STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And I’m Steve Inskeep with sounds from “The Great Animal Orchestra”.
(SOUND EXTRACTION FROM “THE GREAT ORCHESTRA OF ANIMALS” BY BERNIE KRAUSE)
INSKEEP: Hm, it could go on for a while. They are soundscapes of nature, from the flute sounds of birds to the harmonies of arctic wolves. “The Great Animal Orchestra” is an audio art exhibit that has traveled the world and is now at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., where NPR’s Neda Ulaby visited.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Your imagination does the work at “The Great Animal Orchestra.” You sit in a dark room surrounded by strangers and listen.
(SOUND EXTRACTION FROM “THE GREAT ORCHESTRA OF ANIMALS” BY BERNIE KRAUSE)
ULABY: You don’t watch animal movies; you tune into the harmony of soundscapes, from the tundra to the tropics. In this Amazon habitat, all you see are artistic renderings of sound meters projected onto the walls and the names of the creatures you hear – tree frogs, blue-headed parrots, crested owls and jaguars.
(SOUND EXTRACTION FROM “THE GREAT ORCHESTRA OF ANIMALS” BY BERNIE KRAUSE)
ULABY: Creator Bernie Krause says all human music was first inspired by wild choruses like these. He himself has a pretty wild musical background. It started shortly after he graduated from college in 1960 and joined the flagship folk music group The Weavers.
(SOUND EXTRACTION OF THE SONG, “GUANTANAMERA”)
THE WEAVERS: (Singing) Yo soy un hombre sincero.
ULABY: Krause took over Pete Seeger’s place in 1963. But then he moved to the West Coast and fell in love with electronic music. He teamed up with a keyboard player named Paul Beaver, and the two introduced the Moog synthesizer to recordings by The Doors, The Byrds, George Harrison, and The Monkees.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “STAR COLLECTOR”)
MONKEYS: (Vocalizing).
ULABY: What you’re hearing is early electronica, which Beaver and Krause also added to some of the defining film soundtracks of the time…
(SOUNDTRACK FROM THE MOVIE, “APOCALYPSE NOW”)
ROBERT DUVALL: (As Bill Kilgore) Romeo Foxtrot, shall we dance?
ULABY: …Like “Apocalypse Now”. Krause did much of the sound in one of the film’s most memorable sequences.
(SOUNDTRACK FROM THE MOVIE, “APOCALYPSE NOW”)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, laughs).
(MUSIC SOUND EXTRACTION)
ULABY: But while working in Hollywood, Bernie Krause was also experimenting with sound recording on location. He made an album called “In A Wild Sanctuary”, now considered a pioneering piece of ambient music. When Krause shines his microphone on forests, fields and birds, he feels affirmed, awake, spiritually at peace. Nothing about his childhood in the 1950s, he says, prepared him to enter the natural world.
BERNIE KRAUSE: I was terrified of animals. I grew up in a Midwestern home that didn’t allow dogs or cats or – a goldfish was dangerous.
(MUSIC SOUND EXTRACTION)
ULABY: So when he started recording whale music in the 1970s, it changed Krause profoundly. He started traveling the world, collecting thousands of hours of what he calls biophonies (ph) in, for example, a game reserve in Zimbabwe.
JANE WINCHELL: It’s really cool because you’re going to hear baboons barking against a granite wall that creates an echo.
(SOUND EXTRACTION FROM “THE GREAT ORCHESTRA OF ANIMALS” BY BERNIE KRAUSE)
ULABY: Jane Winchell is curator here at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. Her passion is to explore how museums can respond to the environmental crisis. She first saw “The Great Animal Orchestra” in Paris at a contemporary art museum where the public sat for hours. Sometimes, she said, they even cried.
WINCHELL: This feeling – it’s just this miraculous composition. It’s really like a piece of music with different movements.
KRAUSE: These sounds are part of our DNA.
ULABY: Bernie Krause calls these natural soundscapes yoga for the ears. Listening to animals, he says, connects us to what is ancient and vital in being human.
KRAUSE: What we hear resonates with that atavistic time in our life when our ancestors heard those sounds. But let me tell you; the further we move away from this source of our lives, the more pathological we become as a culture. You don’t believe that? Watch the news.
ULABY: Or listen to him, he says, like now. We’ve never been so connected to sound – in our cars, our headphones, our phones.
KRAUSE: And disconnected at the same time. Basically, we just have to learn to shut up.
ULABY: So if you can’t go to Salem, Mass., and experience “The Great Animal Orchestra” yourself, let’s do something now. Take off your helmet. Turn off your radio or streaming device. Go outside. I’m doing it right now.
(DOOR OPENING SOUND)
ULABY: Listen.
(BIRD CHURCHING SOUND EXTRACTION)
ULABY: Even despite the cars, I can hear it – the big animal orchestra.
Neda Ulaby NPR, News.
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