Here’s a song titled Seventeen Year Cicadas by George Peter Block, Jr,:
Category: Music
Southern Culture On The Skids released a cicada-themed song for 2020: Cicada Rock 2020 (Brood IX). Enjoy!
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Some Songs About Cicadas
Everyone knows cicadas love to sing (the males) or be serenaded (the females).
A lot of people like to write songs inspired by cicadas. If you search online music stores or YouTube, you’ll find hundreds of songs about cicadas, in every genre imaginable including rap, country, rock, folk, dance, parody, classical and experimental.
Here are some cicada songs:
The Cicada Song by CincyPolly
Genre: Rock.
Cicada Serenade by The Pheromones
Genre: 1980s Rap.
Cicada By Hannah Gansen
Laura Imbruglia sings her song Cicada on a talk show for teens (YouTube Link):
(You might want to skip ahead 20 seconds to when the music starts.)
Here’s one of my favorite bands, Southern Culture on the Skids peforming their song Cicada Rock (YouTube link):
CICADA Song – SICKA CICADAS by Kathy Ashworth:
Not quite a song, but still very much an audio performance about cicadas: Tessa Farmer and David Rothenberg perform Magicicada in Dublin (YouTube Link):
Do you have a favorite cicada song? Let us know in the comments!
Bonus: Another cicada song send by a reader:
CICADA by Liam Titcomb (YouTube link):
And more:
Seventeen Years (a cicada love song) – Lloyd H. Miller (YouTube Link):
Baby Bug by Samm Bennett:
“Seventeen Years” by Jen Schaffer and the Shiners:
I Ate A Cicada Today:
Periodic Cicadas by Dr. Chordate:
No video for this song, but Dr Chordate wrote a song called Periodic Cicadas.
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The 17-Year Locust Tour by The Agency
I buy things just because they’re cicada related.
Here is my latest purchase:
This week I bought The 17-Year Locust Tour by the band The Agency. It was recorded in Leetown, West Virginia, and copyrighted in 1993. Periodical cicadas are known as “17-Year Locusts” in the U.S., which is where this band got the name for the album. My guess is the album title was inspired by the Brood XIV emergence of 1991.
I haven’t yet listened to the album from start to finish but it falls into the hard rock genre.
The artwork is very nice and was done by bassist and singer Paul Sager using Corel Draw. I used Corel Draw to create the first Cicada Mania logo.
Australian singer/songwriter Laura Imbruglia sent us this photo of her cicada tattoo. Of course, we love it! And we love her music too.
It isn’t often that cicada celebrities show up on your Mother’s lawn, but when you have a healthy supply of easily catchable singing M. septendecim, and a cicada website, these things happen.
Last Saturday I met up with cicada researcher John Cooley, Japanese cicada researcher Jim Yoshimura, and musician and professor David Rothenberg at Roosevelt Park in Edison NJ. They were looking for male cicadas to perform with David at a World Science Festival event in the Bronx later that night. New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell was also there to interview David and John, and artist Asher Jay was there to lend David support.
The cicadas in the park weren’t performing well enough, so I directed them to my Mom’s place in Metuchen.
The Metuchen location yielded many screaming cicadas. David collaborated with the cicadas on the spot with his Ani-Moog iPad app, and a clarinet. John Cooley dropped some cicada science for Stephen Farrell’s video camera as well. My Mom served refreshments. Once enough cicadas were collected, the cicada celebrities departed — before leaving David left my Mom an autographed book and CD. Very cool!
A beautiful day for enjoying the song of cicadas in the suburbs of New Jersey.
More from David Rothenberg:
David Rothenberg plays Animoog on iPad live with cicadas:
More about David Rothenberg:
Man composes music with cicadas (news story with a video).
Cicada Mania: A 17-Year Benchmark on PBS (BTW, nice name for a TV PBS):
More from John Cooley:
Here’s a photo of David Rothenberg’s book Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise. It is available on Amazon.com.
Update: Here is the show that featured the finished cicada songs: http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/51182
Are you a musician? Would you go out in the field ( or your yard ) and jam with some cicadas? WFMU DJ Kurt Gottschalk wants you to send him your duets with cicadas!
Visit Send Me Your Insect Duets! WFMU 17-Year Itch Special Forthcoming! to learn more about Kurt’s appeal to musicians.
I want to hear you sing with the cicadas! They’re out in DC and starting to emerge in Jersey. From what I’ve been able to discern there’s little agreement about where they’ll be in NYC.
My friends form the band Blithe Doll are already planning on contributing their cicada collaboration.
Speaking of musicians who have jammed with cicadas, here is David Rothenberg jamming with some 17 year cicadas:
David also has a new album called Bug Music featuring his collaborations with insects!
Last night at the Judson Church in NYC I opened David’s “Richard Robinson: Song of the Cicada (World Premiere), Insect Music, based on the calls, chirps and clicks of various insects” event with a presentation about the 17 Year cicadas. David’s film and music were extraordinary. Here is a review of the event.
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Cicada Rapp
Check out the CicadaCicadaCiada rapp by Soul-gers on the Mic (MySpace Music). You’ll notice that they use real cicada sounds in place of instruments in the song — pretty cool!
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Cicada News 5/22/2004
Photos from the New Jersey epicenter: cicadas invade
Princeton university from Julie Angarone.
From what I see and hear you will find cicadas galore down Prospect Street and at 171 Broadmead. The upper old campus (Nassau Hall etc) is slowly being inundated, and they are running rampant down near New South and the dorms near the dinky.
MP3 Music: Brood X (Magicicada septendecim) by George Fox.
Seventeen years was such a long time
Now we’re coming out and going up to the sky