Listening to the Cold War Through the Anthropocene
Chair(s): Andrew Barrett (Northwestern University)
Discussant(s): Gabrielle Cornish (University of Wisconsin – Madison)
Organized by Cold War Music Study Group.
This panel explores the topic of music, sound, and the environment in the Cold War. Recent turns in both music studies and history have considered the role played by non-human animals, nature, and global ecologies in geopolitical and ideological struggles during the Cold War. Over the course of the twentieth century, wars both cold and hot were entangled with the “Anthropocene”: an era in which human agency has caused lasting changes to the global environment (Crutzen 2002; Sykes 2019). Whether through nuclear testing, arctic exploration, oil extractivism, or environmental cooperation, Cold War powers both big and small refigured their relationship(s) to the earth and its occupants. And music and sound, too, were there along the way, as musicians, composers, and artists sought to grapple with the impact of climate change and environmental activism.
Asking how music, sound, and environment(s) were entangled in these Cold War geopolitics, the three papers on this panel explore nuclear testing, extractive socialism, and environmental exchange in the second half of the twentieth century. Kari Lindquist's paper, "'Power to Produce for Peace': The University of Michigan Symphony Band at the 1961 Cairo Agricultural Exhibition," looks at sonic and geopolitical entanglements at U.S-sponsored performances at the 1961 Agricultural Exhibition in Cairo, Egypt. Sara Haefeli's paper, "John Cage, 0’00”, and the Atomic Sublime," positions Cage's work within the post-atom bomb context of Cold War Japan. And lastly, Oksana Nesterenko's presentation, "Reflecting on Gaia: How Can the Soil Change in the New Cold War?," connects the 1955 Soviet construction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric powerplant in Ukraine to the Cold War's legacy at play in the War in Ukraine via sound. After these three fifteen-minute papers, Gabrielle Cornish will give a response.
Presentations of the Symposium
“Power to Produce for Peace”: The University of Michigan Symphony Band at the 1961 Cairo Agricultural Exhibition
Kari Lindquist
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
During the ongoing Bay of Pigs invasion, on April 18, 1961, the University of Michigan Symphony Band played outside the U.S. exhibit at the Cairo Agricultural Exhibition. As part of a record-length U.S. State Department tour, the University of Michigan Symphony Band was in Cairo on its first stop after the Soviet Union midway through the 15-week tour. According to all accounts of the exhibition concert, the band’s sound echoed back off of the metal sculpture at the entrance to the Soviet Union exhibit. Months before the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement, this was contested ground. The opposition of the Cold War played out sonically in this environment dedicated to innovation in agriculture and farming. Twenty-three nations participated in the 1961 Cairo Agricultural Exhibition with displays designed to improve global ecology. The U.S. exhibit was called “Power to Produce for Peace” with a focus on farming equipment in a massive two-acre display. Thus, the U.S. government aligned its Cold War musical, scientific, and environmental efforts at a time of geopolitical conflict.
Using this concert as a case study, I demonstrate how sound and music were entwined with the physical environment of the Cairo Agricultural Exhibition and how the U.S. used the band in support of its scientific developments in a global ecological network. Applying archival methods and media analysis, I explore silent camcorder footage from the band’s visit to Cairo to imagine the multifaceted soundscape and how people moved throughout space in the Agricultural Exhibition. Using scholarship on sound in Cairo by Fahmy (2020) and the role of sound in public space by Abe (2018) and Sakakeeny (2013), I investigate how the band’s outdoor concert commanded public space. I analyze the band’s placement in the multi-faceted sonic environment of the Agricultural Exhibition. By exploring how the band interacted in Cairo, I situate wind band music as crucial to the sonic encounters between these musicians and their hosts/audiences during the Cold War.
John Cage, 0’00”, and the Atomic Sublime
Sara Haefeli
Ithaca College
Cage’s 1962 conceptual piece 0’00” is a prose score with the instructions “In a situation provided with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action.” Scholars have used this work to illustrate any number of Cagean aesthetic and philosophical ideas including Cage’s blurring of life and art, his critique of the work construct, his concept of egoless performance, his embrace of sound, his anti-historicist stance, and his belief in an enlightened (yet limited) anarchy. It seems that this piece—whose title could be equated with nothingness or emptiness—is itself an empty screen waiting to be illumined with the viewer’s own projections of meaning.
That the piece was written and premiered in Japan and dedicated to two Japanese composers (Yoko Ono and Toshi Ichiyanagi) has garnered little to no comment in the existing scholarly literature. Kay Larson’s book Where the Heart Beats demonstrates the work’s connections to Buddhist thought, and yet, Cage’s understanding of Buddhism is idiosyncratic––not authentically Japanese––and largely shaped by his own aesthetic goals. What is missing from the scholarly conversation on 0’00” is a thorough account of its Japanese origins and Orientalist aspects. This paper puts the piece firmly on Japanese soil to explore the work’s geographical and temporal contexts in the atomic age. I argue that 0’00” is a Cold War artwork that is “about” the atomic bomb, despite (or perhaps precisely because) of Cage’s claims that his music in meaningless. The work emerges from a context that is rich with references to Japan as an impermanent natural environment. This study describes the circumstances surrounding the creation of 0’00” and its premiere and reception in Japan. I also explore the piece’s connections to Japanese technology, experimental aesthetics, ethics, and politics. I also discuss the significance of the number zero in the atomic age. I ultimately argue that framing Cage’s work in Japan in its geo-political context sheds light on Cage as Cold War composer and raises troubling questions about the aestheticization of violence.
Reflecting on Gaia: How Can the Soil Change in the New Cold War?
Oksana Nesterenko
Union College
In 1955, the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant (HPP) was launched on Dnieper River, as a part of the “great plan for the transformation of nature,” initiated by Stalin in 1948. While it was aimed to become a symbol of the technical power of the USSR, the construction of the Kakhovka dam led to flooding of fertile land and villages, drastically changing the local ecosystem. In 2023, as a part of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces occupied the territory surrounding the HPP, and eventually blew up the dam, causing the flooding of wildlife habitats and the death of over fifty people and thousands of fish and livestock.
This paper addresses the historical context and consequences of construction and destruction of the Kakhovka dam through the lenses of musical works composed in response to these events. First, I will briefly discuss two pieces by musicians from the area affected by the disaster. An electronic piece Damba (The Dam) by composer and sound-designer Edward Sol allows to imagine how living beings who inhabited the reservoir experienced the military occupation and explosion of the dam. Chovny (Boats), a popular song by Maria Chumak, describes the rescue of drowning people and animals. Then, I will focus on GAIA-24: Opera del Mondo (2023-2024) by composer duo Roman Grygoriv and Illia Razumeiko, which explores the Kakhovka dam explosion in the context of global environmental disasters. The opera is inspired by the French philosopher Bruno Latour’s essay “Is Europe’s soil changing beneath our feet?” (2022), and his book Face à Gaïa (2015) and presents video footage of changing landscapes of Kakhovka reservoir shot in summer 2023.
While reflecting on Russia's war against Ukraine through the concept of soil, Latour's essay and Grygoriv and Razumeiko’s opera point to broader questions related to global environmental crisis. If the “free world” cannot stop illegal occupations of sovereign territories, nor is it able to reverse the global warming, what power might solve the dual ecological and military crisis?
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