FEATURE:
The Beauty of the Dawn Chorus
IMAGE CREDIT: @bostonpubliclibrary/Unsplash
How Birdsong Can Be Transformative – and Why More Modern Artists Need to Use It in Their Work
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NOT to lean on The Guardian too much…
IN THIS PHOTO: Musician Cosmo Sheldrake/PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Flude/The Guardian
but I was inspired by an article they published where they met musician Cosmo Sheldrake - he is on a mission to highlight the loss of U.K. birdlife with an album of avian song. It got me thinking about popular songs that incorporate some form of birdsong and how impactful it is. It seems idyllic recording birds and their unique sounds for an album:
“His studio-cum-field-station is a metre from a bird feeder. Inside the studio is a bed, an armchair and a scruffy collection of boxes. He puts the sound recordings into his computer and slows down individual calls. It’s like intercepting morse code, revealing delicate cadences you don’t hear when the songs are rattled out at speed. The blackbird is a guttural, gritty character, while the robin’s voice has bell-like purity.
“Birds live on a different time axis,” says 30-year-old Sheldrake. “There’s a spectrum of relationships with time – we look at birds and think they’re very ‘other’, but when you slow their song down, you get an idea of the tapestry of what they’re saying and they sound strangely human. These are very subtle, integrated phrases that we miss when they’re singing at their normal speed.”
And so these little characters and conversations have been pieced together in an album that follows the natural acoustics of the day; it starts with a nightjar, which sings just after dusk and through the night, then goes to a nightingale, and then the dawn chorus, before working its way through the day. A chord can be composed of five or six different aspects of a song played simultaneously. Tracks are based on sounds that already exist and have their own identity and character. “It’s a collaboration,” says Sheldrake, “except without explicit consent from the birds.”
Part of his aim is to highlight how we may not be conscious of the loss of wildlife from our lives. Many of the birds featured on his album, such as marsh warbler, mistle thrush and dunnock, are no longer a ubiquitous part of our soundscapes. The star performers from today’s chorus – blackbirds and robins – didn’t make it on to Sheldrake’s album because they are not (yet) on the red or amber list of endangered British birds”.
It is clear that nature is good for our health, and birdsong can be transformative for our mental and physical wellbeing. Maybe there are more songs that I realise, but I can only think of a few tracks that feature the calls and conversation of birds. I am including one from The Beatles and another from Kate Bush - both are examples of where you get this very moving and immersive sound that heightens the music around it. At a time when we can go outside but not get too close to one another, it seems that nature and the outdoors is a better option. Not only is there the visual delights of the changing season, but there is also the audible benefits. I think the hum of nature in general is great, but there is something about birdsong that is both relaxing and informative. I am not suggesting that everyone in music starts putting the sounds of birds in their songs, but it does seem to be an untapped area that Cosmo Sheldrakei has highlighted. I do feel that, like instruments, birdsong adds so much texture and language to a song…so I feel that artists are leaving a nutritious source of inspiration cold. There have been Classic pieces inspired by birdsong (and pieces that use birdsong), but I wonder whether there will be any popular tracks or non-Classic cuts that have nature and birdsong either at the forefront or at the background. Maybe some associate that kind of sound with Ambient music or they feel that birdsong is too distracting and it would be hard to combine it with other instruments or feed it into a conventional song. Not only could artists help highlight the danger many bird species face, but there are such calming properties to the sound of birds. From the few songs where one can appreciate birds in unison or solo, the effect is…
UTTERLY sublime.