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1. Let Those Bugs Sing

1. Let Those Bugs Sing. The Essay celebrates the musicality and noise of our insect singers. Writer and musician David Rothenberg explores how insects taught us a love of rhythm.

1. Let Those Bugs Sing. The Essay celebrates the sheer musicality & noise of Earth’s insect singers-long before the first birds took to the sky, katydids and crickets filled the air with their sonorous stridulations. The sound of summer & autumn is one of vibrating tymbals, chirps, trills, Xits, Tsips & kreeeeeaks! Katydids, Crickets, Cicadas. Now we can listen very carefully to a blade of grass & enter a near secret world of vibrating treehoppers. Writer & musician David Rothenberg has long been fascinated our relationship with all this noise & explores how insects taught us to love rhythm.
"This is the music of the world, going back millions of years. We evolved in the midst of these sounds & that counts for something'
Producer Mark Burman
All Music by David Rothenberg & insect companions. Bug music 2013, Secret Songs of Ponds 2024
Insect recordings courtesy of Wil Hershberger, Charlie Woodrow & Rex Cocroft
A Storyscape production for BBC Radio 3

Release date:

14 minutes

On radio

Mon 4 May 202621:45

Broadcast

  • Mon 4 May 202621:45

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