Wildlife champion

In our series about people with a passion for a species, we ask folk singer Sam Lee why he cares so much about the nightingale.

Folk singer Sam Lee on why he loves the nightingale

Why champion the nightingale?

Well, I think it’s fairer to say that the nightingale championed me first. He’s become the most incredible teacher – a master of song, an intrepid traveller, has exquisite taste in home and interiors, is immensely social and loves an ‘all-nighter’! The males have co- opted the stillness of the night and created a theatre for their music, evolving a sound that is as rich as any ancient indigenous human musical tradition I’ve come across.

How would you describe its song?

Mercurial, gymnastic, melancholic, brazen, exuberant, boastful, intimate, tender, reticent, generous, spacious, splendid and spiritual. Like the greatest arias or symphonies, his song ref lects and amplifies all the emotions you bring to him. I first heard one sing by Arlington Reservoir in 2007 with friends, one of whom was nine months pregnant. What ensued was the most extraordinary turn of events that involved me singing some folk songs and a sudden labour!

Why did you duet with the species?

It was quite by accident really. In 2014, BBC Radio Four commissioned me to make a 90th anniversary documentary on the first live outside radio broadcast in 1924:

Beatrice Harrison’s cello and nightingale recording. For my recording [bbc. co.uk/programmes/ b044m17b], I brought some string players together and sang the The Tan Yard Side. The bird joined us in key and rhythm – it was a phenomenal moment and inspired me to start up the annual Singing With Nightingale concerts, which bring audiences into the woods to experience this amazing human and avian interaction.

Music sounds best outside, especially when it includes a nightingale.

Why do you curate concerts between wild birds and musical artists?

We are nature so why be so anthropocentric in our musical endeavours? For thousands of years, in indigenous cultures, song has often been inspired by the landscape and wildlife. Music sounds best outside, especially when you include one of nature’s finest – the nightingale – in the programme.

How does birdsong inspire your music?

It’s there throughout, even if it’s not mentioned or heard explicitly. Birdsong has been my muse, my therapist, my compass and led me into many adventures. Birds have regularly appeared as messengers for me and I think we need to be open to these things. The name of my new album, Old Wow, came from a close encounter with a buzzard on a Scottish mountainside! It is deeply inf luenced by my thoughts on our connections to nature.

You helped assemble Let Nature Sing. Why should people engage with birdsong?

Use it or lose it! The RSPB and I got two and a half minutes of birdsong to number 18 in the charts, into places where it is rarely or never heard and into the ears of people who probably didn’t give birdsong, or the lack of it, all that much thought. If a small percentage of them go on to bring birdsong into their lives, then I think we have succeeded.

SAM LEE’s new album, Old Wow, is out on 31 January 2020 and will be accompanied by a UK tour: samleesong.co.uk.