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Delve into the Amazon rainforest: a 60-minute sound immersion with Bernie Krause

In April 2020, Bernie Krause offered a unique 60-minute sound immersion into the Amazon to the Fondation Cartier’s audience. On the occasion of World Environment Day, we are pleased to share this soundscape once again.

As with many of Bernie Krause's recordings, this soundscape and its biophony recorded in 1990 can no longer be heard today, for this natural habitat has since then been heavily compromised by intense logging and mining.

The Great Animal Orchestra will be presented for the first time in the United States, from November 20, 2021 to May 22, 2022, at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem.

"In the forest, we never easily spot the animals, we notice them by the tracks they leave, or by catching a glimpse of them. Above all, we hear them. Bernie Krause’s work gives us access to this thousand-year-old— - yet still contemporary —experience, which is that of the forest hunters. He reveals a world we no longer know, a world in which anthropocentrism and its industrial background noise aren’t predominant. I discovered this with the Yanomami. At few times On a number of occasions, I spent the night with the hunters, listening to the sounds of the forest. They described to me how some amphibian, or bird, or mammal or insect was joining the chorus, exactly like in Bernie Krause’s soundscapes. Meeting with him brought me the necessary concepts to reconsider this experience in the forest, to which I hadn’t paid much attention to at the time. Through technological means, Bernie Krause reinvents for us a form of listening that is humankind’s most ancient experience—now lost to us."

Bruce Albert, Anthropologist

Find also several recent articles by Bruce Albert, published on Le Monde.fr, bringing up the helplessness experienced by the Native American communities in face of the health crisis.

Covid-19: Lessons From the Yanomami

Coronavirus : « Les Amérindiens ont compris que les Blancs ne peuvent rien pour eux »

Face au coronavirus, « nous sommes tous devenus amérindiens ! »

Bernie Krause, Amazon Days/Amazon Nights
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Bernie Krause, Amazon Days/Amazon Nights

Amazon Days/Amazon Nights

Place: Camp KM41, Amazonas, Brazil

GPS coordinates: 2° 24’ 23.72’’ S / 60° 07’ 48.27” W

Date: February 7, 1990

Rainy season

Height: 220 m

Biome: Tropical rainforest

Habitat: Plain tropical rainforest

Climate: Tropical

Soundscape recorded and produced by Bernie Krause. © 2020 Wild Sanctuary. All rights reserved.

Brazil, Amazon, Aerial view of an igapo, black water creek, in the Amazon forest near Manaus
Picture © John Warburton-Lee Photononstop .