In Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates tell how the cicadas were originally men who were touched by the muses so that they devoted their lives to singing and, forgetting to eat, died to be reborn as insects. In Taoism, cicadas became associated with hsien, the soul, and images of cicadas are employed when preparing a corpse for burial, to assist the soul in disengaging itself from the body after death. The importance of the cicada in the soundscape of the South, as well as the symbolism it has provoked, has been overlooked since the comparatively recent northern drift of European and American civilization.

Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic E…, loc. 124