An Oceanic Orchestra
By Sathvika Krishnan
Location: Coventry, UK
Sathvika Krishnan is a 19-year-old wildlife enthusiast and intersectional environmentalist. She is a passionate campaigner for biodiversity and will be reading Biology at the University of Oxford from October.
An Oceanic Orchestra
The movements and dramatics of the ocean have provided composers with wondrous material, such as Mendelssohn’s captivating Hebrides Overture, but the life that lives under the sea (a certain animated lobster would surely acknowledge the pun!) has never ceased to capture the creativity and interest of scientists and artists alike.
For me, the mournful peaks and troughs of whale song are the symbol of ocean musicality. However, not all whales produce a song. A song is defined as a repetitive acoustic pattern that is highly predictable in its delivery and is often produced for long periods of time by single individuals. The two major suborders of cetaceans, the Odontoceti (toothed whales) and the Mysticeti (baleen whales), employ different mechanisms when producing sound and, therefore, have differences in their sonority. Baleen whales, the suborder capable of producing songs, have a larynx and can recycle air around the body to produce sound; the exact process for this is still uncertain.
Conversely, toothed whales such as dolphins, have specialised organs that produce a variety of buzzes- this is used to obtain sonic information about their environment through echolocation. The echoes of the castanet-like sequence of clicks allows the odontocete to discern the difference in material composition of visually identical objects. Additionally, a structure called phonic lips - similar to human vocal-chords but located in the head - are able to produce a multitude of sounds and vibrations. Most toothed whales have two sets of phonic lips and are therefore capable of producing two different sounds independently and can actually “self-harmonise”! The three types of sounds made by whales (clicks, whistles and pulsed calls) are used in different circumstances. The clicks used for echolocation are also used during social interactions which suggests that they may also have a communicative function. Whistles and pulsed calls, on the other hand, seem to only be used in social activities. These squeaks, screams and squawks are used to differentiate between different whale pods. Each pod has its own dialect or accent which can be used to distinguish friends from strangers- a musical barcode, if you will.
Today, we are very familiar with the songs of whales. However, this was not always the case. Back in the 1960s, the humpback’s sorrowful song was a hidden gem waiting to be uncovered by biologist Roger Payne. Payne took it upon himself to distribute the recordings of the whales’ calls in the hopes of making the public aware of the devastating consequences of whaling. By 1970, millions were introduced to the songs of the humpback whales in Judy Collins’ album Whales and Nightingales. The smash-hit, biomusic record integrated whales and their songs into human culture across the globe and this growth in awareness sparked activists to campaign against the mass slaughter of these magnificent creatures.
People started to realise that whales were more than just blubber and oil; they were intelligent musicians, mothers and mysteries of the deep blue. The environmental movement, “Save the Whales”, led to a ban on deep-sea whaling instituted by the International Whaling Commission in 1982. By combining science and art, humanity united efforts in protecting the lives of these wonderful creatures.
Vanessa Mignon/Barcroft Media, via Getty Images
It serves as a reminder that in our current attempts to conserve biodiversity, we must be interdisciplinary and work across all fields, just as Payne did with humpbacks. Since the rise in ecological consciousness, scientists have further investigated the intricacies of the songs of whales. Behind the regular rising and falling of pitch is an advanced and complex communicatory system with meanings. Punctuated by squeaks and “electronic-esque” pulses, the humpback’s song repeats a set of discrete sound units or themes, which are in-turn built up of subphrases. This telescopic hierarchy of sounds suggests that whale song has a syntactic structure- a chiefly anthropomorphic communicatory quality. The resulting repertoire of the humpback’s song, when notated, resembles the Gregorian chants of the 10th Century with its unison melody and monophonic texture.
An interesting scientific feature of whale song is the ability to coordinate songs between individuals. In humpback whales, all the males of a population tend to sing roughly the same song at any one time, but individuals that are within earshot of each other do not coordinate their songs to sing the same phrases at the same time. Intriguingly, this shared song changes gradually over the singing season, so that the shared song sung at the start of the season differs from the one we hear towards the end. This is known as vocal learning and is a rare attribute in mammals. The ability to modify one’s song in response to another’s indicates a high level of cognitive function and complex social interactions. In fact, it takes around 15 years for a humpback whale song to change completely within a population. With the element of vocal learning causing the change, this evolution of song is often called a cultural revolution. This doubtless bears resemblance to the music of us humans; through time, trends and fashions come and go like the tide. We too adapt our taste in music based on our company and location. Which begs the question: is whale song music?
Well, it certainly has musical components such as melody, rhythm, structure, articulation, and textural harmony. Even the percussive clatterings of sperm whales and dolphins, although not strictly song, contains the rhythmic elements associated with several genres of music (e.g: the solkattu- syllabic- language of Konnakol derived from South Indian classical drums). Whales even appear to have the gift of composition and improvisation, as demonstrated by philosopher and jazz musician David Rothenberg’s clarinet duet with a humpback.
But underneath the somewhat superficial technicalities and features of musicality, lies the essence of true music: emotion.
Currently, scientists believe that the main purposes of whale song are to attract a mate by showing one's fitness, which would give rise to sexual selection, and navigation. The dual functionality of these vocalisations make us question whether or not whales sing for aesthetic enjoyment. There is clearly a biological role to the evolution and necessity of their song but do these creatures ever sing for personal satisfaction? Although this hypothesis is largely untestable, it leads us to philosophise and ponder upon our own interpretation and understanding of music. The definition of music itself is, by and large, highly ambiguous and a fantastic example of the imperceptibility of music is John Cage’s 4’33”..
It would therefore be naïve of us to entirely romanticise the concept of vocal communication of cetaceans and neglect to appreciate and acknowledge the ecological/biological significance of their songs. That being said, we should endeavour to push the barriers between human and natural history by embracing the growing fields of bioacoustics and biomusic. By viewing the wonderful world of wildlife from multiple angles, we can admire its great intricacy in a more complete way. We will also be better equipped to remedy the global challenges we face today.
So, the next time you hear the lonesome call of a whale, cherish its artistic and scientific properties. For that matter, the next time you hear any natural sound, be it the babbling of a brook or the grunting of a triggerfish, enjoy it for both its intrinsic function and extrinsic value.