IS THIS THE MOST UNLIKELY XMAS ALBUM EVER?
Move over, Adele — David Attenborough has released a truly wild album ...featuring nose flutes, didgeridoos and musical bamboo!
Over recent years, the Christmas No 1 slot has often been taken by X Factor finalists or charity singles. In previous decades, a novelty hit was often the festive bestseller, such as There’s No One Quite Like Grandma in 1980, or Mr Blobby in 1993.
This year, there’s perhaps an even more unlikely contender for Christmas No1 in the album charts — Sir David Attenborough. More astonishing still, Britain’s bestloved broadcaster’s bid involves music performed on a nose flute, a Paraguayan harp and a didgeridoo.
It is a double CD of music he recorded during his globe-trotting adventures for the BBC during the Fifties and Sixties, while filming his Zoo Quest series.
‘Although the programmes were primarily about animals,’ he says, ‘I always took the chance of recording some of the music on each trip. When I came back, I handed the tapes to the BBC and they’ve been sitting in Broadcasting House ever since.’
But these are not rough amateur recordings. Sir David carried a state-of-the-art portable recorder that ran off eight bulky torch batteries: it was cumbersome and heavy and had to be rewound by hand, but produced high-quality sound. The microphone acted as a speaker, too, so that, at the press of a button, he could play back the tape for singers and musicians to hear.
Many of them had never met white Westerners before, let alone encountered such sophisticated technology, and their reactions were always the same: ‘First bemusement, then huge smiles.’
Sir David’s fascination with folk music began in the early Fifties when he learned of the work of U.S. folklorist Alan Lomax, who recorded blues singers in America’s Deep South. As a young Tv producer, he invited Lomax to London and record British folk singers for a live Tv series called Song Hunter.
‘One of our most amazing performers,’ remembers Sir David, ‘was an Irish lady called Margaret Barry who had, Alan said, a very important ballad called She Moves Through The Fair.’ He was entranced by her music and recorded Miss Barry several more times, in London’s Irish pubs with his portable recorder.
It was natural that, for his subsequent job, Sir David would want to take his tape machine with him. For the next nine years, between 1954 and 1963, he travelled the world for Zoo Quest.
Now, for the first time, we can hear the remarkable sounds he discovered around the world. Many would have been lost for ever without his tapes: ‘Back then, there were remote places where traditions that had developed over centuries were still continued. They had no knowledge of the Western music that has since enveloped the world.’
Among the weird and wonderful instruments that may help Sir David top the charts are . . .
ZANY XYLOPHONE
A SOrT of xylophone from Sierra Leone, the balange was recorded on the first Zoo Quest series in 1954, accompanied by iron rattles and drums. ‘We were fortunate,’ says Sir David, ‘to find a real virtuoso of the balange, who played a wonderful piece for us.
‘I played it back to him. He listened intently, but I could see he wasn’t impressed by Western technology.
‘He said that he could quite understand how the machine could record that particular tune, because it was after all pretty simple.
‘Now he would play something that would really show whether my metal box could learn a piece of music of real complexity. He played a dazzling piece, full of scales and rapid notes, and then gave me a look as if to say: “What about that, then?”
‘I rewound it and he put the speaker to his ears. I could see his eyes rolling with pleasure — he was very impressed.’
THE ‘BISCUIT BOX’
THe za-za is another West African instrument, consisting of a tin can or ‘biscuit box’, with ‘struts and strings, and bits of gravel inside. As
you play with your thumbs, you shake it up and down to give the rhythm, so one musician creates a very complete sound.’
AUNTING ORCHESTRA
THE gamelan is not a single instrument, but an orchestra in Bali, Indonesia — ‘the biggest collection of instrumentalists playing together out side the Western tradition,’ says Sir David. There can be as many as 30 or 40 players, playing gongs or metallophones such as xylophones. "They play by memory, with none of the music written down, and they are so dedicated that they will rehearse every night.
‘In those days, we heard this haunting music every night in the villages of Bali: energetic and dramatic, full of fire, excitement and thrill.’
FUNERAL GUITAR
A Three-STrIngeD instrument carved from wood, like an ornate guitar, the gambus is commonly used at weddings and other occasions in Borneo. Sir David first heard it played in a remote Dyak village: ‘They were an extraordinarily hospitable people who lived in long communal houses, sometimes 100 yards long. They had gongs that they played in a stately and moving way, and the gambus.
‘One night, they seemed to go on much later than ever. next morning, I asked whether there had been a celebration. It was a funeral, they said — and I discovered I had spent all night beside the body!’
PARAGUAYAN HARP
The national instrument of the South American country, it had never been heard on British television before Sir David recorded it in 1959.
The sound proved popular and was used as the Zoo Quest theme.
The harp has between 32 and 46 strings, played with the fingernails. ‘They don’t have any pedals, unlike european harps,’ explains Sir David, ‘so you can make great sweeping runs.’ The CD includes the show’s theme tune, guira Campana, which translates as The Bell Bird.
NOSE FLUTE
In 1963, Sir David and his camera crew received a royal summons from Queen Salote of Tonga to film some of its traditional ceremonies. her court had an official Custodian of Tradition, who was a virtuoso of the nose flute.
This bamboo instrument, the great naturalist explains, ‘is played by holding it up to one of your nostrils and then stopping the other nostril with your thumb. The courtier practised it every evening and sometimes played nose flute chamber music with a group of friends.’
Queen Salote also had a resident palace band who played every day. She composed royal music, including a foot-stomping lullaby that would be guaranteed to wake any baby.
TURTLE CALLERS
In FIjI, priests practise an ancient art known as turtle calling. A deep, slow incantation is reputed to bring the giant reptiles swimming up from the depths — but, when Sir David first heard of the custom, he didn’t believe it was possible.
‘The local priest, a shy man, told us he could summon up turtles with a song — and, if he performed it correctly, a huge white shark would follow. I was very sceptical, I must say. he took us up to a cliff, overlooking a bay, where the ocean was a wonderful amethyst blue, and he stood on the cliff and started a chant. And, as he sang it, a turtle suddenly came up to the surface.
‘I was still dubious and thought perhaps this was simply a place where there were a lot of turtles.
‘It slowly dived down again and, immediately, a large white shark appeared and swam just where the turtle had been. I was impressed!’
Further east, on the new hebrides, now called Vanuatu, the crew became the first to film the custom of landdiving — where youths would hurl themselves off high platforms with just a liana (jungle vine) tied round their ankle to prevent them from breaking their necks.
As they prepared to jump, recalls Sir David, ‘the villagers sang to give them courage. It was a Stone Age version of bungee-jumping’.
In new guinea, trekking into the jungle to film birds of paradise, he recorded their team of porters — at least 100 villagers helping to lug the heavy equipment along the trail. ‘Many had not seen europeans before. The sound of their voices struck me as really quite magical.’
BAMBOO BEATS
SIr DAVID describes the valiha of Madagascar as ‘a 2ft length of bamboo with strings running along its length and wrapped round it. You play the tube by holding it in front of you like a harp and plucking it with your thumb’.
It is the traditional instrument of the Merina people who live in the middle of Madagascar, off the South African coast. Their greatest festival is the day of retournement or The return: ‘They go to the burial grounds and bring out the corpses of their ancestors that have lain there, some for decades, some for centuries, wrapped in silken shrouds.
‘You might think it is a doleful occasion, to be carrying around corpses, but no — they believe their ancestors should be welcomed with joyful music.’
SACRED DIDGERIDOO
SIr DAVID’S final trip for the Quest series took him to Australia’s northern Territory. In Arnhem Land, he saw an Aboriginal artist from the Burada tribe making a didgeridoo, a sacred instrument. A didgeridoo is ‘a wooden trumpet, 7ft long, made from the branch of a tree’.
Women and children were not permitted to watch the elder, whose name was Magani, carving and painting the instrument but, after much tactful persuasion, Sir David was allowed to see it being made.
‘In the presence of this thing, Magani whispered, because it was a sacred object. It was called Yurlunggur, the name of a serpent god. he was the great rainbow snake who emerged out of a waterhole in the Dreamtime, or the time of the Creation.’
Later, the BBC team filmed an initiation ceremony, at which young men, their bodies decorated with painted lizards, writhed along the ground and under Yurlunggur.
‘Magani blew down it to make the god speak,’ says Sir David. ‘It was very moving and this music takes me back into prehistory.’