A little flute music: mimicry, memory, and narrativity
- Publisher:
- http://environmentalhumanities.org/
- Publication Type:
- Journal Article
- Citation:
- Environmental Humanities, 2013, 3 pp. 43 - 70
- Issue Date:
- 2013-01
Closed Access
| Filename | Description | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 2013000298OK.pdf | Published Version | 798.39 kB |
Copyright Clearance Process
- Recently Added
- In Progress
- Closed Access
This item is closed access and not available.
A lyrebird chick was raised in captivity in the 1920s in Australias New England Tablelands, or so the story goes. The bird mimicked the sounds of the households flute player, learning two tunes and an ascending scale. When released back into the wild, his flute-like songs and timbre spread throughout the local lyrebird population. We count ourselves among those who admire the sonic achievements of this bioregions flute lyrebirds. These Superb Lyrebirds (Menura novaehollandiae) do indeed deliver an unusual and extraordinarily complex, flute-like territorial song, although often with a musical competence exceeding what a human flutist could achieve. In this paper, we engage with both the living and the dead across a wide-ranging cast of characters, linking up in the here and now and grasping a hand across the span of many years. Memory and narrativity are pertinent to the at times conflicting stories and reminiscences from archival and contemporary sources. Ultimately, accounts of flute lyrebirds speak to how meaning evolves in the tensions, boundaries, and interplay between knowledge and imagination. We conclude that this story exceeds containment, dispersed as it is across several fields of inquiry and a number of individual memories that go in and out of sync.
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: