A Boxed Kit for Birds Hopes to Save Them Too

ASHEVILLE, North Carolina — Just before a warm weekday sunset in early May, Avey Tare, a member of the psychedelic pop group Animal Collective, adjusted his glasses and squinted into the fading sunlight. Amid the Appalachian foliage along the Blue Ridge Parkway, he could hear a woodpecker hammering a tree for dinner.

Half a dozen songbirds interrupted his search with evening serenades as Tare gazed at the verdant treetops of spring. “I love how they all sing,” he said, smiling and combing the branches from which the bushes and juncos sprang. “It reminds me of an orchestral chord just before it plays. There’s room for everyone.”

Tare added that he likes to get up early every morning and listen in this mountain city. “That’s when you hear it most before humans…” Just then, a motorcycle whizzed past the parking lot, and Tare never finished his thought.

Randall Poster never noticed the songbirds of the Bronx, where he lived for 60 years, until people began to calm down early each day as the first pandemic winter approached in 2020. He winked and admitted during a recent video call. that childhood bird knowledge was limited to “You know, the Baltimore Orioles and Philadelphia Eagles.”

But when Poster, a powerful music supervisor for filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Todd Haynes, and Wes Anderson, started talking about the birds he could hear, an environmental friend broke the news. human interactions alone It probably kills more than 500 million birds each year in the United States. According to the 2018 report, one out of every eight people bird species of the world now in danger of extinction. Common chemicals ruin a lot of songs The poster suddenly loved it. These statistics led to an idea: What if he had used his quarter-century of industry connections to raise a fund for bird conservation and integrated the tunes he had heard?

On Friday, the poster will release the first volume of “For the Birds,” a star-studded 242-piece collection of original songs and readings inspired by or featuring bird song; Later this year, it will be packaged as a boxed set of 20 LPs to benefit the National Audubon Society. The project spread, he said, because everyone seemed to have birds in mind. “People were spending a lot of time looking out the window,” the poster said. among the legion of bird watchers in the epidemic. “There was so much unknown and unknowable that we were relieved that nature was still doing its thing.”

“For the Birds” dissolves like a soundtrack version that Poster might design for an Anderson movie, playing at will between moods and styles. There are laments and aubades, violin melodies and field recordings. A brilliant electronic trance by Dan Deacon and a Beatles interpretation by Elvis Costello share space with the Jonathan Franzen reading; A reading from Laurie Anderson, Alice Coltrane (remix), Yoko Ono and Wendell Pierce opens separate LPs.

“It’s a pleasure to hear that others are discovering the wonder of birds,” said Elizabeth Gray, Audubon’s CEO, from her Maryland home. “Being able to watch birds fly, nest and feed their young reminds us what makes us human.”

Still, “For the Birds” is the most daring entry in a new dawn choir of benevolent recordings that use either bird song as bait or the entire piece itself. In 2019 “Let Nature Sing” – a poignant mix of 24 chattering genres – entered the UK Top 20; an album in February 53 calls from threatened Australian birds beat international pop stars to land at number 2 there.

Australian cellist Anthony Albrecht said: “Of the things we need to work harder to protect, birds like music speak to everyone.” Bowerbird Collective spearheaded this effort, said by video chat. It is a very visible and audible indication of what we will lose.”

Bird chirping, extant fossil records suggest, at least 66 million years old or at the same time as the last dinosaurs. People have probably incorporated their own voices into the music for as long as we do. Indian instruments evoking warbles, tribal African songs combining calls, compositions by Olivier Messiaen including bird transcriptions: Bird singing has been a cornerstone of musical development across cultures and centuries.

“The range of sounds they use is more or less the same as the range we use, which is part of why we love them so much. We can. to listen Musician Jonathan Meiburg sang from his home in Germany. For twenty years he recorded as Shearwater; released last year first bookA kind of personal history of the “world’s most intelligent bird of prey”, the caracara.

In “For the Birds,” several musicians epiphanically described their experiences of bird singing. Tare wrote “Brown Thrasher,” part of the set of Animal Collective’s Poster, after a morning field recording in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but remembered discovering the mechanical clicks of a crow—imagine the sound of your car with a dead battery. , but elegant – while living in Los Angeles as a musical landmark. “I never knew they could sound like that. he is‘ he said, eyes wide.

Composer Nico Muhly remembered the sound of the whip singing for his family at dinner in the Vermont countryside and how it shaped his early sense of listening. whistler molly lewis He still chuckled when he remembered exchanging (and exchanging) tunes with an invisible songbird outside his window years ago. “I knew we were talking, and I burst out laughing with joy and surprise,” Lewis said over the phone.

Still, projects like these create instant cynicism. Far from challenging the environmentally damaging industrial forces, how much can musicians actually influence individual behavior? What is the value of all this effort?

Such questions prompt Australian cellist Albrecht. “Songs of Disappearance.” After years of performing bird-inspired pieces, including a study based on the potential Australian origins of songbirds, Albrecht wondered what difference it had made. “There’s a real challenge to connect with audiences that aren’t aligned with your values ​​anyway,” he said, frowning. “This is the idea of ​​preaching to the converted.”

Despite Albrecht’s lack of scientific training, Stephen Garnett, a professor at Charles Darwin University, encouraged him to enroll in the school’s conservation biology doctoral program. When Garnett told Albrecht he was publishing a book main report a stating that Sixth of Australian bird species at riskAlbrecht suggested a preemptive eulogy, a compilation showcasing the richness of sounds that can be lost.

They took tracks from the country’s leading wildlife recorder and hired an Australian music industry expert. At Christmas last year, stores were demanding more copies. In six months, Albrecht’s lark had raised more than $70,000 for bird conservation. However, the feeling that people care motivates him more than money.

“It spiraled out in a way that gave us a lot of hope that the public has the potential to engage with these critical issues,” said Albrecht, who was hoping to get a sequel out of North America. “You can do something crazy and get people to respond.”

Robin Perkins also sees wisdom in crazy projects like this. For ten years, Perkins worked for Greenpeace, whose sometimes conflict activism has made the organization a frequent punchline and lightning rod. But through his record label, shika shikaPerkins matched dozens of musicians to the song of a threatened bird from their homeland and asked them to translate it into song. The effort has already raised more than $50,000.

The third volume, to be released in June,Bird Song Guide to West Africa” features the appeals of Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars to protect its wildlife, and the rising techno of Guinea-Bissaun producer Buruntuma, punctuated by the prismatic chirping of a gray Timneh parrot.

“You have to give people something they can understand. 1.5 degrees: What does that mean for me?” Perkins said by phone from Paris: refer to the frequently quoted number as a dangerous threshold for global temperature rise. “There’s a role for chaining yourself to a building, and music has a different role – helping people dream.”

Long familiar with the whims of the entertainment industry, Poster won’t predict how much money “For the Birds” will raise or whether its star power will propel it up the charts. But he is optimistic about the extra components of the projects – the birdhouse exhibition to be held in June. Brooklyn Botanical Gardensound baths and concerts, programs in Miami and Marfa and London.

The poster even convinced eyewear company Warby Parker to design and distribute at least 20,000 branded “Birdoists” to school groups across the country, which he was most excited about. After all, if someone had given him a pair when he was a kid in the Bronx who watched five movies every weekend, he might have adjusted to his surroundings sooner.

“It’s like when you make a movie and hope there’s enough of a kid in the audience to make a movie, or feel less alone,” the poster said. “We will empower young people by giving them the essential tools to take care of birds to help raise responsible citizens for the younger generation. This is how progress is made.”