The Cante Jondo (or ‘Deep Song’) of Andalusia, popularized and made heroic by Lorca, was designed to bounce through the valleys of the Sierra Nevada. Farmers and villagers, washerwomen and shepherd boys would cry its pithy distillations of life on earth from rooftops and hillsides. Succinct, simple folk lyrics and tunes in endless permutation, the wind would carry these clear and melodious fragments like seeds, enabling them to take strong root in the land and bring forth the next generation of songs and singers.
There is a sea-borne ‘deep song’ too of course: that of the whales. Undeniably haunting and intricate, humpback whale songs flux across vast distances, penetrating deep hollows of the sea. Blue whales (possessors of the most potential decibels in nature by far) could once converse across the whole span of the globe. Marine noise pollution has ground down their wave-lengths now alas, but some think they can still burst the brains of giant squid with a well placed aural smash!
Whale bodies are hypersensitive to sound, like massive eardrums catching tiny sonic nuance between raucous waters. There is even research which suggests these creatures might be playing with fractals in their singing. The idea is of an endless song, always being continued somewhere, picked up by different singers, gradually shifted (perfected? – but never made perfect, finished) into new registers and clusters of resonance. But it is the same song underneath, sprung from the same multifarious urge to communicate and bridge distance and silence by filling it with the sound of being alive. The whales channel their music, that carries on as long as the species exists.
Back on land, closer to home, we can happily announce the completion of two new conversations, poetic and human. Sarah Hymas & Jo Brandon discuss, among other things, the breakdown of language, the desire and need to communicate – ‘Each of us hanging by our own tongue.’ It feels like there is a real seeking running through these poems, an earnestness, a quest for balance – so tenuous and tentative a thing.
David Tait and Kay Syrad have crafted a chain both intimate and expansive. The poems feel closely linked yet autonomous. Here, also, words themselves and the instruments of communication come under close scrutiny. There are some powerful and enigmatic encounters on this adventure, and we see a version of nature that seems like it might be able to impart some message too.