Cabaret Voltaire was a dada artistic establishment in Switzerland which existed during and just after the first world war, (the name was later taken by a band in the 70s, and you have to admit it’s a pretty good steal.)  The cabaret featured music, art performances, poetry readings, and general bizarreness.  Well, I guess you can tell that I’ve just read Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, by Greil Marcus and I highly recommend it.  At length Marcus discusses the already well established connection between early 20th century dada philosophy and 1970s punk music and sentiment.   While reading his work I became curious about the music that the dadaists produced themselves.  Theirs was a mixture of noise music, featuring rare and invented instruments, with elements of European folk music, and almost beat-style poetry.  This might be old news for some, but I hadn’t heard this music before, so for anyone else interested in the sonic chaos of early dada music here are some modern recordings of Hugo Ball’s musical and poetic vision.       

Interesting, but for the time being, I’ll stick with punk.