Thai Elephant Orchestra

[jazzy_dave]

As you know, I have a diverse taste in music which extends to non-human music such as humpback whales. Well, here is another discovery thanks to the Wire magazine (June 2005)'

Thai Elephant Orchestra (with Dave Soldier & Richard Lair)

2002 (Mulatta)

00:00 Thung Kwian Sunrise
06:07 Temple Music
09:07 Rainforest
10:56 Jojo
14:41 Duo For Renats
16:23 Big Band
19:15 Swing swing swing
22:59 Percussion Trio
25:32 Luuk Kob's Diddley Bow Feature
30:00 Harmonica Music
34:55 Heavy Logs
39:41 Noe We're off to Paint

𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘌𝘭𝘦𝘱𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘴
44:14 Elephant Field Recording

𝘌𝘭𝘦𝘱𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘏𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘴
47:53 Somneuk & Flour Elephants
51:13 Trio For Theremin & Electric Keyboard
53:16 Ken's Wind Instrument

THAI ELEPHANT ORCHESTRA In 1999, composer Dave Soldier and ‘elephantologist’ Richard Lair met at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre, where some of the 2500 survivors of Thailand’s 100,000 logging elephants still have to work for a living. As a career option for the rescued pachyderms, Lair and Soldier proposed that they play music for tourists. Elephants are highly intelligent social animals and rapidly took to many of the instruments Soldier designed for them to play with their trunks – giant slit drums, large marimba-like renats, the single string bass diddly-bow, a gong, mouth organ and reed instruments. “The notes and rhythms of the pieces were chosen completely by the elephants,” Soldier commented. He didn’t teach elephants to play prewritten human melodies but wanted to hear how they chose to play: “They play variously in duple meter... triple meter... and a dotted rhythm... Sometimes they found motifs for a particular piece and repeated them.” The harmonica became a fad for the animals – one morning Soldier arrived to hear it echoing all round the hills. One female elephant, at first frightened by the gong, learned to strike it on command; by the third day she refused to stop hitting it. The effect, to Western ears, is like children trying to play a gamelan orchestra – the sense of time unsteady, note choice a bit random, but the results, as heard on Thai Elephant Orchestra (Mulatta CD), are very enjoyable. The elephant diddly-bowing on “Rainforest” lays down a thunderous if uncertain groove, while the wheezy reed sounds on “JoJo” are hilarious. (AH)