I can recall the first news article I read about how words were being removed from young children’s dictionaries due to their perceived lack of relevance today. Words such as ‘blackberry’ and ‘bluebell’ made way for words such as ‘blog’ and ‘chatroom’. In direct contrast, the wonderful Spell Songs project by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris challenged this move by celebrating the magic of nature.
While this dictionary word-clipping caused quite a stir, what’s sadder is that our dislocation from nature is far worse than many of us seem to think. The recent State of Nature Report revealed that one in seven species in the UK are at risk of extinction and 58% of species are in decline. You can read the Wildlife Trust’s response to this and the new Environment Bill here.
We also have one of the lowest woodland coverages in Europe, a fact, which until recently, has not been given a lot of attention. We have just 13% woodland cover compared to the European average of 35%. Read about the Double UK Tree Cover campaign by Friends of the Earth here. While planting more trees is essential, so is building resilience in the trees we already have. Rather than buying saplings to plant from abroad, we should be planting those that are natively grown in the UK which are more resilient for growing here. Local tree nurseries play an important role in building up resilience to diseases, one significant failure on this front has been Ash Dieback, a chronic fungal disease which was introduced to the UK and which is devastating our native Ash species.
There is a greater need than ever before to educate people about nature and how we can do better. As well as benefitting our wildlife, increasing natural habitats also has health benefits to humans (read Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild by Lucy Jones).
So, besides those of us that are self-driven explorers in this field, how do you reach the ears of others? Music seems to be playing a much larger role than in the past. The Spell Songs album is one obvious example, but there is an increasing number of future album releases and projects driven by this connection. Jenny Sturgeon‘s forthcoming album, named after and inspired by Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain is one, it also features a series of field recordings made in the Cairngorm’s National Park. Likewise, Fishclaw are launching the Ash project, an audio-visual project that highlights the loss of Ash trees following Ash Dieback and the loss of local culture connected with Ash Trees. And, taking me nicely onto another crusader in the field and the focus of this piece (no apologies for the build-up – it seemed necessary and very relevant) is Cosmo Sheldrake who has featured a fair few times on these pages.
Cosmo Sheldrake Wake Up Calls
In plain terms and actual facts, Cosmo Sheldrake is a London-based multi-instrumentalist musician, composer and producer. His forthcoming album is called ‘Wake Up Calls’, has 13 tracks and a title intended to alert us to the glorious sounds around us, as well as the peril that the natural world faces. The album will be released on 18th September 2020.
However, this introduction probably doesn’t come close to conjuring up Cosmo Sheldrake’s unique take on the world. Described as a maker of ‘baroque pop or folktronica indie’, the truth is that Cosmo Sheldrake genuinely defies categorisation. No-one creates music quite the way that he does.
This new short immersive documentary by Gallivant Film, an award-winning production company, gives a closer insight into the world of Cosmo Sheldrake as they take you into the woods at spring with the artist. Working with his own field recordings of the dawn and evening chorus, he talks us through his process of interpreting these sounds into music and playing them back to the places he recorded them.
Son of a biologist and voice teacher and brother of a mycologist, Cosmo Sheldrake released his first single ‘The Moss’ in 2014, which was followed by the ‘Pelicans We’ EP in 2015 and his debut album The Much Much How How and I in April 2018. He has toured internationally, composed music for film and theatre, and in 2015 he ran a community choir. Cosmo releases music through his own label Tardigrade Records.
Cosmo collaborated with Bernie Krause at The Great Animal Orchestra exhibition at Foundation Cartier in Paris and in 2019 he developed a series of ‘Wake up Calls’, pieces composed entirely from recordings of endangered British birds, pieces which now form his next full-length album.
‘Wake Up Calls’ was created over a nine year period, using recordings of bird song featured on the red and amber lists of endangered British birds (with the exception of a Robin and a Blackbird, which aren’t endangered – yet). The album starts at night with a Nightjar and a Nightingale. The music progresses, track by track, through dawn and day time, round to the evening chorus and back to night with another Nightingale and an Owl. Cuckoo Song, is composed by Benjamin Britten and features the sound of a Cuckoo singing above Britten’s grave in Aldeburgh Cemetery, recorded by the soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause. Cosmo says ‘I couldn’t help but include a recording of a Sheldrake, the bird that my family is named after, which is also on the amber list’.
The project has slowly changed over the years. Some of the pieces started as Christmas presents for friends and family. The presents were intended as alarm clock music, in the hope that they might help people wake up in the morning without the anger often inspired by traditional alarm sounds. They worked well, but had a slightly unintended side effect. Everyone who used them reported that they had become increasingly sensitised to the sound of the dawn chorus and would often wake up at the slightest sound of bird song. They had the same effect on Cosmo. A passionate conservationist, he also wrote a couple of songs in support of the People’s March for Wildlife in September 2019. The name ‘Wake Up Calls’ was a suggestion of Robert McFarlane’s through a conversation they had in the run up the march. Cosmo wrote Nightjar for an Extinction Rebellion protest in London.
‘I hope that this music may serve as a wake up call: to help us become more aware of the glorious polyphonic soundworlds that surround us before many of these voices become extinct in Britain, and to remind us not to take any of these creatures and the music that they make for granted’.
Cosmo Sheldrake’s New album: Wake Up Calls (Tardigrade) is out on Friday 18th September 2020
Website – https://www.cosmosheldrake.com/