![]() ![]() Pete Seeger and Judy Collins, superstars at the time, wrote songs inspired by the record. To everyone’s surprise – Payne was a bioacoustics expert, not a musician – it became a hit: it sold more than 125,000 copies, making it the most popular nature recording of all time. In 1970, Payne led a team that released a five-track, 34-minute album called Songs of the Humpback Whale. ![]() ![]() That was the clue that, ‘This is changing the lives of these people.’ And that’s how I think we’ve got it to really make a difference.” You would hear people basically coming out of a kind of trance. “You were unaware there was anybody in the room and then, when I killed it, there would be this… inhalation. “In that time, the audience would go totally silent,” says the 85-year-old, on a video call from rural Vermont. ![]() For the first 30 seconds, there is mumbling, sometimes awkward giggling as the audience gets used to the deep, rumbling groans and high-pitched squeaks (this is when the TV shows usually cut it off).īut leave it longer – at least five minutes, ideally half an hour – and Payne finds a strange thing happens. He has played sections in schools, in churches, on TV talk shows, at the UN he’s played them to singers, musicians, politicians and other scientists. R oger Payne has played the sounds made by humpback whales to thousands of people – “more than thousands,” he corrects himself – in the past 50 years. ![]()
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