HOW MANY MUSICIANS can claim to have jammed with whales, birds and Pete Seeger?

Probably only one: David Rothenberg.

Though he's fairly tight with the legendary folk singer, Rothenberg is clearly more fascinated by grooving with the natural world. A few years ago, he was making sweet sounds with creatures that fly for his book, "Why Birds Sing." Now, he's waxing poetic (and scientific) about underwater tunes in his new book, "Thousand Mile Song: Whale Music in a Sea of Sound."

"Once you start hearing [whales' sounds] for the first time, you think it's kind of strange," says Rothenberg, 45, who is an accomplished jazz musician, "but after a while, you start to hear that there are these patterns with structure to them. It's very interesting."

"Thousand Mile Song," which comes with a CD of "whale music" recorded live and produced in the studio by Rothenberg, documents one man's quest to listen to and learn from the unique rhythms and noises whales produce underwater. Scientists know very little about why whales sing, and maybe even less about whether anyone can actually interact with the nautical beasts through human instruments and sounds. But that didn't stop the professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology from playing his clarinet for whales from Russia to Vancouver to Hawaii.

How, exactly, would one pull off that sort of interspecies interaction, you might ask?

Rothenberg usually answers that question by pointing to this diagram:

Here's a stab at an explanation, anyway: While he was standing on a boat or on shore near deep water inhabited by whales, Rothenberg played his clarinet into a microphone. His notes were broadcast underwater by a special speaker. During his performances, he also wore headphones connected to an underwater microphone called a hydrophone, so that he could hear the whales' sounds.

Take a look at Rothenberg playing for beluga whales in Russia's White Sea:

You wouldn't be alone if you wondered how well this semi-aquatic acoustic system really works. Rothenberg himself had doubts.

"I have to say that most of the times the whales did not respond," he admits.

But at least one time, he may have gotten through to the whales. On a boat off the coast of Maui in February 2007, Rothenberg pulled out his clarinet, stuck his hydrophone under the sea and played with at least one humpback. Rothenberg describes the collaborative experience in detail in "Thousand Mile Song."

"The whale ... sounds amazingly close," he writes. "I play along for 30 minutes or so, and the whale never stops. Two minutes in, he really seems to get louder in response to the spaces I leave in between my notes. He's alternating with me, not interrupting ...."

(Listen to a sample of the song Rothenberg recorded live with the Hawaiian whale.)

"All I know is for five minutes, I felt music," Rothenberg writes of his jam session with the humpbacks. Later, he says, he played clips of that whale music to a group of skeptical scientists. They had told him that whales don't respond to human sounds, but after hearing some samples, "they said, 'What? That's not real!'" Rothenberg says. "Their immediate reaction was surprise."

It's because of his deep belief that whales make their own unique music — and might even be able to collaborate with humans — that Rothenberg is a strong advocate for saving the underwater creatures, some of whose songs can be heard by other whales from thousands of miles away (hence his book's title, "Thousand Mile Song").

He is none too thrilled with the Japanese, who he says have been hunting whales to eat and sell for years, but only recently came under the international spotlight for announcing their plans to hunt humpbacks (they later backed down, due to international uproar over the news).

"There's just no reason to [kill whales]," Rothenberg says. "Almost everyone in the world thinks that whales should be respected and saved, and a lot of this is because of their song, I believe."

Scientists didn't know that whales could "sing" until the late 1960s, but Americans were fascinated by whales long before then. The popularity of whale tales from Herman Melville's 1851 book "Moby Dick" to the 1993 flick "Free Willy" (as well as, um, "Free Willy 2" and "Free Willy 3"), speaks to our interest in the beasts of the deep blue.

"There's something about people and whales," Rothenberg says. "We have a special curiosity and awe for these animals."

Rothenberg reminded Pete Seeger of his own interest in whales, when he found the lyrics of Seeger's 1970 song "The World's Last Whale" while doing online research for "Thousand Mile Song."

"I'd read about it in newspaper articles, but I couldn't seem to find [a recording of] the song." He soon realized Seeger had performed the song in concerts, but had never recorded it.

"Pete Seeger lives near me in Cold Spring, [New York,] so I just called him up. I knew him a little bit," Rothenberg says. When he asked Seeger about the song, Seeger's initial reaction was, "'I never wrote a song like that!'" Rothenberg says. "I said, 'Yeah, you did. This is how it goes: I heard the song of the world's last whale' .... He goes, 'Oh, yes, that song. My body remembers it but my mind ... I'm 87 years old. I can't remember all these songs.'"

Seeger refused Rothenberg's offer to help him finally record the song, but encouraged Rothenberg to record "Last Whale" himself. ("Everybody can sing," he told Rothenberg after the whale aficionado balked at the offer.) Rothenberg used the rhythms produced by a fin whale as background music for the song, which reminds listeners that "If we can save / Our singers in the sea, / Perhaps there's a chance / To save you and me." Since then, Rothenberg says, he's performed the song live with Seeger a few times.

(Listen to a sample from Rothenberg's recording of "The World's Last Whale.")

As cool and otherworldly as whale-human tunes sound, Rothenberg cautions most people not to try this stuff at home (or on vacation). It's illegal to harass marine mammals in American waters, so although Rothenberg doesn't think playing music to whales counts as a criminal act, he's ready to defend his actions.

"I would argue if I was arrested that [music broadcast underwater] is much less likely to harass whales than the average noise of boats that are all around," Rothenberg says.

If you're the law-abiding type, you can still take in a semi-live human-cetacean concert when Rothenberg plays his clarinet along with pre-recorded whale music (and reads from and signs copies of "Thousand Mile Song") at Olsson's in Dupont Circle on May 7. He hopes his music will inspire more people to try to understand whales and their songs.

"Both of my books are trying to argue that maybe science and art should work together to try to understand phenomena in nature," Rothenberg says. "By and large, it hasn't been done that much."

» Olsson's, 1307 19th St. NW; Wed., 7 p.m., free; 202-785-1133. (Dupont Circle)

Images courtesy David Rothenberg

Posted by Katie Aberbach at 8:24 AM on May 7, 2008
Tagged in Books , Dupont Circle , Entertainment , Music , The District , Top Stories