Owls hoot, frogs croak and hyenas laugh in Wild Concerto, a groundbreaking collaboration between musician Stewart Copeland and naturalist Martin Stewart.
Stewart, a naturalist now based in Florida, has spent decades crisscrossing the globe creating nearly 100,000 animal records. Copland, known as the drummer for the Police, set it all to music and gave members of the animal kingdom a chance at stardom, with humans providing backup.
They hope this album will help preserve the sounds of Mother Nature, while increasing appreciation for the wild kingdom as more animals become endangered.
“If you can show people the beauty of something and get them excited about it, maybe you can throw something at them,” Stewart said.
sounds of nature
For over 60 years, Stewart has focused on the sounds of nature. As a child, he went into the woods around his house with a tape recorder and recorded the sounds of blackbirds.
What started as a boyhood lark turned into a career with a mission.
“I’ve always believed that the reason I’m on this earth is to fight for animals and the environment, and that’s kind of the rent for me to be here,” Stewart said. “I feel like I have the power to convey that message.”
The message is that animal species are dying out, and Stewart says he can tell by the changes in the sounds around him.
“Audio is the barometer of the earth,” he said. “If you want to know the condition of a stream or river, a dipper will tell you. A frog can tell you the condition of a swamp. A bird can tell you the condition of the earth.”
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Stewart last recorded the Panama golden frog, which was listed as an endangered species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1976. This species is currently classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Stewart’s recordings also include the sounds of the northern white rhino, which is now extinct in the wild.
“If we continue to steal from nature, the inevitable will happen,” he said. “We’re going to lose a lot more.”
Stewart, who is battling cancer, said her niece encouraged her to preserve an archive of natural records, leading the naturalist to collaborate with the rock legend.
sound of music
Copeland is used to being in the spotlight with Sting, not with stinging animals. He rose to global stardom in the 1970s as a member of The Police. The band disbanded in the 1980s, but Copland soon found a new path as a composer. Film director Francis Coppola will be central to Copland.
“His job is to find talent and give them a rope, and he hired a drummer from a rock band and hired me to score the movie because his concept was that it was all about rhythm,” Copeland said.
The drummer said he didn’t know anything about film music, but he knew the rhythm. So he created what he called “found sounds” by arranging dog barks, billiard balls, and piledrivers into rhythmic loops.
More movies followed. Copland then began writing classical music.
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He said his father raised him to be a jazz musician, but his mother instilled in him a love of classical music.
“I’ve got Jimi Hendrix in one ear and Igor Stravinsky in the other,” Copeland said. “They were always kind of interacting in my brain.”
Fusion of animal sounds and concerto
Now, in addition to the sounds of Hendrix and Stravinsky, Copland also hears the sounds of hyenas. Hyenas are Copeland’s favorite.
“They have a very wide vocabulary. They make affectionate sounds. They also make aggressive sounds,” he said.
One of the songs on “Wild Concerto” is “Hyena Party on the Skeleton Coast.”
Copeland doesn’t know how he came up with the composition to emphasize the hyena’s calls.
“I asked the Lord that question many times,” Copeland said.
While working on the Abbey Road album, Copland walked through 30,000 hours of field recordings to decide which animals would receive star treatment. He said the animals’ own live voices determined his chosen instrument.
“These are not actual musical notes, but when you put the instrument down, the animal becomes Pavarotti,” he said.
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