberg, Andrew Klobucar and Anna Demetrides.
While his recent Princeton performances have attracted their own swarms of media attention, the Brood X musical tour doesn’t quite end there for Rothenberg. He’s added stops in Baltimore — for concerts in Herring Run Park and “Cicada Fest” at Atomic Books — where he’s teamed up with field recording experts to record an album that will capture the cicadas in the richest detail yet, using stereo parabolic microphones for the first time.
For now though, Rothenberg says he’s just soaking up the experience, and perhaps taking a bit of the Brood X attitude — “We’re here for a good time, not a long time.” — with him.
“We can learn so much from the other musicians on this planet. Hearing music in the songs of insects, sounds they have literally been preparing for seventeen years underground to make for a few weeks, connects us ever closer to the natural world and gives us a way to share in its beauty.”
For more about the 2021 Brood X cicadas and Rothenberg’s music with them this summer, check out Rothenberg’s Radiolab show and read more here.
