Is Birdsong Music? by Hollis Taylor

Author:Hollis Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2017-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

MIMICRY VERSUS ORIGINALITY

My interest here is to delve deeper into avian mimicry as a way of opening a discussion on the nature and definition of music. At least one-fifth of songbirds are vocal mimics.1 This makes it noteworthy that so few studies into the capacity have been conducted. Importations and appropriations occur in a variety of social situations and differ widely among species. Some birds mimic when stressed. Functional hypotheses propose that mimicry might assist in foraging efficiency, predator avoidance and defense, communication in dense habitat, song development, mate attraction, recruiting assistance for mobbing—and on it goes.2 Avian mimicry is poorly understood, and my own comparative studies of lyrebirds and pied butcherbirds suggest that a single functional accounting will likely never serve for all mimicking species.3

One wonders what motivates pied butcherbirds, who have a good-sized repertoire of their own, to incorporate the sonic constructs of others. It is unknown whether the signal of an alien species, when pasted into formal song or subsong, refers to that species, merely represents an appreciation of diverse sounds, or denotes something else altogether. Might it be an audio diary? Is it neophilia? Could it be a way of detaching a sound from its use value and branding it “pied butcherbird”? A bolder move might be to frame mimicry as a hyperintensification of a bird’s milieu—as a bird revealing their inner world at the same time as connecting to their total environment, sonic and otherwise, and perhaps even to a source of power. Yes, this smacks of religion—which is often interwoven with music. If we think of the cave painters at Lascaux as establishing and celebrating a metaphysical connection to prey and survival, as well as the surrounding cosmos, can we likewise allow an avian artist such a moment? Asking such a question is impossible for a scientist because at present there is no chance of answering it. A zoömusicologist, having thought the question but also lacking any expectation of an answer, perhaps has a responsibility to blurt it out nonetheless. We cannot overlook that some human cultures believe animals have souls and participate in ceremonies.4

On a lighter note, I have wondered if mimicry could be an amused glance at other species—an inside joke. Might mimicry be a narrative, and does it archive any extinct species? “Other orders of being have their own literatures,” supposes poet Gary Snyder. “Narrative in the deer world is a track of scents that is passed on from deer to deer with an art of interpretation which is instinctive. A literature of blood-stains, a bit of piss, a whiff of estrus, a hit of rut, a scrape on a sapling and long gone.”5 Detaching a sound from its original function is a process often assumed to be purely human. One assumes this degree of complexity and elaboration would be well beyond what is necessary for survival and reproduction.

Mimicry is equally relevant to understanding the human sound world. Composers are prolific borrowers, from one another and from their own past works; jazz improvisers are fond of quoting themes from both within and without their idiom.

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