Music
for the Massive
Composer Paul Gilman seeks to communicate with ocean giants.
By Keith Bush
A kayak bobs in icy, turbulent water, surrounded by some of the planets most fearsome predators. More than 20 feet in length and weighing several tons, these behemoths can exceed 40 mph in pursuit of their prey. But the relatively tiny land-dwelling mammal in the kayak is making no effort to escape back to the warm, dry safety of his desert home. In fact, he has gone to great effort to get this close.
“I feel no fear with them,” says land-dwelling mammal Paul Gilman. “I almost feel protected by them.” And so the Palm Springs-based composer sits serenely in the kayak trying to reach to these killer whales with the sounds of his flute.
Images like these amazed and delighted audiences who saw Gilman’s short film Ocean Odyssey in 2004. A feature-length version screens at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. “We’ll hear more from the people involved in the project, and we’ll expand on all the stories and include a lot more footage and music that will have more room to breathe and take you deeper on the journey,” Gilman says. “The short was like a tease to what really went on.”
Gilman credits several guides with helping him on his journey, including Native American spiritual leaders as well as noted scientists.”
“I was told by a revered Hawaiian wise man, Abraham Kahuna Kauai, I would carry the message of the whales and dolphins through my music and I needed to share it with as many people as possible and I’m honoring that,” Gilman says. The words would change the course of his career.
“At the time I was actually producing CDs for Papa John Phillips,” he recalls. “The studio was booked two weeks in advance with him, and after seeing the kahuna I just said, ‘John, I’m going to Hawaii and work with dolphins.’” His travels would eventually bring him into contact with humpback whales, which he calls the keepers of the secrets. To encourage them to share their secrets with him, he reached out in a language he felt was much like their own: music.
Other humans have attempted to communicate with cetaceans through musical sounds, but Gilman differentiates himself from many of these.
“A lot of scientists come up with a tone they whale understands, and then they’ll go play this frequency in the water that will give you a headache,” Gilman says. “I think that music has emotion in it, and they respond to the emotion in it.” Different groups do respond to different key signatures, however, according to Gilman. Gilman says he doesn’t chase whales; they hear his playing, come right to him and sometimes invite him to join them.
“In Tonga in the Cook Islands I was invited by the whales -- I don’t know how else to put it -- to swim between a 40-foot whale and her baby,” Gilman says. “That’s very rare in nature that they would allow something like that. And we don’t use any food, no tricks, the only conduit is music.”
Music gets the animals’ attention and helps establish the connection, but the thoughts and feelings that accompany it make up the real message, according to Gilman.
“Anybody could play an instrument and see what happens with a whale, and they probably won’t have much to do with them,” Gilman says. “But when I’m playing, I’m 100 percent connected to them, and I know the difference. I can’t fake it. I can’t just sort of halfway do it. I’m all in with it and I’m playing. I can feel their connection on a multitude of levels. It goes really deep.”
And although he’s a long way from the ocean off Tonga, Gilman feels that connection still exists. “If I really close my eyes and go completely out there, I can feel the presence of those whales from the desert all the way to the South Pacific.”
Gilman hopes his documentary will give other people a sense of that connection.
“That intelligence they have and the beauty is what we’re really sharing through Ocean Odyssey, and I just hope that it affects people in a positive way,” he says.
