Between the Ears: Sound in the Blood

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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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Between the Ears

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Innovative and thought-provoking features on a wide variety of subjects

Innovative and thought-provoking features that make adventurous use of sound and explore a wide variety of subjects. Made by leading radio producers.

Sound in the Blood

BBC Radio 3 - Between the Ears, Sound in the Blood

Nature beatboxer Jason Singh explores the origin and meaning of his art.

Nature beatboxer Jason Singh explores the origin and meaning of his art, in a journey rich in binaural soundscapes - full of sea, wind and birds, all created using his voice.

All sound carries an emotional charge: the sea at rest, bird squabbles, wind moving through trees. Nature beatboxer and sound artist Jason Singh registers this emotion in his skin and bones, using his voice to make sensitive, layered and moving soundscapes - for galleries, theatres, and films. To encounter Jason's work is to be astonished at what can be achieved with the human voice. Jason's craft requires a poet's heightened attention; inhabiting the song of a blackbird has been a lifetime's work.

In this programme, Jason seeks the source of his fascination with mimicking the natural world, which became very important to him after reading 'The Conference of the Birds' a 12th-century Persian poem.

Jason also thinks his fascination with shapeshifting or 'soundshifting' must have something to do with his great-grandfather, who left Lahore to travel and read the palms of the great and the good, always carrying glowing letters of recommendation explaining that he would reveal truths about people 'not commonly known' and reflecting people's stories back to them. He explores the idea that they are both 'listeners' - a kind of family inheritance.

Jason bares his process along the way, taking us deep into a soundscape of sea, wind, birds and drones.

Contributors:
Sophie Scott
Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London

Alan Williams  
Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Religion and the University of Manchester

Dr Humera Iqbal
Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Psychology at University College London


Producer: Faith Lawrence 
Mixed by: Sharon Hughes and Sue Stonestreet

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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