Whale Songs

Photo by Todd Cravens on Unsplash

If you look up the definition of “song,” you will find a variety of descriptions, all based on Eurocentric ways of looking at things. A “short piece of music, usually with words,” or a “short piece of music with a verse and a chorus.” Songs are pretty much about romantic love and loss in our popular culture. Or songs are misidentified. Back when iPods first came out, everything was a “song.” I could not get past the second movement of Mahler #5 being a “song,” and I had to tell my iPod not to shuffle movements of a symphony because that is not How It Was Done.

So, the other day, out on the ocean watching whales, our captain, Heidi, lowered a hydrophone into the water and suddenly we were surrounded by a hundred amplified whale songs. I instantly burst into tears. I don’t know why, something about connection, music (really, music) and these amazing beings.

Yes, the whales are singing right now and the sea is full of their music. And true to humanness, researchers have categorized what they are singing as true songs. There are patterns, repetitions – sections of their songs that can be called verses. How do we even know this?

In the late 60s, Roger Payne, a biologist, released an album called Songs of the Humpback Whale. It turned out to be a call to humanity, the best end result of which is that commercial whaling ended, pretty much globally. The whale music spoke (sang) to collectively to us, creating a bridge where people could empathize, connect, understand.

We only hear part of their songs, because like elephants, they can create infrasonic sound (below about 20Hz, well below our human range of hearing). What we can hear within our hearing range are the melodic patterns characteristic of whale song. We might be able to feel the infrasonic sounds they make. In the water, I feel – something.

Here’s what I wonder: if hearing the songs of these great whale beings can lead to the end of centuries of predation, how else does their music or any other music connect us with one another? Why do we still have to deal with hatred, conflict, “othering” of one another? Music is a bridge-builder, an instant empathetic connection, an intangible link from you to someone else (whether or not that someone else is human).

One of the things I love about being at the music school is hearing the littlest of students, on their way to or from a lesson, singing to themselves. They might be repeating something they’re learning, or sometimes it’s a sing-songy recap of their day. Maybe it doesn’t have verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus, but it is a song, and a song seems to be the deepest expression of our very selves. Kids just do this. When we get older and more musically trained, we read songs off the page and play them just so. I think this is when we forget how to reach down into ourselves and just let the music fly out. I know this is true of me, and I’m learning how to unlearn that. I wonder how the whales do it, sending their complex music for miles and miles to one another. They’re communicating, they’re expressing – and they’re doing it with music and song.

Thank you, Roger Payne

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/science/roger-payne-dead.html