Album Notes

Water Music is the final recording of the Thai Elephant Orchestra, at least barring some dramatic stimulus from outside. Simply stated, we have accomplished all of our goals and see no purpose in repeating ourselves. Our first CD, The Thai Elephant Orchestra, featured six elephants and embodied a rough-and-ready tone, like an early field recording by Alan Lomax or Hugh Tracey. Our second recording, Elephonic Rhapsodies, intentionally oriented towards a popular audience, was a sophisticated potpourri of instrumentals, human-elephant collaborations, and human songs about elephants.

Water Music is the "classic" or purist ensemble we have long promised to ourselves and to others who delight in hearing elephants performing entirely on their own. The only human presence is on Track 1, a traditional religious invocation in Northern Thai (Lanna) dialect incanted by Boonyang Boonthiam, a master mahout and holy man. A minor exception, on Tracks 2 & 3, is the sound of two rainsticks played by employees of the Center. (Rainsticks proved unsuitable for the elephant trunk.)

The music was recorded on the showground of the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, all but one piece in July 2006 by fourteen elephants at the height of the monsoon — as witnessed by the incessant staccato humming of cicadas — in the mornings before the usual afternoon showers. (Track 5 was recorded, with fewer elephants, a year earlier.) As always, elephants were given only two basic commands: start and stop. Apart from that stricture, the animals were free to play as they wished. (Most of the elephants were quite anxious to play.) There are no overdubs, and the only edits allowed were to remove extraneous human noise, primarily theubiquitous and jarring sound of motorbikes.

This collection reflects six years' evolution of invented and purchased musical instruments and six years of a steadily expanding number of elephants developing their own styles. We extend our heartfelt thanks to those fourteen elephants and to the mahouts who are so devoted to their care. We also wish to thank the farsighted management team of the Thai Elephant Conservation Center and its parent organization, the Forest Industry Organization.

Art for all species!

Dave Soldier & Richard Lair
January 27, 2010