Episode 3: Bernie Krause
“When I go out and record, the material doesn't come through the microphone anymore. It's not recorded because it's not there.”
Bernie Krause
When Nature Falls Silent
For over five decades, Bernie Krause has ventured to some of the most remote corners of our planet, capturing the symphony of nature's voices.
As a pioneer in the world of sound ecology, he's played a crucial role in raising awareness about the urgency of preserving these precious sonic environments. His illustrious career as a bioacoustician and sound ecologist started on a different note. Originally a musician, he's worked with artists such as The Doors and Stevie Wonder, and his recordings have graced countless documentaries, exhibitions and film scores, including Apocalypse Now and Rosemary's Baby.
As an author, he's also explored the impact of human-generated noise pollution. His touring sound exhibit, The Great Animal Orchestra, plunges viewers into a magnificent digital soundscape that feels vast and vulnerable. He writes: “I've come to believe that soundscapes, especially natural or wild ones, hold secrets that might help us solve many of life's mysteries. If only we had a way to decipher the code.”
Listen Now
Transcript
(Edited slightly for clarity)
Melissa Ceria: Bernie Krause, welcome.
Bernie Krause: Thank you so much. Happy to be here.
Melissa Ceria: Bernie, it's fascinating to consider that these soundscapes might hold secrets to life's mysteries. What prompted you to have this insight?
Bernie Krause: Well, I was recording in Kenya on a project for the California Academy of Sciences, and I was resting one night, it was 1983, with my earphones on, listening to the night sounds of a particular habitat, and all of a sudden I realized that these sounds were not only organized in some kind of magical way, but they also conveyed some very important information. And I began to listen to it, and I thought to myself, 'I'm just dreaming here.' But when I took the soundscapes back to San Francisco, where I was living at the time, and began to analyze them, I realized that there was a lot of information there contained in the whole soundscape of the habitat. And before, many years before, the way that I studied natural sound was a single animal at a time. We went out with these big parabolic dishes and recorded the bird in a tree, and took it out of context and tried to understand what was going on acoustically in the natural world. But we were finding we were running up against hard surfaces all the time, like stone walls that we couldn't get over or under, and we couldn't understand what was really happening until we began to look at these things more holistically. And that's a major part of what I've brought to soundscape ecology, and I heard it as a musician. Other people are listening to it in different ways, but I heard it as a musician. I was listening to the whole soundscape and wondering what was there and discovered all of this magical stuff.
-
Melissa Ceria [00:02:55] Well, let's listen to a clip of The Great Animal Orchestra. (Clip plays)
[00:03:29] That was an excerpt of Bernie Krause's work, The Great Animal Orchestra.
[00:03:42] Bernie, you were born in Detroit, Michigan. Were you the kind of kid that ran through fields catching crickets? Or did your relationship with the natural environment develop later on in life?
Bernie Krause [00:03:53] Actually, no. I started really engaged with the natural world. The things that calmed me down. We lived in a spot in Detroit in the early 1940s that wasn't developed yet and had previously been farm country. So we had a lot of space around us where our house was built at that particular time, and the natural sounds that came from this field that had a little bit of a forest, were always engaging to me. And these were the sounds that made me feel good, that made me calm down, that made me know what season it was just by opening that window and listening to the soundscape. In the summertime, in particular it was magical at that moment. There were lots of birds and lots of insects and lots of frogs around, and that was the soundscape that really informed my life from the earliest point.
Melissa Ceria [00:04:43] Your work demonstrates remarkable listening skills. You've described some of them in your early years, but did your time as a musician also contribute to honing your ear? Or would you say that you have a natural inclination for careful listening?
Bernie Krause [00:04:57] Well, I don't see very well. So most of my world is informed through what I hear, and that makes a big difference in how you listen. So I was a careful listener very early on. And also I have a terrible case of ADHD, attention deficit disorder. And so hearing natural sound and hearing that rhythm of the birds and the insects, and so on, at any given time was something that was very alluring to me. And early on, I compared it to what I was hearing musically and what I was being presented musically as I was trained as a professional musician, played violin, learned composition. And when I was a teenager, I switched to guitar and had guitar as a major instrument for a long time. All I was hearing was when I went outside to listen to natural sounds, the impact that the natural sounds had on me was profound. I mean, it was the only thing that stemmed the anxiety of the ADHD that I was suffering as a child.
Melissa Ceria [00:06:04] In The Great Animal Orchestra you incorporate different animal sounds and you also convey a more intricate ecosystem. You refer to the composition as a "biophonic narrative." Can you briefly describe what viewers see and hear when they step into that space?
Bernie Krause [00:06:20] Well, when they step into a space like that, mostly what we're trying to concentrate on is the sound, because we're a visual culture and we spend a lot of time learning what we understand of the world by what we see. But the soundscape informs us in many different ways and many more ways than what we see. I always say that: 'What you see is worth a thousand words; a soundscape is worth a thousand pictures." So it's really important to learn to listen. Because when we listen in a discriminating way, we find things about our world that we really can't see and we can't understand it.
Melissa Ceria [00:07:05] You have expressed concern in your writing that we now live in, what you have said, is "a visually dominant culture." Why does this preoccupy you and what do you think we're losing through this?
Bernie Krause [00:07:17] Well, we're losing a lot of what the sensibilities of our ears provide for us. For instance, when we listen to the natural world, the natural world is this narrative of place. And it tells us, when we're listening to these sounds, where we're at, what season we're in, whether or not this habitat is healthy, our effect — the human effect — on the natural world that we're listening to. It's all there in that narrative of place. And what we're finding here, for instance, where I live now in Northern California, is probably the bird density and diversity, the sounds of these springtime sounds of birds, for instance, the dawn choruses and evening choruses, have diminished in the time I've been recording them since 1993, when we moved here, they've diminished probably 70%. The numbers of birds have fallen and the numbers of species have dropped, largely because of global warming and also because habitat development that's had an impact on these creatures. I hear all of that, and I have recordings of that, so I can actually explain to people what's happening. When we did The Great Animal Orchestra for the Cartier Foundation, and it first opened up, people didn't believe that habitats were changing that radically.
Melissa Ceria [00:08:37] Did you have to tell them about that so that they could believe you?
Bernie Krause [00:08:40] All I need to do is play the sounds for them and they believe it.
Melissa Ceria [00:08:44] Right.
Melissa Ceria [00:08:44] To what degree do you intend for people not only to just see and hear the sounds in your wildlife concert, but also physically feel the vibrations running through their bodies as one does sitting in that space?
Bernie Krause [00:08:57] Yeah, that's what's really remarkable about it. But one of the things I want to say about natural soundscapes, and in particular, The Great Animal Orchestra piece that just closed at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, is that these soundscapes work because they're not culturally biased. There's no cultural connection like there is with music, because music immediately signals a culture that it comes from, but with natural soundscapes it reaches across all lines with people and all ages with people, because it has none of this historical or cultural bias to it. So it reaches everybody at some level, and the sounds are physical, and they reach us in a physical way because they make our ears vibrate, which is how we hear. So the natural soundscapes that I've presented in this exhibit are the kinds of things from healthy habitats when they were healthy. But all of these sounds and habitats have changed now because of global warming, but they've changed very quickly over the last 20 years. It's getting to the point where it sounds like, to me, that it's very critical. And if we don't do something about these issues, we've got a serious problem.
Melissa Ceria [00:10:08] Even in your daily recordings of work, you've described how long it can take you to capture certain sounds. Can you give us an example of what that might look like?
Bernie Krause [00:10:17] Yeah. When I first began, I could record for ten hours and get one hour of usable material for an exhibit, for instance, or a record album. Now it takes probably 1,000 hours. That's like half a year of recording to get one hour of usable material. Partly because the habitats are not as vibrant as they once were, and partly because there's too much noise, there's too much human noise.
Melissa Ceria [00:10:49] Your recordings of natural elements have a distinct artistic quality to them. How do you approach the process of recording and arranging these sounds to create these compositions?
Bernie Krause [00:11:00] Well, mostly the soundscapes that I've created are not collages or anything like that. They're just straight examples of really beautiful periods of time from these habitats, so they're not edited or mixed in any unusual way. The only thing that I have that is done that way is an example from the oceans. Because the oceans are so wide, sound is dispersed all over them. So, I've combined fish and whales and crustaceans and different marine animals, so that it's a cohesive tapestry rather than just individual sounds, which is the way we would probably hear the ocean sounds.
Melissa Ceria [00:11:39] How do you go about recording those ocean sounds?
Bernie Krause [00:11:42] We have a little microphone called a hydrophone — hydro, meaning water — and we're able to record in marine environments with this hydrophone. Just drop it down, it's on a ten-meter cable, and we drop it down off the side of a boat and listen to the ocean. It's wonderful.
Melissa Ceria [00:11:59] Where have you traveled to capture these sounds?
Bernie Krause [00:12:01] Everywhere. Fiji, Australia, Hawaii, the San Juan Islands up near Washington, off the East Coast, down in the Caribbean. I mean, there's sound all over. You can drop a hydrophone in a little pool in the back of your house after a spring rainstorm and hear little insects swimming around and gnashing their teeth at little things.
Melissa Ceria [00:12:26] Is there a place in particular that you love to go back to over and over again?
Bernie Krause [00:12:30] Well, I really am drawn to Alaska, and the reason is because it's a place that's three times the size of France, and there are 750,000 people there. It's a place where you can walk for a week in any direction and not hit a fence or a road. It's a place where there are no rangers to tell you about the life cycle of a bear or an elk. And best of all, there's nothing to buy, so it's really wonderful.
Melissa Ceria [00:12:59] And are you welcomed there by locals? Do they participate with you in some of the recordings, or do you work alone all the time?
Bernie Krause [00:13:06] Pretty much I work alone. I like working alone because in sound every other person that joins you is going to make some kind of noise, like I was just rattling papers here. And it really has an effect on the animal behavior in the areas that we go to record. And if there are too many people around, it just changes everything.
Melissa Ceria [00:13:29] How does your work reflect the greater sense of urgency that you've described in terms of ecological loss?
Bernie Krause [00:13:36] I never really intended to collect material that reflected loss when I first began, but what I found was that at first, in the late 1980s, I began to notice a change. Like, for example, I was recording up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, about a four hour drive east of San Francisco, and I was recording there one year, and a logging company had come through posting notices that they wanted to do a new protocol called selective logging. And I said, well, “Is there going to be any environmental impact because of selective logging?” And they said, "No impact at all." I said, "Can I record?" And they said, "Sure." So I went there and recorded in June of 1988. And that summer the logging company did their selective logging, meaning taking out a tree here and there. And in 1989, after the logging operation, I went back and the whole place had been transformed. From what you could see, not a stick or a tree was out of place, but from what you could hear of, all of it was gone. The birds had gone because of just a few changes in that habitat. The birds just didn't inhabit that particular place anymore. And they left. But you can't tell from looking at it that it's changed at all. That was the first time I noticed that human endeavor was actually having an impact on the natural soundscape.
Melissa Ceria [00:15:03] The danger there, Bernie, is that you're saying it's invisible to the eye, but the change is happening.
Bernie Krause [00:15:10] Yeah, it's almost like (Antoine de) Saint-Exupéry: What is essential is invisible to the eye.
Melissa Ceria [00:15:16] What emotions does it elicit in you in those moments?
Bernie Krause [00:15:20] First of all, I'm surprised at how profound the message is to us. Secondly, it makes me feel very sad. I really have to think hard and long when I get up in the morning about what I want to do, and how I want to proceed with this work now, because it's getting to the point where so much of it is gone. Over 70% of my archive that I've been recording for 50 years now is from habitats that no longer exist.
Melissa Ceria [00:15:47] On a personal note, presumably your work has brought you tremendous joy, but I hear you expressing a sadness, an increasing sadness. How do you reconcile the two?
Bernie Krause [00:15:56] I don't. I mean, there's no way to reconcile it. They exist in parallel with one another. I get tremendous joy when I actually hear the sounds now, but the sounds are diminished. And also, at my age, I'm 85 years old now, I'm beginning to lose my hearing. And so that's another thing that's really hard to live with at this point. At the same time, when I go out and record, the material doesn't come through the microphone anymore, and it's not on tape, it's not recorded because it's not there.
Melissa Ceria [00:16:28] You've openly discussed how nature's tranquility helps alleviate your ADHD. You wrote, and I'm quoting: "It nurtures me in ways that no other experience, vocation, or chemical intercession can. In fact, wild soundscapes have become the guiding voices of the divine, my mantras, my sermon on the Mount." Why was it important for you to share this with your readers?
Bernie Krause [00:16:52] This stuff is really therapeutic to us. The reason that I started it, and the reason that I got involved in it, was because it made me feel good when I was out there recording. I want them to know what the impact is on me and how being present in that world, in the natural world, makes me feel. And I hope that other people can enjoy the same kind of benefit from it that I've had.
Melissa Ceria [00:17:16] Your work is often described as being at the intersection of science and art. What draws you to both disciplines?
Bernie Krause [00:17:23] It's very clear when I write a paper, a scientific paper and get it published, maybe six colleagues will read it. If I do a program like I did for the Fondation Cartier in Paris, The Great Animal Orchestra, over a million and a half people see and hear that presentation. And because it's formed as a work of art, it hits you emotionally rather than intellectually, and it has an emotional impact that causes you to think about what it is that's happening in this world that you inhabit. So the transformation of the scientific data into works of art is seminal to my idea of what I need to do in this world now. And so I'm taking all of my material and transforming it now.
Melissa Ceria [00:18:12] So the sense of urgency that you're describing has a real impact on your creative choices. What are you looking at more closely now?
Bernie Krause [00:18:22] Well, I'm just looking more closely at how we're going to make it through this terrible period that we're going through, on all levels, and in particular with the effect that we're having on the natural world and our inability to be able to come to terms with what it is we need to do to make those necessary changes as a culture, as political entities, as economic entities, all of them. Our survival depends on it. And the closer we come to realize that, and the sooner we come to realize it, I think the better off we're going to be.
Melissa Ceria [00:18:58] Your work distinguishes between sounds and noise in your book, The Power of Tranquility in a Very Noisy World. You highlight that as Americans, we are a noisy culture. Can you elaborate a bit on that idea for us?
Bernie Krause [00:19:12] We're a young country, and we're still trying to have our egos recognized somehow. James Watt was, in the early 1980s. Ronald Reagan, Secretary of the interior. And one of the first things that he did was to shut down the Bureau of Noise Management. And when he was asked why he did that, he said, "Well, noise is power." And the noisier we are as Americans, the more powerful we appear to be to others. So there's something about the DNA of that idea that it runs very deep in the veins of many Americans, and they have loud motorcycles, and they drive with their windows down and cars with loud sound systems, and we go to noisy restaurants to eat, which are all created, by the way, for quick turnover, because the noisier those places are, the physical effect on us is one of distraction and anxiety. And so we are a country of noise. We're noisy politically, we're noisy culturally, and we just can't seem to help ourselves.
Melissa Ceria [00:20:24] And so it affects our well-being as a society.
Bernie Krause [00:20:27] Sure, it affects our health.
Melissa Ceria [00:20:29] Which countries have you visited that have quieter cultures?
Bernie Krause [00:20:32] Northern European countries tend to be a little bit quieter. There are groups that live more closely connected to the natural world, that understand the effect of noise on the natural world around them, and they tend to be a little bit quieter, a little bit more careful, a little bit more conscious of their presence and the effect that has on other living organisms around them. It's a problem we have to deal with.
Melissa Ceria [00:20:58] And it's ironic, right, that just as we are becoming a noisier culture, the sounds in our environment are being silenced.
Bernie Krause [00:21:08] The natural sounds, the sounds that are really therapeutic and helpful to us and remedial, are cut out because they're overwhelmed by our noise.
Melissa Ceria [00:21:18] What advice would you give to individuals and communities looking to reconnect with the natural world?
Bernie Krause [00:21:24] Shut the hell up and get out there! That's the kind expression. You have to spend some time out in the natural world. And don't be afraid. You'll be just fine out there. And the other thing is you have to be quiet. And we have to learn. We have to study to be quiet.
Melissa Ceria [00:21:43] What does that mean?
Bernie Krause [00:21:45] That means we have to pay some attention to the sounds around us and how they affect us when we are quiet, when we're actually listening, actively listening, engaged in that process.
Melissa Ceria [00:21:56] Do you have a practice of your own that you could share with us that helps you to listen, to quiet down, to be present?
Bernie Krause [00:22:05] Sure. When I go out and record, that's the best way to do it. I try not to rub my hands, rub my body. I try not to slap mosquitoes. I try not to cough. I try not to sneeze or sniff. I try to be really, really quiet because I want to hear the very subtle pieces of that fabric of sound that is so engaging and important. Those are the sounds I want to hear, not me.
Melissa Ceria [00:22:32] Do you think that in our culture we are somewhat afraid of silence?
Bernie Krause [00:22:38] There's no question about that. That has to do with making ourselves heard and seen at the same time. And so that culture of noise is very, very important to us. We've nurtured that a long time. You know, I mean, it started..This whole thing about noise, it has its roots going back as far as the 11th, 12th, 13th century, when we built churches with big, thick walls to shut out the sound of the natural world and separate it. The only thing that we heard was the echo of our own voices in these huge churches that populate Europe, and we made that separation from the natural world at that point, because it was considered by the church as evil. These sounds.
Melissa Ceria [00:23:22] Where are you going next? What will you be recording next? What can we look forward to?
Bernie Krause [00:23:28] What I'm working on is a new project for the Cartier Foundation. We're trying to get the archive placed at the Foundation in Paris, and then we're going to be developing from that, works of art that are derived from my archive. They're actually looking at the archive as a standalone work of art in its own right. Pretty interesting concept.
Melissa Ceria [00:23:53] And will these be audio pieces? Visual pieces?
Bernie Krause [00:23:58] It'll be both audio and visual. Because again, we're visual culture. And for the first time we can actually see impressions of sound, either projected, or we can use different kinds of art pieces to actually show what we're listening to.
Melissa Ceria [00:24:13] And to have that visual component, Bernie, is to realize that suddenly nothing appears.
Bernie Krause [00:24:19] Well, it shows in a healthy environment the ways in which sound is organized. Each species of organism finds its own bandwidth, which is unimpeded by other organisms. So it's like its own television channel or radio station. So it finds its own bandwidth and it stays there. And these habitats are defined by these structures of sound. And you can actually see it happen in real time in The Great Animal Orchestra, which is really what's so neat about it, because it does have that visual component to it.
Melissa Ceria [00:24:54] And Bernie, you also restore a sense of grandeur through the scale of the work. As we look and listen to it, we realize just how important and powerful that ecosystem is. I think it's a beautiful reminder of our relationship with the environment and our place in this world.
[00:25:10] Bernie, it's been a pleasure speaking with you.
Bernie Krause [00:25:13] Thank you so much.