I’m spending a good chunk of time with my family, before I move the 500 miles to Memphis. Staying at my parents’ house means a slightly different radio market than I get at my apartment. Which means that some of the NPR time between “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” is filled with things which are not classical music.
This morning, for instance, I took the opportunity to listen to “The Diane Rehm Show,” which has been, in my experience, a fairly insightful call-in show about current events. Today’s first hour was no different. Then there was the second hour.
What it sounded like to me was that the guest, David Rothenberg, just liked to mess around with whales. Their noises sound like clarinets, so the dude played clarinet for the whales to see what they would do. It’s like barking at your dog. It’s entertaining.
But what the callers thought was happening was something more like this:
They seemed to think that the guy was legitimately communicating with the whales. One woman even called in in tears and expressed her opinion that a worldwide radio station broadcasting nothing but whalesong would unite the world in prayer and peace.
I believe “Hearts of Space” has been trying that for years, without success.
Oh, and I tried to find a version of that picture with a rainbow, also without success.
But what this really reminds me of is Jim Nollman, who has a record out on Smithsonian Folkways. Short of Timothy Leary’s acid trip walkthrough, “The Psychedelic Experience” – also on Folkways – this might easily be the weirdest recording I own.
Nollman plays music with animals, and believes that any noise made means direct and personal connection. It’s AMAZING, if by “amazing” you mean “it’s completely ridiculous and this guy is completely off his rocker. If you pick up the Nollman record or anything off it, I highly recommend his version of “Froggy Went A-Courting.” The guest artist? Four hundred Turkeys.
Image credits: “Whale – unfinished” and “Whale” by Treebarkses on Flickr.
UPDATE: Treebarkses would like us to note his name as “Mac.” So, uh, thanks to Mac for the use of the pictures.
2 Comments
Oh, I remember David Rothenberg. His last book was about bird calls, and not just any tweets and chirps, but bird calls set to music. We interviewed him on the local NPR show I used to produce and the listeners went *bonkers*. I got calls 3 years later asking, “Sometime during Bush’s first term, you aired an interview with a guy who made music out of birds. My cat needs it now. Can you find it?” My “calm professional” voice got a lot of use b/c of this Rothenberg guy.
That’s pretty much the greatest respsonse I could have hoped for. You just made my day (and at a very early point). Rothenberg seemd to know the response he was going to get but still seemed completely bemused by it.
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