FEATURE: Guest Book Review |
 The Great Animal Orchestra
By: Bernie Krause
Reviewed by: Mike Cumberland
The Great Animal Orchestra is available in the following formats: hardcover, 278 pages, $17.81 (amazon.com); Audiobook (from audible.com, narrated by Krause), 9 hours and 24 minutes, $21.95; Kindle (enhanced), $14.99; Enhanced iBook (for iPads and iPods), $14.99; and Nook (enhanced) $15.99. This review is limited to the hardcover and audiobook.
As a reviewer, I am biased in two ways: first, I have known Dr. Krause for about a decade and have always enjoyed his perspectives; furthermore, I have also read Krause’s Wild Soundscapes and Into a Wild Sanctuary, as well as listened to a dozen of his CD recordings.
This admission will enable the neophyte and knowledgable to be selective how they would approach this volume and/or audio-recording.
The Great Animal Orchestra will change the way you listen. Krause awakens the spirit of the reader from the ennui of the everyday to the acoustic susurrations that surround us each day. As he notes, as a species, we now tend to block out our surrounding sounds with our own digital technology, but we also do this as a limbic brain protective / survival mechanism.
In The Great Animal Orchestra Krause skillfully relates the progression of his early personal experiences to his life’s journey as a performer with the Weavers folk group (replacing Pete Seger), to the introduction of the synthesizer, pop music and film with his late music partner Paul Beaver, and their many albums and films they did together beginning in 1967 and ending after Beaver’s death and Krause’s contributions to Apocalypse Now.
Krause continues with his true vocation as a naturalist in pioneering spectrographic soundscape recording techniques and amassing a collection of soundscapes recordings worthy for all generations to come. This book brings his salient technical journal and professional writings into a consummate assemblage of easily understood ideas.
Dr. Krause asks, “How and where did man develop his capacity for oral communication?” His thesis, that geologic and animal sounds are what helped create man’s aural and oral vocabulary, is adroitly handled. His explanation of terms such as: spectrograms, geophonies, biophonies, and anthrophonies are easy to grasp through his use of diagrams and suitably accompany his ideas. This volume is more succinct than previous works.
Krause eschews complicated nomenclature, thus allowing any reader to comprehend his subject-matter. This may be why the book made it to the New York Times Book Review best seller list this past April 15, 2012. (Denk, pages 9 - 10)
One particular éclat phrase is particularly poignant, “…While a picture is worth a thousand words, a natural soundscape is worth a thousand pictures.” (Krause, p. 71) This particular phrase alludes to the multidimensionality of life that Krause has captured in his extensive research studies. He not only clearly explains the three-dimensionality of vision, but goes on to concisely explain the fourth dimensionality of the inclusion of space and time through his spectrographs.
For the advanced researcher Krause begins to allude to general relativity and quantum mechanics. The allusion begs further inquiry into the field of acoustics and sound.
If you want a general introduction the book itself is well explained. If you have Wild Soundscapes I wouldn’t bother with audio versions. If you have never compared Krause’s spectrograms with his audio recordings the audio would be beneficial, as a researcher, to make this connection. If you’re a commuter to a city the Audiobook/Kindle/iBook/Nook would be an excellent way to understand the book as the Audiobook and enhanced formats do have many background soundscapes which make it quite enjoyable.
I ordered the hardback and Audiobook formats. I am glad I did this to help readers of this review. Simple book reviews are no longer the norm. The most intriguing parts of the Audiobook were the recordings of: the spectrogram comparisons, native groups, and particularly the mourning beaver cry (Krause, Audio, 4:19:44 -- 4:22:00).
Having worked with R. Murray Schafer for over thirty years I can say The Great Animal Orchestra provides clear and concise insights into soundscapes. This is a book the beginning naturalist, the advanced soundscape artist, an educator, a Holocene sixth extinctionist, and researcher could benefit from reading. The book evokes more questions to be answered for future generations than it answers questions. It demands a response from the reader to act.
Lastly, what relevance does The Great Animal Orchestra have for today? I need look no further than while I was in my early twenties when I was tree-planting massive clear-cuts in British Columbia. The colloquial forest management saying of those days was, “Log it, burn it, pave it!” For four years I was in the areas of Terrace, Smithers, Hazleton, and Kitimat -- I reverently pause -- thinking of the existing fight to save this pristine land of paramount native cultural importance and ecological significance. The current debacle with the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines Project which will permanently change this area comes to mind immediately.
What will happen to this ecological niche and thousands like it which are constantly under threat in the name of progress? It is time for us to wake up from our soporific stupor of uncaring, greed-based, urban-life, and hear the thousands of voices. If you listen -- they are there.
Bibliography
1. Denk, Jeremy. “Earth Music.” The New York Times (April 15, 2012): section 2:1 pages 9-10.
2. Krause, Bernie. The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the world’s Wild Places, New York Boston London: Little Brown and Company Hachette Book Group, First Edition: March 2012
3. Krause, Bernie; The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the world’s Wild Places, narrated by Bernie Krause, Hachette Audio (Audiobook, 9 hours and 24 minutes), March 19, 2012
Thanks to:
Melanie Storoschuk, Director of Publicity for Little, Brown & Company, Hachette Book Group Canada for the use of the book cover image.
About the reviewer: Mike Cumberland completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto and earned his Master of Music degree from the University of British Columbia. He continued his studies at McGill University in Montreal and is currently working on his Ph.D. at York University Toronto. He has studied and collaborated with composer R. Murray Schafer. Known as a master of the alphorn, Cumberland has performed numerous solo and chamber recitals in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. He has premiered works by R. Murray Schafer, Bengt Hambraeus, Lothar Kliene and Ronald Royer.
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