Welcome to the show. Today we're going to be doing something a little different. I'm going to be reading you an essay from a couple years back about birds and music, especially its evolution, which I wrote for a magazine, which has since shuttered its doors, Tenderly Magazine. You can still find

the link online. I've put it in the show description if you prefer to read. And there you can find

all the sources which are linked directly in the article. Although I'll note that I'm reading

an edited draft. Thanks for listening. Thank you to all the donors for your continued support.

Thank you, Eric, and the Animals for playing me in.

I hope you enjoy.

I'll find it. Alfonso pressed a CD into my hand and gave me a mission.

Memorized the name of every musician and song on the album.

In a few days, he planned to play a random 15-second section,

and I would pass his quiz if I could identify the tune and its players by ear. For a jazz-officionado, I suspect this task would have been

trivially easy. Unfortunately, I wasn't one. My mother had decided I would play the trumpet,

hoping that the limited three buttons would give my clumsy hands more of an opportunity.

After a few years of embarrassing progress on classical pieces, I deemed myself ready to move on to a trickier genre with which I had even less familiarity.

I joined my high school's jazz class, putting my ineptitude on a collision course with an eccentric music teacher.

Alfonso wore the bright, tight-fitting garb that typifies European men in the American imagination.

In addition to being a talented musician, Alfonso claimed to be a yoga master.

At random intervals, he would attempt to persuade us to do sun salutations. He had a thick Portuguese accent, through which he spoke a version

of English that corresponded best to the last century's era of jazz. He insisted on calling everyone a cat. From the perspective of my Zumer upbringing,

this quiz assignment felt similarly dated. I didn't own a CD player. Instead, I had to sit in my

parents' car and use the built-in one. To my uneducated year, the first track sounded like elevator music.

The second and third were a little too interesting for an elevator,

maybe a coffee shop would better suit.

...