The Musical Talents of Animals
— -- As the sun rises, birds sing to greet the day. On warm summer nights, crickets call out to each other, creating a lush symphony. Even seemingly silent creatures, such as elephants and whales, display vocal prowess.
Nature and music have always been linked, but never officially in academic studies. Proponents of a new field they call “biomusic” soon hope to change that.
Coming To A School Near YouWhile researchers have studied animal sounds for many years, biomusic is a concept born just in the last couple of decades. “The purpose of biomusic is to examine linkages between music and a variety of sciences,” says Patricia Gray, artistic director of National Musical Arts and one of the founders of the biomusic, “and to use this nexus as a means for developing new linkages and deeper understandings of life.”
As Gray points out, compelling links exist between music and a number of traditional sciences. Anthropologists, for example, have discovered that for thousands of years, the Amahuaca Indians of the Amazon rain forests have relied on nuances in the whistles of the tinamous bird and other avian tunes. One song could point to the location of food; another might warn of the slithering approach of a poisonous snake.
Last month, Gray helped organize a biomusic symposium at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. The symposium, one the meeting’s most popular, included song styling in elephants, a demonstration of whale songs, love calls of insects and birdcall-inspired prehistoric flutes.
Gray and her colleagues now hope to develop educational tools such as books and CD-ROMs to move biomusic into schools. Some universities offer related bioacoustics courses in their animal behavior departments, but Gray hopes to draw younger students to biomusic, too.
People Aren’t The Only Musicmakers
Cynics may argue animal sounds are just sounds, sometimes pretty, but not music, a term that implies creativity and deliberate composition.
