The blowhole section: if whales make jazz, what about the rest of the animal kingdom?

[Judi Lynn]

Scientists are comparing the songs sung by bowhead whales to the music of Thelonious Monk. But from cicada techno to bonobo gabber, they have competition for who’s top of the pops

Lucy Jones

Wed 4 Apr 2018 10.39 EDT

Move over Thelonious, there’s a new jazzer in town. New research from the University of Washington shows that unlike humpback whales, which sing similar songs each season in unison (zzz), bowhead whales have a freeform, improvised repertoire that scientists have compared to jazz. Audio recordings of a population in the Arctic between 2010 and 2014 showed that they sang 184 different tunes, a remarkable diversity of song seen only in a handful of bird species. But let’s leave the bowheads noodling around the High Arctic and explore which other genres of biomusic – music, kind of, made by animals – might be worth your while.

Birds
Joining whales on the Pyramid stage are, of course, the extensively studied birds, which have rhythm, pitch and tonal melodies similar to those that humans consider music (composers from Beethoven to Messiaen and Charlie Parker to Pink Floyd used birdsong in their work). The nightingale, blackbird and skylark are top of the pops in Britain, but there are 5,000 species of songbird across the world. Birdsong is the pop of biomusic: it’s accessible and there’s something for everyone. The lyrebird doing the chainsaw is a little punky; the butcherbird’s chorus is a crowd-pleaser.

Rock hyrax
Song might be pushing it, but the male rock hyrax, a small mammal that resembles a badger and a rabbit, is often found standing on a rock and shouting his guttural, rhythmic ditty, fancying himself as some kind of rodent Dave Grohl. Scientists studied the vocalisations and were surprised to find the young hyrax has a repertoire of lengthy, complex tunes. He also borrows from other tunes he likes. Rock on.

Bonobos
Let’s mix things up with a spot of ... gabber. In a study of spontaneous tempo and rhythm in a bonobo called Kuni, the chimp could keep time with a human drummer at various tempos on her own drum. However, her spontaneous tempo was extremely fast, at 270bpm. Bonobos, then, are the speedcore extremists of the animal kingdom.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/shortcuts/2018/apr/04/the-blowhole-section-if-whales-make-jazz-what-about-the-rest-of-the-animal-kingdom