Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction
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“[A] glorious guide to the miracle of life’s sound.” —The New York Times Book Review A lyrical exploration of the diverse sounds of our planet, the creative processes that produced these marvels, and the perils that sonic diversity now faces We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rain forests shimmering with insect sound and swamps pulsing with frog calls we learn about evolution’s creative powers. From birds in the Rocky Mountains and on the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt to new environments. Below the waves, we hear our kinship to beings as different as snapping shrimp, toadfish, and whales. In the startlingly divergent sonic vibes of the animals of different continents, we experience the legacies of plate tectonics, the deep history of animal groups and their movements around the world, and the quirks of aesthetic evolution. Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth history, Haskell illuminates and celebrates the emergence of the varied sounds of our world. In mammoth ivory flutes from Paleolithic caves, violins in modern concert halls, and electronic music in earbuds, we learn that human music and language belong within this story of ecology and evolution. Yet we are also destroyers, now silencing or smothering many of the sounds of the living Earth. Haskell takes us to threatened forests, noise-filled oceans, and loud city streets, and shows that sonic crises are not mere losses of sensory ornament. Sound is a generative force, and so the erasure of sonic diversity makes the world less creative, just, and beautiful. The appreciation of the beauty and brokenness of sound is therefore an important guide in today’s convulsions and crises of change and inequity. Sounds Wild and Broken is an invitation to listen, wonder, belong, and act.
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Haskell is our tour-guide on the history of sound on earth. We learn about the first insects who learn to rub their wings together to create a buzz, and how the evolution of flowers caused a huge motivation for the development of auditory communication for winged creatures.
He takes us under water to listen to snapping shrimps, and to remote mountains to discover the geographic differences in bird song. Haskell's writing is beautiful, immerses you in the moment, teaches you to listen and to wonder.
Of course, there's no nature story without a focus on all the ways humanity is causing destruction. It's very hard nowadays to listen without noticing humanity's creations rumbling, hammering, screaming and droning. We're not only destroying animal habitats and causing biodiversity loss, our artificial noises are also invading and actively harming nature. The chapter on the effects of boat traffic and seismic measurement noise in the ocean was particularly eye opening.
A book to savour and to read while immersed in nature and its soundscape.
There was unevenness in some chapters, in the balance of poetics and science. And it could have been a bit shorter, maybe cut the chapter on musical instrument, but all in all very inspiring.
Sound and song is such a weird thing, in its ephemerality.