Some people can find harmony in the wonders of the wild. Bernie Krause's fascination with sounds in the wild has inspired him to record soundscapes where the wind, the trees and the beasts create their own soundscapes, literally find their own bandwidths for what becomes The Great Animal Orchestra ….a veritable symphony that has influenced what we call music.

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Part Two of The Current

The Great Animal Orchestra: Bernie Krause

When Bernie Krause was a young man, this was his dream gig. He joined the legendary folk group The Weavers in 1963. But it wasn't long before he left folk music behind for the nascent world of electronic music. By 1970, he and his collaborator, Paul Beaver, started incorporating the sounds of the natural world in songs such as Walking Green Algae Blues from the album In a Wild Sanctuary.

Bernie Krause eventually became more interested in the music of nature than his own compositions and started recording natural soundscapes, such as this one from Borneo.

Recording the sounds of nature soon became Bernie Krause's life's work. He has been one of the world's leading bioacoustic recorders for four decades, chronicling what he calls the biophony ... the great, unscored symphony of non-human life that buzzes, chirps, roars, clicks, rustles, croaks, trills and howls all around us if we're close enough -- and closely attuned enough -- to hear it.

Bernie Krause's new book is The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places. He was in Rohnert Park, California.

This segment was produced by The Current's Chris Wodskou.

Other segments from today's show:

Employment Insurance: No such thing as a bad job

Simon Fraser University Men's Centre