Running after my Uncle Jeberyl throughout my grandma’s freshly raked yard was a common activity in my childhood. I would spend summers outside with him: attempting camping (epic failure), climbing trees, and splashing in those walmart pools. We would have a ball. What I tend to forget, but remember now, is lightly gliding my fingertips across water, and seeing the bottom of a shallow concrete bowl. I would stare into my grandma’s bird bath, looking at the reflection of cumulus clouds before I’d swiftly scurry away when a bird would perch it’s booty on the edge of its oasis. Then, small chirps would draw me back in…I remained pretty fearful of birds. I think it was their ability to fly.
I never considered myself a lover of nature until recently. My friend Dara, an avid birder, but also an seriously deep reservoir of knowledge on all things environmentally related, guided myself and others through Tallahassee, FL’s state parks. “The Carolina Wren and the Chickadee are two of the most populous birds of FL, Cardinals too… *silence* OOoooo, you hear that??? *chirping* Chickadee!,” Dara says beaming ear to ear. Ain’t no telling how many bird species I heard in my grandma’s yard; however, I could guarantee there were some Chickadees and Carolina Wrens, if I knew how to identify their call/song.
Becoming an active listener of the natural landscape and it’s creatures, not only music, is important to me. This listening practice teaches me how to listen to music and what to listen for or perhaps what is absent. There are sounds one may have difficulty recognizing if they rarely have opportunities to participate in the stillness of listening to the world.
But I am wary of leading with such assertions. People participate in listening to natural landscapes in manners that apply and work for them. While I may go on a hike or walk, they may sit out on their porch or balcony in the morning before work. My way is not the blueprint, which is something I can admire about how Black artists, producers, and musicians engage with nature. I love how they create their own blueprints. They use sound to evoke place: dreamed or otherwise.
People that came to mind when I began thinking about Black musicians employing nature sounds was Aaliyah x Missy Elliott x Timbaland. Those who are familiar with them, already KNOW what songs I’m thinking of! “One In A Million,” for example, immediately starts with the sound of wind rushing (or perhaps something else was being imitated) and eventually leads into the chirps of crickets that are steady and never ending. The whole song is absolutely ethereal. And, when you think the nothing else in this otherworldly, futuristic soundscape could be added, you hear a turntable scratch-esque bird tweeting in the fourth bar when one counts by four.
The use of sound from natural landscapes and events is a common occurrence within R&B and hip-hop. I’m moved to recall The Quiet Storm radio station from the 1970s & 80s hosted by Melvin Lindsey on WHUR-FM at Howard University. Melvin Lindsey and Cathy Hughes created the radio show beginning with reference to Smokey Robinson’s “Quiet Storm” (Cathy’s idea, she’s amazing read up on her). They ultimately made a sub-genre of R&B that remains easily recognizable today by coalescing love ballads, personal stories, and peace.
Even Ann Pebbles’ “I Can’t Stand the Rain” plays loudly in my brain. Ashanti’s “Rain on Me,” SWV’s “Rain,” The Dramatics’ “In The Rain,” and Missy Elliott’s “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” all awaken a sense of romance, sensuality, wonder, playfulness, or melancholy.
The sound of rain and storms does a lot work in music. Rainfall and, more generally water, is probably the most common nature sound of all in Black music. Nailah Hunter’s “Nacre Meadow” (as I’ve referenced in my Black Women Harpists Pushing Music article, go read that & support some artists) lifts the listening practice to a place of serenity through her use of water. You may end up imagining what I like to call “beachside fairies.” I hear the sound of tides going in and out of the shore. But through the use of synths, harp, and an instrument reminiscent of a flute, I think of birds being above the water or nearby. What do you all hear? What does this meditation make you think of?
To be clear, Nailah already told us what she wanted to evoke with this composition:
In another way, I wonder what it sounds like when artists decide to replicate sounds of nature without directly using those sounds. Have you all ever heard that? I’d say The Quiet Storm is a direct example of that, but also Sudan Archives’ “Water.” Filmed in Ghana, “Water” doesn’t feature any water sounds (at least that I could hear), but the visuals and drums (bodily and otherwise) certainly add a sense of fluidity to the mood Sudan Archives wanted to capture. Not only the percussive elements, but her pizzicato on the violin reminds me of raindrops against objects and forest floors. Her voice is multiplied by the vocal layering and reverb, but her tone is very free flowing as well. As one listens near the end of the song, it sounds as if we are slowly dragged under the water [1:45]. Visual content and fluid choreography aside, Sudan Archives knows what she’s doing here with conjuring water and it clear that she has a aural knowledge of water.
And though it’s not often highlighted, Black folks’ (across the world!!!) ecological knowledge is tied to our experience in and with nature during various moments throughout our everyday living. Even during the chattel enslavement, Black Americans used and loved nature in such a way that lended them to becoming one with it as a useful for survival. One, as in nature being a veil.
Erik Nielson examined how enslaved Black folks used the invocation of the wilderness in spirituals as a veil to liberate themselves from enslavement. The wilderness, in Judeo-Christian biblical terms, usually was a place of temptation, confusion, but in spirituals it is a place of freedom and retreat from the eyes of others aka white folk. Accordingly, Nielson claims that these spirituals were also hidden communication. The codes these songs contained gave directions to enslaved folks to come into the forest and seek liberation, perhaps for night time insurrection meetings. “Go In De Wilderness” is one of many examples of this. I wonder what songs Denmark Vesey and his co-conspirators sang or hummed to call in freedom or meeting goers.
What examples do you have of Black people engaging with nature via sound and/or music? What does it teach you? Comment or email me (gallion98@gmail.com) if you like.
Sources:
Play Another Slow Jam: The Oral History of the Quiet Storm. Essence Mag. By Ericka Blount Danois
Nielson, Erik. ""Go in De Wilderness": Evading the "Eyes of Others" in the Slave Songs. "Western Journal of Black Studies 35, no. 2 (March 1, 2011): 106-17.