RE: Music and "politics"

[Henny van der Groep <tijgervink...>]

At  28-4-2002 08:03 -0500, Joan wrote:
>And there is something else.  A university biology teacher whose own
>specialty is bird songs once told me that birds have two principal song
>modes:  One is for mating (attracting mates, etc.,) and the second is
>for territoriality (establishing territorial dominance, etc.)

  I think bird songs are very complicated. We often have difficulties to 
hear the difference. The apparantly one song of one bird differs sometimes 
fifty times (if I remember well the Dutch finch is an example but ofcourse 
there are may other examples too). For our ears hardly  to hear. It's also 
my understanding that the warning sounds for a territory/danger sound not 
really as a song. I'm not sure about the two principal song modes. It 
sounds interesting to me.

>This may be another stretch, but as I think about our songs I can't help
>thinking how many songs from any culture are either about 1) some aspect
>of mating (in the form of love songs, etc.)  or  2) some aspect of
>territoriality (my country, my school, my religion, my home where the
>buffalo roam, my shtetele, etc. etc.)

Wow, never thought of that. Such a great thought!!! Thank you!!

Henny

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