a fuller range of human sensory apparatus

January 17, 2019 1:42 PM

This essay offers a chronological survey of the range of songs and musical productions inspired by Darwin and his theory since they entered the public sphere some 150 years ago. It draws on an unusual set of historical materials, including illustrated sheet music, lyrics and librettos, wax cylinder recordings, vinyl records, and video recordings located in digital and sound archives and on the Internet. If you'd rather listen than read, ecologist Jeremy Fox has gleefully compiled a dozen evolution- or Darwin-inspired songs for the listening.
posted by sciatrix (7 comments total)

Really surprised this author missed Tomorrow, in a Year. It's a whole concept opera thing about Darwin and the Origin of Species. I highly recommend it to anyone, it's a lovely album. It's a collaborative done by The Knife, Mt. Sims, and Planningtorock. Many or all of the lyrics are pulled from Darwin's letters and writings.
posted by GoblinHoney at 3:20 PM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

Also missing: The Darwin Song Project from the 2009 Shrewsbury Folk Festival, featuring songs about Darwin's life written collaboratively by Krista Detor, Mark Erelli, Stu Hanna, Jez Lowe, Rachael McShane, Karine Polwart, Emily Smith and Chris Wood. One of my favourite albums ever.
posted by offog at 5:22 PM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Oh, this is completely awesome. The most awesome thing about it is that you posted it to share with the rest of us.

(aside: Elvis Costello! Springsteen! The Kinks! TMBG! Clearly, the average quality of “rock musicians who’ve written man-as-monkey-or-ape songs” is much higher than the average quality of all rock musicians.)

I am disappointed that I can't find a performance of Time Will Tell on Youtube. C'mon, community theater people! Let's put on a show!

... offog: Darwin songs with Karine Polwart? Oh my goodness. Thank you for that!

This is just fabulous. Thank you, sciatrix!
posted by kristi at 5:54 PM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

It's missing Evo-Devo by A Capella Science!
posted by Harald74 at 11:36 PM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Missing Tomorrow, In a Year by The Knife and collaborators, which was both a theater production and a 2-cd album.
posted by ardgedee at 5:13 AM on January 18, 2019

Oh, now I see GoblinHoney had evolved better reflexes than me.
posted by ardgedee at 5:15 AM on January 18, 2019

Mentioned in the paper but not on the playlist, Pearl Jam's creepy-ass Do the Evolution video.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:37 AM on January 18, 2019