Orpheus in the city

Street Songs ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 13-35
Author(s):  
Daniel Karlin
Keyword(s):  
Urban Noise ◽  
The City

Chapter 1 begins with a primal myth transposed to the city. William Wordsworth’s ‘Power of Music’ represents street music as an unqualified blessing: in proclaiming his fiddler ‘An Orpheus!’, the poet summons the miraculous and sacred power of music and song, but any allusion to Orpheus is shadowed by his tragic fate. Wordsworth’s poem recalls, by inversion, William Hogarth’s famous print, ‘The Enrag’d Musician’ (1741), in which a mob of urban noise-makers (including rival and degraded forms of street music and song) advance on the ‘classical’ violinist, himself a bathetic version of divine harmony. Hogarth’s urban ‘soundscape’ reappears in James Clarence Mangan’s poem ‘Khidder’ (1845), which likewise brings the fate of Orpheus, rather than his power, into focus. The violence with which street singers are faced is evident in George Gissing’s The Nether World (1889), whose title indicates that Orpheus will descend in vain into the hell of the city.

scholarly journals Learning to cope: vocal adjustment to urban noise is correlated with prior experience in black-capped chickadees

2016 ◽  
Vol 283 (1833) ◽  
pp. 20161058 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie E. LaZerte ◽  
Hans Slabbekoorn ◽  
Ken A. Otter
Keyword(s):  
Ambient Noise ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Traffic Noise ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Previous Exposure ◽  
Poecile Atricapillus ◽  
Urban Noise ◽  
Experimental Noise ◽  
Avian Communication ◽  
The City

Urban noise can interfere with avian communication through masking, but birds can reduce this interference by altering their vocalizations. Although several experimental studies indicate that birds can rapidly change their vocalizations in response to sudden increases in ambient noise, none have investigated whether this is a learned response that depends on previous exposure. Black-capped chickadees ( Poecile atricapillus ) change the frequency of their songs in response to both fluctuating traffic noise and experimental noise. We investigated whether these responses to fluctuating noise depend on familiarity with noise. We confirmed that males in noisy areas sang higher-frequency songs than those in quiet areas, but found that only males in already-noisy territories shifted songs upwards in immediate response to experimental noise. Unexpectedly, males in more quiet territories shifted songs downwards in response to experimental noise. These results suggest that chickadees may require prior experience with fluctuating noise to adjust vocalizations in such a way as to minimize masking. Thus, learning to cope may be an important part of adjusting to acoustic life in the city.

Elsewheres

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Julie Ren
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
The City ◽  
Comparative Urbanism

By examining 798 in Beijing and Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Chapter 1 establishes the context for a comparative study of art spaces. Rather than empirical anomalies of their respective settings, these examples evince the capacity of art spaces to transform cities and the contested perceptions of their role in cities. The dual aims of the book are to understand how the place-making activities of art spaces add to an understanding about aspiration in the city as well as to develop a means to operationalize comparative urbanism. Beyond a critique of parochialism in urban theory, this empirical study of art spaces offers some guidance about how to engage with comparative urbanism as a framework for research. An overview of the chapters is provided.

“A well conceived scheme to maintain racial segregation”

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-44
Author(s):  
Nancy K. Bristow
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Student Activism ◽  
Board Of Trustees ◽  
State College ◽  
Freedom Summer ◽  
Racial History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The City

Chapter 1 situates Jackson State College in the racial history of Mississippi, emphasizing the struggle it faced against white supremacy and the balancing act its leadership performed. Determined to preserve the school, its presidents, both white and black, were forced to accept elements of racial containment. When protests emerged in Jackson in the 1960s, the Board of Trustees ensured that Jackson State’s president, Jacob Reddix, controlled student activism. When students joined Jacksonians to protest segregation in the city, he expelled them. When students voiced their political opinions, he dissolved the Student Government Association. During Freedom Summer, the Board of Trustees tightened restrictions on students. The smallest protest or rumor prompted white Jacksonians to condemn the campus as a breeding ground of criminals. In 1967 a new president, John A. Peoples, relaxed some restrictions on student life, even as the increasing influence of Black Power began to be felt on campus.

Urban noise pollution in the city of Curitiba, Brazil

2002 ◽  
Vol 112 (5) ◽  
pp. 2375-2375
Author(s):  
Paulo H. T. Zannin ◽  
Fabiano B. Diniz
Keyword(s):  
Noise Pollution ◽  
Urban Noise ◽  
The City

Comparative analysis of the urban noise between two different areas in the city of Curitiba, PR

2004 ◽  
Vol 115 (5) ◽  
pp. 2623-2623
Author(s):  
Elaine C. Paz ◽  
Andressa C. Ferreira ◽  
Paulo T. Zannin
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Urban Noise ◽  
The City

The Rise of Trou Coffy and the Jacmel Insurgent Theater

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Rey
Keyword(s):  
The South ◽  
Coffee Plantation ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Sociopolitical Context ◽  
The City

Chapter 1, “The Rise of Trou Coffy and the Jacmel Insurgent Theater,” explains both the transatlantic sociopolitical context in which the free colored insurgencies in Saint-Domingue’s West and South Provinces emerged and the specific local social and racial tensions that drove Romaine-la-Prophétesse to lead an insurgency based on his coffee plantation in Trou Coffy, a mountain hamlet located between the cities of Jacmel and Léogâne. Trou Coffy’s raids and ultimate conquest of Jacmel are then carefully detailed, as well as its insurgents’ destruction of surrounding plantations and assaults on white populations throughout the region. The chapter also offers an original discussion of unrelated but culturally and historically relevant free colored insurgent activity around the city of Les Cayes, in the South Province. Generally speaking, the time period covered in this chapter is September 1791 to January 1792.

Cities and Border Control

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avner de Shalit
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Philosophical Argument ◽  
Border Control ◽  
Shrinking Cities ◽  
The City

Should we allow cities to control their borders, and issue permits to settle in the city? Some cities that have become extremely popular among immigrants wish to limit the number of immigrants who can settle in the city; contrariwise, some shrinking cities have asked to be allowed to issue permits to settle in the city even if the state is less open to immigration. Arguments for and against open city borders are analysed in Chapter 1 and it proves difficult either to support or dismiss the idea using a consistent and coherent philosophical argument. The chapter also discusses selective policies of migration to cities. It is claimed that such policies are morally justifiable, provided that they do not dismiss selectively but only encourage selectively.

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