4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2020
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Songs of the Humpback Whale was released in 1970 and went multi-platinum, becoming the best selling environmental album of all time. But it also became emblematic of the West’s shifting attitudes towards environmentalism, inspiring a global movement to save the whales which continues to this day. Marking the 50th anniversary of bio-acoustician Roger Payne’s unlikely smash hit, this programme considers the legacy of sounds that caught the imagination of the world. With contributions from the world of music, science and ecology, including the folk singer Judy Collins, Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner Willie Mackenzie, Greenlandic musician Peter Tussi Motzfeldt, marine biologist and electronic musician Sara Niksic, music writer Simon Reynolds and Roger Payne.
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
0:00.0 | It does sound really creepy and spooky like you're in the mountains and like you just hear this like |
0:10.7 | Coming from the mountains sometimes it does remind me of Chewacker. |
0:17.0 | I can't really remember when was it the first time I heard Roger Payne's album? |
0:23.4 | It was years ago, maybe even before I went into a science career. |
0:28.8 | It sounds like one of those wooden dinephrine things, |
0:31.9 | where you get there beating sticking you like rub it along and it goes |
0:36.4 | but just just hearing these sounds for the first time just blew my mind. |
0:43.0 | Ormish sounds like a cat. |
0:45.0 | And I think that's what happened to many people. |
0:48.0 | Through his album, he brought the sounds from the ocean to people's homes. |
0:53.2 | Sounds like a jab of walking or something. |
0:58.0 | I had just finished my eighth album which was called who knows where the time goes. |
1:06.7 | Now this was in 69 when I was starring in this musical of Pergint and we were performing in the park and this is a beautiful |
1:15.8 | theater in New York City the Shakespeare Theater it's called and people would come |
1:22.0 | backstage after the show a lot of times it was friends, a lot of times it was people I didn't know. |
1:27.0 | And one night this very tall good looking man came backstage after the show and he said, |
1:32.0 | hi, I'm Roger Payne and I have something for you. |
1:38.5 | And then he handed me a tape and he said I want you to take this home and play it and think about what you'd like to do with it. |
1:47.0 | And Roger had said to me, this is the first time you will have heard these and this is the |
1:53.7 | first time the world will have heard this sound. My name is Roger Payne. I'm |
2:00.3 | best known I suppose for having discovered that the sounds that Humpback whales make are in fact songs. |
2:07.0 | In the summer of 1970, I recorded and then released an album called Songs of the Humpback Whale. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.