The RSPB has today released a 'pop single' track of pure bird song into the charts for the first time in UK music history.
‘Let Nature Sing’ is an arrangement of some of the UK’s most loved and most threatened bird songs. It is a collaboration between the RSPB, folk singer Sam Lee, Bill Barclay, music director of The Globe and Drew Colby, the nation's leading hand shadowgrapher. RSPB project manager Adrian Thomas recorded over 100 species for the project.
The track is being released today (Friday 26 April), in time to get bird song into the charts for International Dawn Chorus Day on the 5 May. The RSPB is hoping that as many people as possible will buy the track, on sale for only £1, within this time window.
Mercury Prize nominee folk singer Sam Lee helped edit the single. He described the track as: "bringing music and bird song together, through art but with conservation at it's heart."
He said: “Birdsong has been one of the biggest influences of our song, poetry and literature.
"The loss of it should concern us all, because it is a signal that all is not well in the world. We should see birdsong as a barometer for the health of this planet, and hence of ourselves."
Martin Harper, the RSPB’s director of conservation said: “The signs are all around us that something is not right, that nature is falling silent and you only need to stop and listen to find the beautiful bird song that should be the background music to our life is absent.
"But no one is talking about the crisis facing wildlife and nature in the UK. We all need to start talking about this, and the Let Nature Sing track is a good starting point as it perfectly highlights the music we risk losing.
“Wildlife and our natural world can recover, it can be saved for future generations, but we need more people to talk about the issue and how much something as simple and wonderful as bird song means to each of us. Because if we do not start talking about the threats facing nature the inspiration behind so much of our music, poetry and literature may go silent.”
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