Barking Dog: March 16, 2023
This Week’s Theme: Non-Music Recordings
This week is a little different from our usual programming. Every week as we’re preparing a regular edition of the show, we come across interesting recordings from outside the world of folk music, and outside the world of music in general. We sometimes play these tracks alongside traditional folk recordings, but this week, we wanted to highlight the enormous body of non-musical recordings that exists alongside, and often informs, the traditional music we present to you each week. I hope you enjoy this break from the norm, and I hope you can still find hints of music in these wide-ranging recordings.
Frémeaux Nature - Grande Chaleur (Hot Weather)
From a 1995 album of Canadian Soundscapes produced by Bernard Fort
This is the sound of hot weather in the Mount Saint Hilaire forest near Montreal
Unspecified - Harbor and at Sea
From the 1954 album Voice of the Sea, recorded by Emory Cook at the height of a period of excitement surrounding new recording technologies
It presents a collage of sounds from the ocean, collected along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America
We hear the horn of the Queen Mary and general activity on board the ship
Unspecified - Bellringing
From the 1982 album Cable Car Soundscapes, recorded by Jed Speare for Folkways Records
We hear a lot of Folkways releases on this week’s show because of the incredible amount of groundbreaking educational recordings the label has released during its extensive history
The album this track is from presents sounds from the historic San Francisco cable cars
This specific track captures the various bellringing patterns developed by the cable car workers and their discussion of the annual Bellringing Championship
Unspecified - Steel Saw Cutting
From the 1964 album The Sounds of the Junk Yard, recorded by Michael Siegel at a junkyard in Warren, Pennsylvania
This is the sound of a steel saw cutting channel iron into two pieces
Unspecified - The Office on a Busy Day
Off the 1964 album Sounds of the Office, recorded by Michael Siegel for Folkways Records
Though you can find similar contemporary ambient tracks of office noise on YouTube aimed towards people working from home during the pandemic, I doubt many offices sound quite like this nowadays, with manual typewriters, intercoms, calculators, laminators, bookkeeping machines, addressographs, postage meters, envelope sealers, and time clocks all going at the same time
Albro T Gaul - Suburban Sounds (Crickets and temperature, Crickets chirp at slow speed)
From Albro T Gaul’s 1960 album Sounds of Insects
Mixed Chorus of Frogs - Mixed Chorus
From the 1958 album Sounds of North American Frogs, recorded and narrated by renowned herpetologist Charles M Bogert
The nice thing is that we know exactly when and where this was recorded: One half-mile south of Archbold Biological Station, Highlands County, Florida, at 10:15 pm on July 7, 1954
The Barking Treefrog is the focus of this track, though we hear the Pine Woods Treefrog, Oak Toads, and the Gopher Frog as well
Unspecified - Field Sparrow
From the 1961 album The Birds World of Song, recorded by Hudson and Sandra Ansley at a Maryland Farm
The track is pretty self-explanatory, but the liner notes provide musical notation for each of the bird calls, which is a really nice touch
Unspecified - The Rainy Season: Giant Toad
From the 1952 album Sounds of a Tropical Rain Forest: Produced for the American Museum of Natural History
This album went through a few stages: Herbert Knobloch and Frederic Ramsey, Jr. were commissioned by the American Museum of Natural History in New York to produce an album of animal sounds from the Peruvian Amazon region called Montaña
They were then put in contact with scientists from the Bronx Zoo and the Cornell Ornithology Department who provided them with information about animal activity at different times of day and during wet and dry periods in the rainforest, and were given some recordings made in the rainforest
From there, Knobloch and Ramsey produced the sounds they still needed at the Bronx Zoo in the early morning before visitors were permitted
The general idea of the album was to provide a full audio picture of the rainforest from dawn to dusk during both the rainy and dry seasons
P Bruce - Analysis: Group Singing
Off the 1966 Folkways album The Lyrebird: A Documentary Study of Its Song, recorded by Peter Bruce and KC Halafoff near Melbourne, Australia
The lyrebird is one of the greatest mimics of the natural world
Arthur Merwin Greenhall - At the Zoo: Indian Elephant
From a 1954 album called Sounds of Animals, an instructional recording of the sounds of different animals from the Detroit Zoo and The Cornell Behavioral Farm at Cornell University
Greenhall was the curator at the Detroit Zoological Park
Unspecified - The Dry Season: Monkey Chatter
Another one from the 1952 album Sounds of a Tropical Rain Forest: Produced for the American Museum of Natural History
Sandy Stoddard - Moose and Bear Calls
From the 1956 album Folk Music from Nova Scotia, recorded by the folklorist Helen Creighton
This is one of my favourite non-music tracks, which we’ve played a few times on the show
It’s a perfect example of the kind of things we stumble upon while finding music for the show each week
Sandy Stoddard, who performs these calls, was born on an island off of Nova Scotia where his father was a light keeper
He later moved to the mainland and lived in Ship Harbour, where he was well-known as a guide, folk singer, and raconteur
Harry Gibbons - Imitations of Walrus
From a 1955 album of Inuit songs from Hudson Bay and Alaska
He was from Southampton Island in Nunavut
The liner notes state that one of the most useful gifts of a hunter is the ability to imitate the calls of the animals so perfectly that he can bring them within shooting range
Unspecified - Laika’s Heart
This is off a 1958 Folkways album called Voices of the Satellites, which chronicles the sounds of the first thirteen American and Soviet satellites launched during that year
This is a recording of the heartbeat of Laika, the first dog to go to space (warning: don’t click the link if you don’t want to read a sad story)
Unspecified - Natural Sounds: Wood Thrush, Slowed Down to ¼ Speed
From the 1953 album Sound Patterns, recorded for Folkways Records
It’s a compilation album divided into four sections: natural, musical, location, and manmade sounds, and it includes both the most unusual and the most common sounds that exist
Peter Paul Kellogg of the Cornell Ornithology Department made this recording
Dan Gibson - Loons; R. Murray Schafer - Talking Fugue
This is from the 1983 album Music As Transformation, released on cassette by the Canadian magazine Musicworks, which focused on Canadian avant-garde music
The first track was a recording of loon calls by Dan Gibson, a photographer, cinematographer, and sound recordist from Montreal
It’s from his Solitudes series of environmental recordings
The second track was R Murray Schafer’s “Talking Fugue”
Schafer was a composer, environmentalist, and educator from Ontario, known for his World Soundscape Project and his interest in acoustic ecology, which studies the auditory relationship between people and their environment
University of Toronto Electronic Music Studio - Dripsody
From the 1967 album Electronic Music, recorded at the University of Toronto Electronic Music Studio, which was the first studio of its kind in Canada and the second in North America
Hugh Le Caine produced this track in 1955 from the sound of the fall of a single drop of water
The liner notes state that the “rhythmic figures which imitate the rhythms of dripping water were written down in musical notation and set up on tape by splicing together prints of the right pitch.”
Unspecified - Stethoscope Sounds: Sounds of the Bowels
From the 1955 Folkways Records album Sounds of Medicine
The full title of the track is actually “Sounds of the Bowels - A Normal Hungry Man Smoking a Cigarette Before Dinner”, which is about as descriptive as I think we need to get
Michael Faraday, Jenny Johnson, Roy Hart - Four & Five Octave Leaps on the word “Viola”: Boy / Female Voice / Male Voice
From the 1956 album Vox Humana: Alfred Wolfsohn’s Experiments in Extension of Human Vocal Range
Wolfsohn became interested in the abilities of the human voice after serving in the First World War, turning to these musical experiments as a form of therapy as he suffered from PTSD
Unspecified - Parabuccal Speech / Singing Voice
From the 1964 Folkways album Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, recorded by Harm A. Drost to demonstrate the evolving developments in artificial voice creation after the removal of the larynx
Unspecified - Delay Distortion
Off the 1958 album The Science of Sound, produced by Bell Telephone Laboratories
Unspecified - Eating, Happy Birthday
From the 1959 album The Sounds of Camp, recorded for Folkways at Camp Killooleet, a children’s sleepaway camp in Hancock, Vermont, in 1958
The liner notes say of this track: “At Killooleet there are few traditions, but one of them is the ‘happy birthday’ parade through the dining room. When a child has a birthday, Peg Kunitz, the dietician, bakes a birthday cake for the child, and a similar though not so elaborate cake for each table. Then after the main course is finished a parade of waiters goes through the dining room showing the cake and singing ‘happy birthday.’”
Students of McGill University - Ode I
From a 1959 album that captures a performance of Sophocles’ play Antigone, performed by students at McGill University in Montreal
This Ode is performed by the Chorus
Philip Sidney Gross - Numbers 1-10
From a 1962 educational album meant to teach International Morse Code through a method developed by the narrator, Philip S Gross
Here, we learn numbers one through ten
Tony Schwartz - People Contemplating “Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer”
He was an agoraphobic sound archivist who spent much of his life documenting the sounds of his neighbourhood in New York City, though he also collected recordings from around the world by corresponding with international musicians
From the 1962 album “You’re Stepping on My Shadow”, which was originally broadcast on WNYC’s Around New York program
In the liner notes, Schwartz states: “It is hoped that this record will demonstrate the use of the tape recorder as a tool similar to the portable camera and that someday soon, the term "the art of recording" will really mean something more than the technique of recording.”
The painting in question…
Ritchie Calder - Food from the Jungle
Off the 1955 Folkways album Science in Our Lives, narrated by British writer Ritchie Calder, who was personally interested in the public understanding of science
Morris Schreiber - The Rhythms of Poetry
From author and educator Morris Schreiber’s 1960 album Understanding and Appreciation of Poetry
This is the first track of the album, discussing the rhythms of poetry
Aaron Kramer - Old Mattress in the Lots
He was a poet, social activist, and translator from New York
This poem is from his 1957 album Serenade by Aaron Kramer: Reading His Own and Other Poems by Poets of New York
Lawrence Ferlinghetti - The World is a Beautiful Place
He was a poet, artist, and activist from New York who founded City Lights bookstore in San Francisco
Though he didn’t consider himself a Beat poet, he published many of the Beat poets, including Allen Ginsberg, and is often aligned with members of that movement
Ferlinghetti died in 2021 at the age of 101
The city of San Francisco named his birthday, March 24, “Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day” on the occasion of his 100th birthday
This poem is from perhaps his best known collection of poetry, A Coney Island of the Mind, which was published in 1958
Allen Ginsberg - A Dream Record
He was a poet and writer from New Jersey, known as one of the leading figures in the Beat Generation
From the album At Reed College: The First Recorded Reading of Howl & Other Poems, recorded in February of 1956
Leonard Cohen - Warning
From a 1957 album of poems by six Montreal poets, recorded when Cohen was still known primarily as a poet and novelist, about 10 years before he began his music career
This poem was included in his very first poetry book, Let Us Compare Mythologies, from 1956
Sarah Webster Fabio - To Turn from Love
She was a poet, educator, and literary critic from Nashville, Tennessee, who began writing poetry as a high school student
Fabio helped introduce the Black Arts Movement to her colleagues while she was teaching in California, and she helped establish the first Black Studies departments at several universities
This recording is from her 1973 album Soul Ain’t Soul Is, recorded for Folkways Records
Sterling A Brown - Long Gone
From a 1954 album of African American poetry
Brown was an American folklorist, poet, and literary critic known for being the first poet laureate of the District of Columbia
The founder of Folkways Records, Moses Asch, recorded this one in the early 1940s
It was first published in 1922
Utah Phillips - The Two Bums
He was an anarchist folksinger, storyteller, and labour organiser from Ohio who also rode the rails throughout the United States and worked as an archivist, a dishwasher, and a warehouse-man at various points in his life
Recorded live in British Columbia in February 1981
Pedro Pietri - Telephone Booth Number 535
He was a New York poet and a founding member of the Nuyorican movement, which consisted of artists of Puerto Rican descent living in New York City
This is from his 1979 album Loose Joints: Poetry by Pedro Pietri
Pete Seeger - Pete’s Extroduction
Pete Seeger was a very influential folk singer and activist from New York who advocated for countless important social causes through his music
This is from his 2008 album At 89, which won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album
Bob Dylan - Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie
Recorded live at Town Hall in New York City in April of 1963, when the influential folksinger Woody Guthrie was hospitalised with Huntington’s disease at Brooklyn State Hospital in New York City
Sylvia Plath - Mushrooms
A poet and writer from Massachusetts known for her novel The Bell Jar and her collections of poetry
Recorded at the Poetry Room at Harvard College Library in the late 1950s
Raymond Souster - Downtown Corner News Stand
From the 1958 Folkways album Six Toronto Poets
Souster was a poet from Toronto whose career spanned over 70 years
Though he is known as a poet, Souster worked as a bank vault custodian at CIBC for 45 years before retiring in 1984
Souster was also a founding editor of Contact magazine and Contact Press, which published books from 1952 until 1967
George Abbe - Changed
An American poet and novelist
From the 1961 Folkways album Poetry in the Round: A Poetry Workshop
Gwendolyn Brooks - Song of the Front Yard
She was a very influential Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and teacher from Chicago, who held the position of Poet Laureate of Illinois from 1968 until her death in 2000, and the position of US Poet Laureate for the 1985 to 1986 term
This is from a 1954 Folkways anthology of African American poetry
Richard Brautigan - A Chapter from Trout Fishing in America
Henry Hamilton - The Case of the Dream Murder
