Thousand Mile Song

Roger Payne loved those 1960s songs so much he lamented their passing: "Today’s humpback whale songs pale beside those of the sixties," he recently wrote in an open letter to the youth of Japan.  "The North Atlantic is so musically lackluster today."  I don’t think Paul Knapp would agree.  Today, there might be more beats, maybe fewer legato passages.  We may like the beat more than melody today, and it might be the same with the whales.

The subtitle of this excellent book is Whale Music in a Sea of Sound and it is by David Rothenberg.  Here is David’s previous excellent book, Why Birds Sing.