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Looper's Delight
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The 20th century French composer Olivier Messaien was also fascinated with birdsong, to the point of collecting, notating, cataloguing and transcribing numerous examples from his own fieldwork, then incorporating these "found" melodies into his own compositions. Another fascinating example of interplay between live musicians and birds can be found on a great recording, on the Swiss VDE-Gallo label, VDE CD-699 "Afghanistan - the Rubab of Herat - Mohammed Rahim Khushnawaz." These were field recordning made by an ethnomusicologist, John Baily, who was studying Afghani traditional music. The performer heard here is a virtuoso of the short-necked Afghani lute, the rubab (also spelled rabab). On several pieces you can clearly hear birds singing. This would not be unusual for "field recordings" -- except that the performer specifically brought some caged canaries along to the recording session! The liner notes explain: "The sounds of music combined with the sounds of birdsong constituted the acme of musical aesthetic enjoyment in Herat [town where the music was recorded]. The Heratis believed that the birds were stimulated to sing by the sound of music, and caged birds were sometimes brought to performances so that their voices could be added to the sound. The better the music, the more the birds were believed to respond, and their song provided a sort of litmus test of how well the music was going." But I'd recommend this recording for its incredible musical content even more than for the birdsong. I've also heard other Afghani recordings where the musicians themselves perform amazing imitations of bird calls during their performance, I suppose for the same effect. >Along these lines (but in the "Classical" bins, on Catalyst along with >Cage!) you might enjoy Einojuhani Rautavaara's "Cantus Arcticus" (1972), a >"Concerto for Birds and Orchestra" where multiple layers of taped wild >birds are played along with live instrumentation as an integral part of >the >piece. Not looping, though... > >Loop Guru, on the other hand, use loops of birds all the time! Jamuud rules! > >Tim > >At 03:52 PM 6/4/99 -0400, you wrote: >> >>---------- >>From: Todd Madson[SMTP:crash@waste.org] >>Sent: Thursday, June 03, 1999 2:30 AM >> >>>I also have noticed that birds can be master loopers. I get up at >>>4:30 in the a.m. to get ready for work and find that some of it would >>>be loopworthy. >> >>Check out "Granchester Meadows" by Roger Waters, from Pink Floyd's 1968 >album "Ummagumma." The backing is a tape loop of a bird singing (species >unknown). >> >>Jim Bailey >> >> >>---------------------------------------------------------- >>Get your FREE personalized e-mail at http://www.canada.com >> >> >