Their songs are everywhere, but few seem to notice: The mating calls of frogs can be heard year-round across Taiwan, whether in the forests of Nantou County or the dense urban sprawl of Yonghe City.
Such amorous noises tend to get buried in the commotion of daily life or perhaps taken for granted in nature areas, but a recording by sound artist Yannick Dauby has shone an audio spotlight on the country’s frogs.
In the summer Dauby released Songs of the Frogs of Taiwan, Volume 1 (蛙蛙哇), which documents the sounds of 16 of the country’s 32 endemic frog species. The French national, who is currently based in Taipei, has been compiling recordings on trips around Taiwan since 2004.
With detailed liner notes on each species, photos and an introduction by Yang Yi-ru (楊懿如), Taiwan’s foremost expert on frogs, this 68-minute compilation will appeal to nature lovers, conservationists and amphibian experts. Dauby, a self-professed amphibian enthusiast, hopes to draw attention to Taiwan’s ecology, but he also has a simpler view of the project.
“For me, this is really a CD of music,” he said with a laugh during an interview just after releasing Songs in July. “It’s really for the pleasure.”
Calling it music might be a stretch for some, but what Dauby has captured is certainly pleasing to the ear, and is presented in an engaging format. The compilation’s wide diversity of sounds will surprise those who think of frogs as capable of only croaks
and “ribbits.”
Many of the sounds on the CD could be mistaken for other animals. The Meintein Temple Treefrog (面天樹蛙) lets out a chirpy whistle similar to a cricket, while the Indian Ricefield Frog (澤蛙) squawks like a duck and Guenther’s Brown Frog (貢德氏赤蛙) barks like a dog.
Some frogs produce unusual noises that sound man-made. LaTouche’s Frog (拉都希氏赤蛙) croaks like a creaky door; the Taipei Treefrog (台北樹蛙), which I’ve been hearing a lot this winter outside of my apartment in Muzha (木柵), makes a high-pitched noise that sounds like an engine revving from far away, occasionally switching to a series of slow, puckering kisses.
The CD was inspired by Dauby’s self-professed love of nature and the outdoors, cultivated during his upbringing near the French Alps. But its production was driven by his main occupation, sound art.
NATURE AS SOUND ART
Much of Dauby’s work involves recording natural “soundscapes,” which can range from abstract noises to social events. His past projects have included aural collages using bird songs; digital compositions made from recordings on a glacier in Switzerland; and an “audio documentary” featuring a portrait photographer interacting with his two subjects, a woman and her dog. He is currently working on a sound archive project for the Chiayi County Government, recording everything from the noises of antique machines to oral history.
Dauby developed a fascination with sound as a musicology student in university, where he studied field recording techniques using portable equipment and microphones. His earliest subjects were of wind and streams — sounds that attracted him because they had “lots of energy.” Later on, he finished an advanced degree in “electroacoustic composition” at the National Conservatory in Nice and he now curates a Web site devoted to sound art and the environment (kalerne.net).
Though sound art is broad in scope and hard to define, Dauby says in contrast to music, the field “just asks questions about listening — it puts the listener into a situation where he or she must ask, ‘What am I listening to? How am I listening [to this sound]?’”
For Dauby, listening — or just paying particular attention to a sound — can deepen our understanding of our surroundings. He uses the cicada as an example when teaching workshops or holding seminars. “In Taiwan, there are more than 60 species, which means there are 60 different sounds. And 60 different sounds of cicadas means 60 different ways of listening to summer in Taiwan.”
THE PLEASURE OF LISTENING
On Songs, each of the 16 species of frogs gets its own track, on which Dauby splices together (but doesn’t manipulate, mix or overlap) recordings made at different locations.
Dauby works much in the same way as biologists or enthusiasts collecting sounds of nature: He traipses through forests, microphone in hand, wearing big headphones and a backpack full of recording equipment, searching for his subject with his ears.
But his final product differs from the five-second sound bites one might find on educational or science Web sites. His tracks range from three to seven minutes long, and are not just designed to help identify each species. His selected snippets emphasize the “pleasure” of listening and “the experience of sound.”
One of the most striking recordings is of Molrecht’s Treefrog, which sounds like a wood block being struck. In the first half of the track, two frogs engage in a lively call-and-response session across a ditch. Later on, a group of males starts chirping and their voices cascade into a surreal, polyphonic chorus that sounds electronic.
But is it music? Dauby says what he hears in a chorus of frogs is not so different from the work of one of his favorite classical composers, Gyorgy Ligite (best known for the sound track to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Oydessy). “When you observe it from a distance, you have this amazing structure, which is very complicated and very well done, and very well composed.”
Dauby questions the premise of typical recordings of nature, such as the new age variety that blends environmental sounds with atmospheric music. He feels this “promotes an image of nature that is naive” and “doesn’t ask any questions.”
“This is why on the CD there is no [narration] explaining things,” he said. “So the listener is alone with the frogs. This is also why there is no music or other sounds — because we don’t really need that.”
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