The Thai Elephant Orchestra is a musical ensemble consisting of as many as fourteen Thai elephants near Lampang in Northern Thailand. The elephants play music, essentially as conducted improvisations, on specially designed heavy-duty musical instruments. The orchestra was co-created by elephant conservationist Richard Lair of the National Elephant Institute and the American musical artist and neuroscientist Dave Soldier. They have released three CDs on the Mulatta Records label with an orchestra ranging in size from six to fourteen elephants.
The Orchestra currently performs for visitors at the center. It was created as part of the center's effort to provide a place for former working animals. [1] Their music has been described as "genuine" by some music critics. [2]
It has been noted since ancient times that elephants seem to have an affinity for music. Performing circus elephants commonly follow musical cues, and early American circuses such as Adam Forepaugh and Barnum & Bailey even featured "elephant bands." [3] In the 1950s, German evolutionary biologist Bernard Rensch found that elephants can distinguish 12 tones on the musical scale and remember simple melodies, even when played on different instruments at various pitches, timbres, and meters. [3] [4]
Three albums of music created by elephant musicians was conceived by New York-based musical artist Dave Soldier (a.k.a. David Sulzer, PhD) and elephant expert Richard Lair, who works at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang. Traditional Thai music is a genre familiar to the elephants, so they chose Thai music scales with a few blues notes. According to Lair, many of the elephants took to their assignment "with gusto". [5]
The Thai Elephant Orchestra primarily uses the Lanna Thai five-note scale, and most instruments are heavy-duty versions of traditional Thai musical instruments; additional instruments include drums and harmonica. [6]
Their musical works are of two general types. The first type, which are on the recordings, features the elephants individually improvising on the instruments with the only human interaction being cues as to when to start and stop. The other type is compositional and requires mahouts to teach or train the elephants to perform human tunes as a hocket, with each elephant playing an individual note on angalungs. [7]
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville song, and dance music. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation.
Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all human societies. Definitions of music vary widely in substance and approach. While scholars agree that music is defined by a small number of specific elements, there is no consensus as to what these necessary elements are. Music is often characterized as a highly versatile medium for expressing human creativity. Diverse activities are involved in the creation of music, and are often divided into categories of composition, improvisation, and performance. Music may be performed using a wide variety of musical instruments, including the human voice. It can also be composed, sequenced, or otherwise produced to be indirectly played mechanically or electronically, such as via a music box, barrel organ, or digital audio workstation software on a computer.
The music of Thailand includes a wide array of distinct genres, both traditional and modern.
Anthony Braxton is an American experimental composer, educator, music theorist, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who is best known for playing saxophones, particularly the alto. Braxton grew up on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, and was a key early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. He received great acclaim for his 1969 double-LP record For Alto, the first full-length album of solo saxophone music.
Accompaniment is the musical part which provides the rhythmic and/or harmonic support for the melody or main themes of a song or instrumental piece. There are many different styles and types of accompaniment in different genres and styles of music. In homophonic music, the main accompaniment approach used in popular music, a clear vocal melody is supported by subordinate chords. In popular music and traditional music, the accompaniment parts typically provide the "beat" for the music and outline the chord progression of the song or instrumental piece.
Equatorial Guinea's culture has been less documented than most African countries, and commercial recordings remain scarce.
Nicholas Payton is an American trumpet player and multi-instrumentalist. A Grammy Award winner, he is from New Orleans, Louisiana. He is also a writer who comments on subjects including music, race, politics, and life in America.
STEIM was a center for research and development of new musical instruments in the electronic performing arts, located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Beginning in the 1970's, STEIM became known as a pioneering center for electronic music, where the specific context of electronic music was always strongly related to the physical and direct actions of a musician. In this tradition, STEIM supported artists in residence such as composers and performers, but also multimedia and video artists, helping them to develop setups which allowed for bespoke improvisation and performance with individually designed technology.
Michael Marcus Hearst is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, writer, and producer. He is best known for his solo albums Songs For Ice Cream Trucks, Songs For Unusual Creatures, Songs For Fearful Flyers, Songs For Unconventional Vehicles and Songs For Extraordinary People, as well as the children's books Unusual Creatures, Extraordinary People, Curious Constructions and Unconventional Vehicles. He has composed the music for a number of films including The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin, Chicken People, To Be Takei, Magic Camp, and House of Suh. In 2014, he co-produced and co-directed Unusual Creatures, a ten-episode series for PBS Digital Studios. Hearst is also a founding member of the eclectic musical group One Ring Zero.
Animal-made art consists of works by non-human animals, that have been considered by humans to be artistic, including visual works, music, photography, and videography. Some of these are created naturally by animals, often as courtship displays, while others are created with human involvement.
Jonathan Anthony Rose is an Australian violinist, cellist, composer, and multimedia artist. Rose's work is centered in the experimental music known as free improvisation, where he has created large environmental multimedia works, built experimental musical instruments, and improvised violin concertos with accompanying orchestra. He has been described by Tony Mitchell as "undoubtedly the most exploratory, imaginative and iconoclastic violin player who has lived in Australia".
Mulatta Records, which, in 2020, has changed its name to EEG Records, is a record label established in 2000 by the Nigerian record producer and DJ Ayo Osinibi and the American composer/performer Dave Soldier
Elephant cognition is animal cognition as present in elephants. Most contemporary ethologists view the elephant as one of the world's most intelligent animals. Elephants manifest a wide variety of behaviors, including those associated with grief, learning, mimicry, playing, altruism, tool use, compassion, cooperation, self-awareness, memory, and communication. Recent evidence suggests that elephants may understand pointing, the ability to nonverbally communicate an object by extending a finger, or equivalent.
Cage the Elephant is an American rock band formed in 2006 in Bowling Green, Kentucky. They moved to England and settled in London in 2008, shortly before their self-titled first album was released. The band currently consists of Matt Shultz (vocals), his older brother Brad Shultz, Nick Bockrath, Matthan Minster, Daniel Tichenor (bass), and Jared Champion (drums). The band's first album was released to much success, spawning several successful radio singles and gaining the band a large following in both the United States and the United Kingdom. It was influenced by classic rock, '90s alternative, blues, punk rock, and funk music. Lincoln Parish served as the band's lead guitarist from their formation in 2006 until 2013, when he left on good terms to pursue a career in producing.
Everyone Orchestra is an American improvisational musical project that features a constantly revolving roster of musicians. Everyone Orchestra creates completely different music every time it appears through conducted improvisational musical exploration and audience participation.
Martin White is an English musician, comedian and animator. As well as performing solo with an accordion around the London comedy circuit, White also fronts the Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra and the Karaoke Circus live bands. He performs jingles regularly in the comedy podcast Answer Me This!.
David Sulzer is an American neuroscientist and musician. He is a professor at Columbia University Medical Center in the departments of psychiatry, neurology, and pharmacology. Sulzer's laboratory investigates the interaction between the synapses of the cerebral cortex and the basal ganglia, including the dopamine system, in habit formation, planning, decision making, and diseases of the system. His lab has developed the first means to optically measure neurotransmission, and has introduced new hypotheses of neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease, and changes in synapses that produce autism and habit learning.
Buke and Gase is a New York based musical duo named after the musical instruments invented and built by founders Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez; the buke is a six-string former-baritone ukulele and the gase is a hybrid guitar-bass.
Bluegrass mandolin is a style of mandolin playing most commonly heard in bluegrass bands.
Noah Flynn Kaplan, known professionally as Noah K, is an American composer, saxophonist, and record producer.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: location (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: location (link)This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines.(January 2017) |
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) — Story, photos and 4-part documentary