The sounds produced by cicadas and other humming, clicking, or thrumming insects may be the basis for human rhythm, synchronization, and dance.
Fruitful areas of study include the acoustics of insect sounds, the imitation of insects and theme of insects in music, jazz performance with insects, and the interconnectedness of species.
This according to Bug music: How insects gave us rhythm and noise by David Rothenberg (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013). Below, Graeme Revell is a composer who likes bugs.
BONUS: Professor Rothenberg puts his clarinet where his mouth is.
Snowball, a male sulphur-crested cockatoo, was brought to the rescue shelter Bird Lovers Only in 2007; his caregiver had gone off to college, and the family was having trouble managing him.
The family gave a CD to Irena Schulz, the shelter’s director, and told her to play it and watch Snowball. She was amazed to see the cockatoo dance to the music, accurately keeping time with his head, shoulders, legs, and claws!
A video that Schulz made of Snowball ended up on YouTube, where it went viral; he went on to appear in several television shows and ads.
The video was brought to the attention of Annirudh D. Patel and John R. Iversen, two researchers interested in connections between animal behavior and music; they were astonished, and Schulz allowed them to conduct experiments to verify that Snowball was actually listening to the music and responding with physical rhythmic mimicry. Their vindicating study, “Experimental evidence for synchronization to a musical beat in a nonhuman animal” (Current biology XIX/10 [26 May 2009] pp. 827–830) carries a byline for Schulz along with Patel, Iversen, and Micah R. Bregman.
Below, a brief video about Schulz and Snowball, followed by more videos of Snowball in action.
At any one time all the whales in a population sing the same song, which differs significantly from songs of other populations. The song of each population evolves continuously, progressively, and so rapidly that nonreversing changes can be measured month to month in a singing season.
Such changes, which affect the songs at all levels, seem to arise through improvisation and imitation rather than through accident or as conveyors of information. The greatest amount of change appears when singing is most pervasive and the effort of each singer is most intense.
Rhymelike structures occur in songs that contain much thematic material, perhaps serving as a mnemonic device in the context of a rapidly changing oral culture. Sexual selection may be the driving evolutionary force behind song changing.
This according to “The progressively changing songs of humpback whales: A window on the creative process in a wild animal” by Katharine Payne, an essay included in The origins of music (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000). Below, underwater recordings of humpback whale songs.
Thailand’s National Elephant Institute is the first government-sponsored organization dedicated to the long-term future of the domesticated elephant; but it also requires funds from tourism for its upkeep.
To establish an orchestra that could raise financial support from tourists, instruments were designed that could be operable with elephants’ trunks, and that were large and strong enough to stand up to very powerful animals and monsoons. The Thai Elephant Orchestra was soon a reality.
To teach them, a mahout demonstrates an instrument and the elephant begins to play almost immediately. The animals learn through experimentation how to make their instruments sound the best.
Once the group is assembled, the mahouts cue the elephants to begin and stop playing. They now perform daily concerts, and often refuse to stop when they are told to do so.
This according to “Eine kleine naughtmusik: How nefarious nonartists cleverly imitate music” by David Soldier (Leonardo music journal XII [2002] pp. 53–58). Above and below, the orchestra in action.
During the first half of the 20th century a mania for yodeling seized America, catapulting its greatest practitioners to national celebrity. Though yodelers once numbered among America’s best-known vocalists, their names have faded from public memory with the exception of Jimmie Rodgers and a few movie cowboys.
While the Arkansas native Elton Britt was billed as “The World’s Highest Yodeler”—his stardom was such that he performed at the White House for Franklin Roosevelt, and then ran for president himself in 1960—neither he nor any other vocalist of the period approached the range of sounds coaxed from the human voice by two girls from a farm just outside Royalton, Minnesota.
Among the first female country singers to appear on stage without husbands or fathers, The DeZurik Sisters (Mary Jane and Caroline, with Lorraine later replacing Mary Jane) always appeared as a duet, amazing audiences with their rapid, high-pitched yodels that often spiraled into animal sounds. In fact, so convincing were their chicken yodels that the act was renamed The Cackle Sisters when they joined the Ralston Purina Company’s Checkerboard time radio program as regulars from 1937 to 1941.
This according to “The DeZurik Sisters: Two farm girls who yodeled their way to the Grand Ole Opry” by John Biguenet (Oxford American, summer 2005; reprinted in Da Capo best music writing 2006, pp. 92–99) Below, a rare video of Caroline and Lorraine.
In an experiment, researchers performed heart transplants on mice and studied the subsequent effects of music on their alloimmune responses.
The researchers exposed different groups of the recuperating mice to three types of recorded music—a collection of works by Mozart, the album The best of Enya, and Verdi’s La traviata—and a single sound frequency as a control. After seven days their results indicated that the mice who listened to La traviata had developed superior alloimmune responses.
This according to “Auditory stimulation of opera music induced prolongation of murine cardiac allograft survival and maintained generation of regulatory CD4+CD25+ cells” by Masateru Uchiyama, et al. (Journal of cardiothoracic surgery VII/26 [2010]). Many thanks to the Improbable Research Blog for sharing this study with us!
Below, we invite you to improve your own alloimmune responses to La traviata while contemplating animated party food.
Zoomusicology is an area of intellectual endeavor that developed outside of music studies, among scholars interested in animal behavior.
Although this field is almost 30 years old, people operating in ethnomusicology, who are potentially the better equipped to understand the goals and challenges of zoomusicology, are often not aware of how compatible the two fields are.
Zoomusicology and ethnomusicology have much to gain from each other. Moreover, if ethnomusicology indeed has the ambition to be a field that brings together musical knowledge in a worldwide perspective, then one would have to maintain that zoomusicology should be seen as part of ethnomusicology.
This according to “Zoomusicology and ethnomusicology: A marriage to celebrate in heaven” by Marcello Sorce Keller (Yearbook for traditional music XLIV [2012] 166–83). Above and below, lupine group vocalizations.
Archivists at the American Institute for Verdi Studies discovered a document that sheds new light on Verdi’s activity just prior to the composition of his final opera, Falstaff.
A letter from the publisher Giulio Ricordi dated 22 August 1890 congratulates Verdi on the successful launching of a new business devoted to the sale of pork prepared at the composer’s Sant’Agata farm.
Ricordi, having purchased a “G.V. brand” pork shoulder, reports that he found the bill “a bit salty”, but for such exquisite meat he would pay “neither a lira more nor a lira less”.
This according to “New Verdi document discovered” by Martin Chusid (Verdi newsletter XX [1992] p. 23). (The information in this article, delicious as it is, appears to be outdated; see the comment below.)
Today is Verdi’s 200th birthday! Below, in Falstaff’s finale, the opera’s characters prepare to dine together—no doubt anticipating the composer’s own homegrown prosciutto.
Two experiments explored the effects of specific sound stimuli on laying hens.
The first measured heterophil to lymphocyte ratio and tonic immobility duration in 216 36-week-old hens exposed to specific noise stimuli of 65 dB (background chicken vocalizations and fans, control) or 90 dB (background noises plus truck, train, and aircraft noises) for 60 minutes. The measurements showed that the hens exposed to 90 dB noise were more stressed and fearful than control hens.
The second experiment measured heterophil to lymphocyte ratio and tonic immobility duration in 108 36-week-old hens exposed to background noises (65 dB) or to classical music plus background noises (75 dB) between 9.00 and 14.00 for three days. The measurements showed that the hens exposed to classical music were more fearful than control hens.
Overall, the results indicate that loud noise causes stress and fear in laying hens, and classical music influences their fearfulness.
The only clear difference between human dance and primate dancelike behavior is that the former is culturally patterned; otherwise, attributes only vary in terms of their complexity.
Dance, therefore, is not a human invention—it is a human variation on a primate theme.
This according to “The origins of dance: The perspective of primate evolution” by Sandra T. Francis (Dance chronicle XIV/2–3 [1991] pp. 203–220). Above, a lemur trips the light fantastic; below, the story behind a popular YouTube video.
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Seven strings/Сім струн (dedicated to Uncle Michael)* For thee, O Ukraine, O our mother unfortunate, bound, The first string I touch is for thee. The string will vibrate with a quiet yet deep solemn sound, The song from my heart … Continue reading →
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For it [the Walkman] permits the possibility…of imposing your soundscape on the surrounding aural environment and thereby domesticating the external world: for a moment, it can all be brought under the STOP/START, FAST FOWARD, PAUSE and REWIND buttons. –Iain Chambers, “The … Continue reading →
