the Sound Of Life Itself
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"Without music we’d simply be something other than human beings.” Birthdays, weddings, festivals, funerals and more – pretty much every important human event is marked by music, and our brains take it all in, no matter how distant or vague those memories become. In this episode we meet Paul Robertson, violinist and professor in music and medicine, who has spent years working with people suffering from dementia and brain damage. From a distant childhood memory of a fragment of a song to a mass of rugby fans singing together in harmony, we discover how the music embedded in memories and dreams can be accessed in people whose fabric of identity has come under stress in order to help them find their way back to themselves.
We kick off our podcast series with the ambitiously titled episode "The Sound Of Life Itself". In this instalment we meet the influential field recordist, bio-acoustician and musician Bernie Krause. Starting out studying classical composition and playing guitar, Krause joined legendary folk group The Weavers in 1963. Krause later became interested in electronic and avant-garde music, and by the late 1960s had started to incorporate recordings of wildlife and soundscapes into his own music. In this episode we speak to Krause about his work as a founding pioneer in the field of soundscape ecology.
"Without music we’d simply be something other than human beings.” Birthdays, weddings, festivals, funerals and more – pretty much every important human event is marked by music, and our brains take it all in, no matter how distant or vague those memories become. In this episode we meet Paul Robertson, violinist and professor in music and medicine, who has spent years working with people suffering from dementia and brain damage. From a distant childhood memory of a fragment of a song to a mass of rugby fans singing together in harmony, we discover how the music embedded in memories and dreams can be accessed in people whose fabric of identity has come under stress in order to help them find their way back to themselves.