Resistant Noise

Janice Misurell-Mitchell, Resistant Noise (2020)

Resistant Noise was commissioned by the Ear Taxi Festival in 2020. The piece uses a text from Jacques Attali’s Bruits Noise. His thesis is that noise (unwanted sound) represents people and forces in a society that are excluded from the mainstream culture, and that cultural change will be heralded by musical change. The text is as follows:

With noise is born disorder and its opposite: the world
With music is born power and its opposite: subversion
In noise...the codes of life, les codes de la vie.
Clameurs, Mélodie, Dissonance, Harmonie

Resistant Noise is a musical representation of the conflicts and social forces in the United States today.

Janice Misurell-Mitchell is a composer, lecturer, flutist and vocal artist. She teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.