Listen to this excerpt from fifteen minute jam session between an electric guitarist and a male orca. This is one of interspecies' oldest recordings, from 1979, made while I was working on a film for a Japanese production company, directed by Kenji Iwashita, known for his famous film, The Man Who Skied Down Everest. I played through an underwater sound system for about an hour each night. On the fourth night, one of the juvenile whales who had been joining in everytime I played, (called A-6 by the local scientists) initiated a startling response to my playing. He precisely answered my own ragged version of his pod's own typical call, then broke it down into its component parts, repeating them one at a time. About fifteen minutes into this interaction i began the blues progression you hear. During the first verse, the orca responds several times on pitch and on beat, clearly demonstrating his ability to improvise in a comprehensible manner to rhythmical, harmony-based music. He even makes the chord changes on the downbeat.
Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but A-6's response has always reminded me of the way that Miles Davis soloed during his Bitches Brew Period.
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