Listening to the Sleeping Tree
I hadn’t heard of a Sleeping Tree before. A sleeping tree is one which a group of primates will choose to sleep in. It is typically a ‘tall, emergent tree with comfortable, large branches that sticks out above the canopy just enough to keep them safe from predators. At dawn, they (the gibbons) will emerge and often start their day with their distinctive song.’
This information is from the immersive experience that I attended at the Brighton Dome, as part of the Brighton Festival. ‘The Sleeping Tree by Invisible Flock is a long form, durational sound experience’.
You enter from the busy streets of Brighton, into the dimmed cave space of the Dome. As your eyes adjust to the half-light, your ears open to the sounds of the tropical rainforests of Sumatra - the sounds of the gibbons, the birds, the cicadas. Your hear the repetitive sounds of one bird or insect, an insistent, incessant bassline, until suddenly it stops, and the tone of the forest orchestra instantly lightens, as if day is breaking and the chorus has shifted to the next phase of its singing.
The sound installation was made from 5000+ hours of audio collected during a three period. The research took place in the Gunung Leuser Ecosystem in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. It followed a family of small ape, Siamang Symphalangus syndactylus, which belong to the gibbon family. They are critically endangered due to forest destruction. They now only have a few sleeping trees to choose from because of the logging that has taken place and the illegal logging that continue to this day.
As I listened to the intricate web of sounds, I thought of all the interconnections. How if more trees were destroyed, perhaps cut down for palm oil plantations as has happened in many parts of Indonesia, then the siamang wouldn’t have trees to sleep and sing in. The birds and the insects would lose their homes too. I don’t know if there are peoples indigenous to the forest who still live there. Would they lose their homes too?
Scientists are now using audio recordings to monitor the health of forests. Bioacoustics is a way of assessing the biodiversity of the forest ecosystem. The quieter the forest, the more degraded it is.
I remembered being in the Amazon basin in Ecuador, listening to the dawn chorus there. As part of my 10 trees journey, I travelled there with Gordon Hempton, one of the leading acoustic ecologists in the world, and with Randy Borman, head of a village of Cofan people living in the forest, who both had valuable advice on how to listen to the forest (which I won’t share here, but it is in the book!). Here, it was the sound of the howler monkeys that could be heard as part of the auditory web, although more of a growl than a howl.
Sounds of the Zabalo river, Ecuador
I thought of the sloth that I saw in Ecuador. I only saw it because I heard a dripping of water as we floated down the river in a canoe and was curious about the source of the sound. It turned out the sloth had just climbed out of the river and was dripping water as it climbed a tree.
I thought of how once common bird species such as sparrows are on the decline in the UK, and how the remnants of bird song that we do have here are such as joy. There is a blackbird in a neighbour’s tree who pipes away, seemingly from dawn to dusk. I am sure the trees enjoy the vibrations of the bird’s song as much as we humans do.
In the evening in Brighton, I went to a performance by Nabihah Iqbal and Invisible Flock, combining human-made music and human voice with the sounds of the forest. It was a beautiful collaboration and co-creation, creating a unique soundscape and reminding the audience of the destruction that is taking place, as well as sharing the beauty of the forest.
Questions to explore:
Can you identify a sleeping tree in your neighbourhood? I’m thinking that the neighbour’s tree that the blackbird sings from is a sleeping tree.
‘The sleeping tree’ sounds like the title of a fairytale to me. What does it conjure up for you?
Mapping where our food comes from. This is another reminder to me to try to avoid products with palm oil in - our choices have consequences.
How can we help to create more habitats for birds and animals in our neighbourhoods?