The Book of Music and Nature: An Anthology of Sounds, Words, Thoughts

Where the Sounds Live

Where the Sounds Live i I worked with the Nez Perce in Idaho and central Washington in the late sixties and early seventies, recording oral histories, music, and natural ambient sound. Many of the Elders, wishing to have their traditions preserved, generously permitted us to record their stories. These exchanges of family histories played an important role, establishing a mutual trust over a period of many months. One member we interviewed, tribal Elder Angus Wilson, suddenly became very pensive and quiet one afternoon when I told him, among other personal revelations, that I was a musician. “You white folks know nothing about music,” he said, half-serious, half-teasing with a confrontation unusual in his culture. “But I’ll teach you something about it if you want.” Early the next morning, we drove from Lewiston to Lake Wallowa, one of the many campsites in northeastern Oregon where Chief Joseph had lived and where the Nez Perce had lived and hunted for many centuries. Wilson led my colleague and me to the bank of a small stream, the east fork of the Wallowa River, and motioned for us to sit quietly on the ground. In the chilly October mountain air, we sat huddled in fetal positions, arms wrapped tightly to our sides, trying to keep ourselves warm for the better part of an hour. Every now and then, we glanced in the direction of Angus, who sat stoically and motionless about fifty feet upstream. For a long while, except for the calls of a few jays and ravens, we heard nothing. After what seemed like a long time, a slight breeze came from up the valley and began to stir the branches of the aspen and fir trees. Suddenly, the whole forest burst into a cathedral of sound! Like a huge pipe organ with all the stops out, a giant cacophonous chord echoed from everywhere throughout the valley. Angus, seeing the startled looks on our faces, walked slowly in our direction and said, “Do you know yet what makes the sound?” “No,” I said, shivering and irritated. “I haven’t the slightest idea.” Without another word, he walked over to the bank of the stream and, kneeling low to the water’s edge, pointed to the reeds that had been broken diVerent lengths by wind and ice. Slipping a hunting knife from the leather [ 215 ] bernie krause ⢇ sheath hanging at his belt, Angus cut one of the reeds at the waterline, whittled some holes, and, without tuning the instrument, brought the transformed reed to his lips and played a melody. After a long while, he stopped and said quietly, “This is how we learned our music.” ii Essentially, the relationship of humans with the natural world and its wonders has a history of being adversarial and isolated. This is especially evident when we try to replicate aspects of the wild natural in our natural history museums and aquaria. In many of these spaces, animals are lumped together in contained areas: African species mixed with Asian, estuary with open ocean. The audio media used to reproduce this material is not much better. Frequently set up in reverberant or noisy outdoor spaces and competing with other events, the sound is often boring and hard to hear. Video material is also of poor quality . And many museums, zoos, and aquaria are still using antiquated push-abutton , hear-a-sound (or see-an-event) systems. For me as a visitor, nothing much is gained from these encounters, as they are so far from useful experience . As part of my own work, I have gone to lengths to address these problems through the development of new technologies that play back sound as it would be heard in a natural state. When these systems are used to play back excellent field recordings, the visitor is able to experience a bit of the wild. In doing so, we’ve begun to address the art of re-creating natural environments more realistically. Other forms of sound art, however, still lag behind. For instance, what has happened to Western musical expression and our socalled connection to the natural? Our art forms have become so detached from our direct experience with the wild that, while aspects of music attempt to emulate or express nature, none I’ve heard sounds particularly convincing. Some composers may take the melodious voice of a thrush or warbler and be inspired to write a symphony as a result. However, the articulation of the bird through the...