Congratulations on a fabulous day down here in Norman’s Bay and St. Nicolas Church, Pevensey, to Alicia Lloyd and the A Team at the Museum of Zoology, University of Cambridge.
Internationally renowned wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson was just so interesting at both Norman’s Bay and in the workshop community setting at St. Nicolas Church.
At one point in the church, two young girls, Evie and Verity, who had come all the way from Norman’s Bay, were invited to put on his headphones to listen in to what was being recorded. Their faces. They just lit up with excitement. At the end outside the church they both beamed in the sun when they were asked if they had enjoyed their moment with Chris Watson and his headphones.
Chris in a timely mention talked about the wooden beams in the original roof of the church and the way in which local sailors in 1216 in their boats, probably built by the same people, would have heard and known the sounds of whales so well underneath in the ocean in their wooden boats.
We heard clips of whale songs, seals and limpets and the cacophony of sound beneath the waves that forever ended the notion of the ‘silent world’ that was once thought to characterise our oceans.
Then workshop and choir leader Rowena Whitehead led the 50+ people assembled into a workshop recreating the sounds of the ocean.
We heard whale and seal sounds re-created from what they had heard from Chris Watson, and clicking sounds from limpets and the gentle whoosh of the ocean backwards and forwards as the massed group huddled together in the aisle.
Together with everyone she began to build song cycles and a sea-shanty emerged. An old song from the Shetland Isles with a Norwegian text was taught, with the words handed out on a simple sheet. It was built and sung by the ensemble with Rowena gently leading the way line by line.
Suddenly about 40 minutes into the workshop session a song emerged. Looking towards the stained glass window in the chancel of the 800 year old church, the harmony hung in the air above the group as if the church was holding the moment lovingly in its hands.
The Pevensey Whale was being sung home.
The soundscape will now be crated amongst the hydrophonic headphones, sound equipment and speakers and taken back to Cambridge. Stripped down to the essence, it will become the soundscape for the launch of Whale Hall, the new home to the Pevensey Whale in the new museum in Cambridge when it opens in the summer of 2016.
The soundscape will be witnessed by everyone as they enter the Hall to see the skeleton of the Whale in all its glory.
The people of Pevensey, in the place where the whale was beached, working with one of the most famous wildlife sound recordists in the world, together with one of the most talented song workshop leaders in the country, in one of the most iconic churches in Sussex, had done it.
The song to celebrate the Pevensey Whale had been created, sung and recorded in an hour.
There was a hushed silence as the workshop ended and then applause rang out that filled the church.
As a way of celebrating the story of the Pevensey Whale in sound, in the place where the story began, it could not have been more creative, it could not have been more engaging as an experience.
So well organised, so successful. Pure magic.
More information about when people will be able to hear what was recorded on Norman’s Bay beach and in the community song workshop at St. Nicolas Church Pevensey is available from the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology team.
Simon Montgomery
