Songs of the Humpback Whale (album)

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Songs of the Humpback Whale is a 1970 album produced by bio-acoustician Roger Payne. It publicly demonstrated for the first time the elaborate whale vocalizations of Humpbacks, and became the bestselling environmental album in history, selling over 100,000 copies. By raising awareness of the intelligence and culture of whales the album helped spawn a worldwide ”Save The Whales” movement, leading to the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment 10-year global moratorium on commercial whaling (observed by all but a few nations).

Background

Roger Payne has a background in bat and owl echolocation, but his interest in whale vocalizations came about circuitously. In the late 1960s he heard on the radio that a dead whale had washed up on Revere Beach (near Tufts University where he was working) so he drove out to see it. He found that souvenir hunters had already hacked off the flukes from the dead porpoise, somebody had carved their initials in its side, and a cigar butt had been stuffed into its blowhole.

“I removed the cigar and stood there for a long time with feelings I cannot describe. Everybody has some such experience that affects him for life, probably several. That night was mine.” - Roger Payne

In 1966, Payne heard about the whale recordings of Frank Watlington, a Navy engineer who eight years earlier had captured eerie underwater moaning and wailing sounds while manning a top-secret hydrophone station off the coast of Bermuda, listening for Russian submarines. Payne asked for and received copies of the recordings, and soon made the startling discovery that the songs repeated themselves, exactly. The shortest songs were in the six-minute range and the longest were over 30 minutes, and these could be repeated continuously for up to 24 hours. When the sounds were graphed they displayed a definite structure.

Subsequent research by Payne and his then-wife Katharine Payne discovered that all whales in a given ocean (or at least, the males during breeding season) sing the same song. Further, the whale songs change subtly from year-to-year, but never went back to previous songs. Katy further discovered that the longer songs sung by the whales used the equivalent of “rhyming,” with key structures repeating at intervals. This raises the possibility that the whales use mnemonic devices to help them remember the more complicated songs.

Reception

The album was an unexpected smash hit, quickly selling over 100,000 copies and eventually going multi-platinum. Excerpts from the record have shown up in songs by Judy Collins, Kate Bush and Glass Wave, in the symphonic suite And God Created Great Whales by Alan Hovhaness, on the Voyager Gold Record which was carried aboard the Voyager program spaceships, and in the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Numerous other recordings of Humpback and other whales have attempted to capitalize on its popularity. In 2010 the album was inducted into the National Recording Registry as one of the significant recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States."

Track listing

1. “Solo Whale” – 9:32 (recording: Frank Watlington)
2. "Slowed-Down Solo Whale" – 1:05 (recording: Frank Watlington)
3. “Tower Whales" – 3:23 (recording: Roger & Katharine Payne)
4. “Distant Whale" – 3:55 (recording: Frank Watlington)
5. “Three Whale Trip" – 16:31 (recording: Roger & Katharine Payne)

Production notes

• Produced by Roger Payne
• Recorded by Frank Watlington and Roger Payne