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In 1968, when Paul McCartney was putting the final touches on Blackbird, he called up the EMI sound effects library and requested a tape labeled Birds of a Feather. As a result, the final song features the melodic chirp of a male blackbird, originally recorded in the garden of a sound engineer three years earlier.
The effect was so intrinsic to the track that some fans thought McCartney had recorded it live on the roof of Abbey Road Studios. This is an example of how the sounds of nature have an impact on music, from the satisfying thundercrunch that opens Enyas Storm’s in Africa to the twilight cricket song that underscores Missy Elliott’s Rain (supa Dupa Fly).
Last year, Elliot’s producer said that hearing the crickets in the music made him want to use nature in his songs. Just things that we see and hear every day.
The sounds used to go uncredited until now, since a new initiative will see Nature as an official artist on major streaming platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music. Artists who use natural sounds in their recordings can now choose to list “nature” as a featured artist. And a share of their profits will be distributed to environmental causes.
Brian Eno,who has remixed his David Bowie collaboration to get real about the project, says that it is a way of saying to artists that we all use sounds like waves and wind, so why don’t we pay nature a royalty?
Artists have also contributed to this first wave of releases, including London Grammar,Mø, Tom Walker, and Elie Goulding, who updated her song Brightest Blue with the calls of speckled chachalacas and Amazonian oropendas. Alt-pop star Aurora is also releasing a new track featuring the sounds of lush,dense forests in her native Norway.
Called Sounds Right, the project is the brainchild of the museum for the United Nations, UN Live, which hopes to raise $40 million in its first four years.
Nature’s artist page on Spotify will also include ambient recordings of the planet, and for the tracks, at least 70% of the profits will fund conservation programs.
Current targets include preservation efforts in Madagascar and the Indian Ocean islands, as well as efforts to prevent deep sea mining. Aurora adds that it is much easier to engage people to feel like they are part of something and create a connection with nature.
Eno,who is renowned world-wide as the founder of Roxy Music and a pioneer of ambient music,is a key part of the project through his Earth Percent charity. Founded in 2021, the organization works for the music industry to support credible and impactful environmental organizations and will also distribute the money generated by sounds right.
Ig @mannu mwendwa.
