This is a fascinating article about bird songs and their similarities to human musicality. When it comes to melody, birds and humans are really quite alike as birds show evidence that it is also a learned behavior. However for birds, this learned behavior is inextricably connected to their ability to survive, find a mate and territoritize a region. For us, it may only get you a date with that cute girl in the front row of the concert. But to me, birdsongs are shrouded in a mystery that even most ornithologists (say, Messiaen for example) would unceasingly admit to. Devoid of any artistic intent, birdsongs project a natural fidelity to their survival that we find difficult to render. To us, music and art are one-in-the-same but to the birds, music and survival are inseperable...how can we not be jealous?
2 comments:
Bird-song is an endlessly fascinating topic (look at Messiaen's 50-year long obsession!).
I want to briefly examine one thing you mentioned: the dichotomy between art and survival. Lots of anthropological research (or maybe we should say "anthromusicological"), as well as discoveries in evolutionary modeling, postulate that the first human musicality came about as a response to the birds and for the same reasons. The key scholar on the development of music over the course of human evolution is Ellen Dissanayake (a J-Stor search should yield a lot) if you want to jump down this rabbit hole. Anyways, the basic premise is that the arts aren't just something we as humans do to pass the time and express ourselves - they are essential to our nature as a species, and to survival. (On the other end of the spectrum you have Steven Pinker, who calls music "auditory cheesecake.") The real interesting question is why we as a species were programmed to need to sing, paint things, dance around, create poetry from our languages (the ultimate link between our "language instinct" and our musical instinct), etc....
Here's a very good introductory paper to the topic. It is scholarly, but quite readable:
http://www.mus.cam.ac.uk/~ic108/MMS/
I also meant to repost a great link from Bill Marsh with audio clips of a variety of beautiful bird songs:
http://closetcurios2.blogspot.com/2008/02/songs-of-eastern-birds.html
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