Search - Various Artists :: New Songs of the Humpback Whale

IC B. (icberry)
Reviewed on 10/1/2017...

From Important Records:

"People tend to assume humpback whale song just a "whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaooooh" and leave it at that. But if you sit down and listen to a complete humpback performance you will find that the long moan is only one note in a complex composition, with distinct phrases, repetition, structure, organization, shape and form akin to many kinds of human music. This is no random outburst of cries and whispers, but a song with power, verve, identity, and design.

It is a desire to go beyond memory and into the sounds of reality that has led us to release New Songs of the Humpback Whale, which aims to gather the best recent recordings of scientists and whale listeners the globe over to give all of us a chance to assess what has happened to whale song over the past few decades. One can hear gradual changes in humpback song from year to year, with some phrases lengthening, others shortening, others disappearing altogether as new variations appear. The change can be heard month to month, and even week to week within a single season. Today's whale songs should sound quite different from what he fondly remembers from the sixties. But is their musical culture going downhill? Or is it on the rise? Or just changing? Can we humans even tell the difference?

To tell the difference infographic designer Michael Deal has created a new way to visualize humpback whale song, based on sonograms familiar to sound scientist but simplified into colorful glyphs making the structure of this grand underwater music easier to understand than ever before.

Though humpback whale song did not evolve for humans to appreciate, it may be no accident that we do. Upon hearing the great song for the first time, whale scientist Roger Payne said he heard the size of the ocean, "as if I had walked into a dark cave to hear wave after wave of echoes cascading back from the darkness beyond.... That's what whales do, give the ocean its voice."'

For more information, reviews: http://importantrecords.com/imprec/imprec433