Beginning in the early 1970s I began a series of nature sound-walks, field expeditions, interspecies sonic meditations, explorations and mediated threshold music performances. They eventually coalesced under the banner “Frog Bog.” Its novelty attracted media attention back then. I took musicians on Frog Bog sound fieldwalks, and played my field recordings in concert halls in music and modern dance settings. Excerpts found their way onto albums, like the 1981 Jon Hassell and Brian Eno track These Times.
After several dormant decades, overlapping impulses and emerging research reactivated my interest in the Frog Bog. For example, in his best-selling 2005 book Last Child in the Woods… American journalist Richard Louv coined the phrase “Nature-Deficit Disorder” for what he deemed “human costs of alienation from nature.” He’s been pointing ever since to research on attention disorders, obesity, a dampening of creativity and depression as problems associated with a nature-deficient childhood (and adulthood).
Concerned by shrinking Ontario Greenbelt wetlands, eager to get back to the rich sounds of nature in the springtime and inspired by renewed interest in the soundscape projects I inaugurated five decades ago, I decided to go back into the field and get my boots and ears wet again. This time out I chose to sound out the state of frog population choruses along the shores of Lake Ontario’s Presqu’ile Provincial Park during the height of the spring mating season. According to Brighton, ON composer and musician Graham Flett, frog groups throughout the area were already vocally active in April – historically a week or two early. Was this yet another local reflection of global warming?
On two consecutive early May Sundays, along with intrepid colleagues Graham Flett and Dewi Minden, I led Frog Bog Soundwalks at three secluded sites. The evenings were peaceful, dark, cool, misty, foggy – decidedly frog-friendly conditions. We encountered no fellow humans. Dewi captured the look and sound of our first exploratory Frog Bog Soundwalk in this suitably dark video clip.
At the second event, I was inspired to play suling gambuh (long, low bamboo ring flute from Bali, Indonesia) and other sound makers in response to the sonic beauty all around: sunset bird calls and swirling frog choruses. It’s a kind of interspecies sonic performance I’ve dubbed “music-adjacent.” While Graham played melodica in the spirit of Threshold Music, Dewi made documentary audio recordings and stills.
To my surprise they’ve garnered interest in unexpected places. On my personal Facebook page Indonesian musician Tatang Sobari said the video clip reflects, “…a truly extraordinary natural music. Negative murmurs which defeat the soul disappear, replaced by soothing whispers of natural music.” Mexican modern dancer Marina Acevedo exclaimed, “…what a great sensation arises in the body from that unique and diverse sound environment!”
While my awareness of and interaction with what I call Frog Bog extends just over 50 years, the phenomenon itself has been a regular feature of our Southern Ontario spring soundscape for at least 4,000. As Acevedo cannily observed, such rich sonic environments are experienced by the entire body as we walk through it with care and respect. We listen with all our senses, with everything that makes us human - with an awareness of all our relations and our responsibility to uphold them.
Andrew Timar is a musician, composer, music journalist and sound explorer with curious ears. Active in and outside Toronto since the 1970s, he has recently been nominated for the Anugerah Kebudayaan Indonesia award for four decades of service to Indonesian music in Canada.
