We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Blue Lobelia - Please Don't Cover Your Ears

from Carry the Spark: Songs from 50 Things by Various Artists

/

about

Birds have offered me beautiful experiences throughout my life with their music. I can recall the haunting duet of loons, the ethereal whimsy of the hermit thrush and my general relief each year as birdsong joins the sunrise in Spring. 'Please don't cover your ears' was co-written with the Robin, the Blackburnian Warbler, the Red-winged Blackbird, the Hermit Thrush, the Winter Wren, and the Grey Catbird. All of these songbirds spend part of their lives in Nova Scotia, a home that is increasingly threatened by the resource-competitive nature of human expansion.

Inspired by the writings of Adrienne Maree Brown and Robin Wall Kimmerer, I approached this composition as an opportunity to invite my audience's attention to the pleasure and joy of songbirds as musicmakers. In learning and notating each of their age-old folk songs, I became more familiar with the birds. Each hermit thrush, for example, has a voice with unique tone and timbre that can be passed down over generations. You will hear a hermit thrush open this composition. Later, the violins play its song to accompany the second verse. The Blackburnian Warbler, a small black-and-orange songbird, wrote the driving rhythm of the strings. This warbler prefers to nest up high in mature hemlocks. We do not see it as often in a province with so little old growth forest left. The vocal melody of this piece is the robin's song. The robin's song is changing, sung earlier in the day as cities brighten and higher in pitch as noise pollution increases. The song of the grey catbird, which can last up to ten minutes, is featured in the violin solo. The red-winged blackbird is heard in the violins at the beginning of the piece and joins its voice with the winter wren at the close.

These birds offer their songs so freely into the world. It was a gift to collaborate with them.

lyrics

I'll ask to learn to sing the song of birds
The songs from dusk and dawn I've always heard
I heard but I was not listening then
I could not pick the Robin from the Wren
and as I grow to know each song you sing
you emerge from the noise, you stop blending
familiar now, I listen for the birds
and try to sing a syrinx through my cords

credits

from Carry the Spark: Songs from 50 Things, released October 13, 2022
Composer, singer, violinist: Rachel Bruch
Music engineer: Kurtis McAllister

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Zuppa image

Zuppa Halifax, Nova Scotia

We aim to make extraordinary experiences that provoke the consideration of new perspectives and ideas. We prioritize questions over answers, and the discovery of possibility over the depiction of what is. We favour the intuitive over the formulaic and thrive on the play between the imagined and the real.

We are Alex McLean, Ben Stone and Stewart Legere. ... more

contact / help

Contact Zuppa

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

If you like Please Don't Cover Your Ears, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featured guests are the golden-voiced Baby Rose and psyche soulsters Brainstory.
listen now