Songs of the Humpback Whale

By Anonymous -
     In A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman discusses each of the senses in great detail. In the section on hearing she describes the ocean as looking "mute, but is alive with sounds from animals, breaking waves, tidal scouring, ship traffic, and nomadic storms, locked within the atmosphere of water as our sounds are within the atmosphere of air" (198). One sound that she illustrates is the song of the humpback whale, specifically mentioning Roger Payne (a whale and environmental activist) and Alan Hovhaness (a composer) who incorporated whale songs into music to create a connection between humans and the whale.
    Alan Hovhaness composed "And God Created Great Whales", a composition that both incorporates and mimics the mating song of the whale. Hovhaness not only uses the strings, horns, and drums to imitate the piecing squeaks, elongated humming, and low raking-rumbling of the whale song, but also uses the instruments to express the majesty and grandeur of the creature that is the Humpback whale as it glides its way through the vast ocean.
    Roger Payne sought out to record the songs of the Humpback in and effort to expose the beauty of the whale to public. He wanted to create an awareness and a connection between humans and the Humpback in order to stop the whaling that was significantly depleting the whale population. He goes into detail about how the whale's song is so similar to our type of song, and if sped up sounds like a bird song.
   I found the discussion on whale songs fascinating. As a singer I have a strong connection to music and song. Though I would not normally listen to music like Hovhaness composition, it was very interesting to analyze it as a musical interpretation of a creature by incorporating the natural music of the creature itself. I am also very interested in the mechanics behind the whale singing under water.  Seeing as how human sing by pushing air through out vocal chords to create the vibration, I am curious as to how whales create that vibration.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The most primitive sense

By -
Image
Smell the Flowers by Kirsten Star Smell, to me, is the most primitive sense. When most mammals are born, they immediately can recognize their mother’s smell and form an attachment to that smell. Mammals like puppies are almost entirely limited to only the sense of smell until they develop more of their other senses. The sense of smell also becomes the most primitive when considering humans and the phenomenon of perfume. For years, humans hunted certain animals for the purpose of obtaining the musk produced in the anal gland. This musk in small doses can act as an aphrodisiac when put into a perfume even though it has incredibly primitive origins. Though most of Western culture has an aversion to smells considered gross or undesirable, the wealthiest of women are still willing to pay heavy prices to spray a smell once obtained from the anal glands of other animals. The sense of smell is not something that humans can control and adjust but rather it is only changed by evolution over
Read more

Cannibalism and Symbolism

By -
Symbolism plays an important role in religious ceremonies because people cannot have the divine being where they want him all the time. So they start creating ways to be in touch with God. Such as in Christianity, eating bread is symbolized to be eating God-made flesh. There are similar rituals in Judaism where they eat the food of God. A big difference between taste and the other senses is that the object that is being sensed is internalized, whereas all the other senses use an external sensation. Taste cannot extend anywhere like the other senses can. This allows the humans to have no barrier between the divine (symbolized as food) and themselves. This is the closest they can get to God, but internalizing Him.  This thought of getting the closest they can to someone by ingesting and gaining power from it led my mind to wander to the thought of serial killers that also happen to be cannibals. I know that it might be a stretch, but there are some similarities. I als
Read more

Wrap-Up Post

By -
Image
Alright, let’s tie this up in a nice little bow. I genuinely did not know what to expect coming into this class. The extent of my knowledge of the senses comes from elementary school when we had to make it a little song to get the information through our tiny heads. Beyond that, everything seemed pretty cut and dry. We have five senses. We need to use all of them to survive. It’s as simple as that. I did not know how there was enough to talk about the senses to fill an entire college course, especially one specifically regarding the relationship between the senses and religion. But the fact that we were barely able to fit all the content in before the semester ended proves just how wrong I was. Let’s talk about why that is and what some of the things I learned were. First off, even the most basic assumption about the senses, that there are five of them, was questioned immediately. The sixth sense may not have been as clearly defined as the other senses, but there was certainly a lot to
Read more