Professor David Rothenberg & His Orca-stra for Humpback Whales
NJIT’s very own Professor David Rothenberg is well-known for his music philosophy. Rothenberg has spent many years combining music and nature, to create music that features the natural world including birds, whales and insects. In fact, he has been referred to as an “interspecies musician.”
Recently, Rothenberg has collaborated with Pattern Radio, a project in partnership with Google and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to collect thousands of hours of whale songs.
Rothenberg believes in the power of music as a language. He remarked, “Music, with its strange emotional way of communicating, is an ideal way to reach across the boundaries to other species and to connect to other species.”
The professor’s method for communication with this species is simple: dropping an underwater speaker into the ocean so the whale can hear the music played, along with a hydrophone hooked up to headphones so Rothenberg can hear the reactions from the whales. David has travelled to the far reaches of the world to submerge mics and capture the melodic and rhythmic sounds of belugas, sperm whales, humpbacks and more. The results have been presented both in raw and musically sequenced forms.
You may be surprised by just how well the sounds of whales fit into productions of all types across and beyond genres. Rothenberg says, “beluga whales have always been interested in human music, so much so that they’d hang around boats when sailors were singing. Their songs contain so much sonic diversity that they can be turned into almost anything. From echolocation creaks to social whistles and grunts, these white whales have it all.”
“What’s interesting about humpback whales is they’re always changing their song, always listening for new sounds, and it makes it interesting to play with them because sometimes, only sometimes, they respond to what I’m doing.”
Rothenberg recalled that surprising moment where a whale showed interest in his music, “At that moment, you feel like, ah, maybe something’s going on here - maybe there’s a sense of getting through to another species through music.”
Rothenberg hasn’t just communicated with humpback whales. His work dates back to 2005, when he completed his first title, Why Birds Sing, exploring the art of bird song. Along the way, he’s also completed titles relating to cicadasand other insects, whales and most recently nightingales.
“The way so many animals communicate is in a way much more like music than like language.”
Take Professor Rothenberg’s tour on Pattern Radio.
