50. 1975, the Pacific Ocean

The MiraculousOctober 2023Music

In April, the same month as the fall of Saigon, the Phyllis Cormack, a 66-foot-long fishing trawler, sets sail from Vancouver in search of the Russian whaling fleet. Its mission is twofold: prevent the Russian vessels from killing any more whales, and alert the public about the continuing slaughter of this endangered species. On board are members of an environmental activist group, along with a flutist, a jazz saxophonist and a musician specializing in electronic instruments. The latter has brought on board a large modular synthesizer which he acquired while studying at California art school. All three musicians hope to communicate with whales by playing melodies inspired by recordings of whale songs, with the synthesizer sounds being broadcast through underwater speakers. It takes the Phyllis Cormack and its crew until late June to find the Russian fleet, which it intercepts as the whaling factory ship Dalnyi Vostok and its accompanying harpoon boats are operating some 50 nautical miles off the coast of Northern California. Launching three small Zodiacs, a handful of activists seek to place themselves between the pod of gray whales and Russian harpoons, a harrowing exercise. Although they are unable to protect all the whales, their photo and video documentation of the incident is instrumental in raising public outcry over the practice of whaling. In fact, this event marks the start of a worldwide movement to preserve these marine mammals. It also inspires countless other musicians to take to the oceans to perform music for—and, if all goes well, with—endangered cetaceans.

(Melville Gregory, Paul Winter, William Edward Jackson III)

Raphael Rubinstein is the New York-based author of The Miraculous (Paper Monument, 2014) and A Geniza (Granary Books, 2015). Excerpts from his recently completed book Libraries of Sand about the Jewish-Egyptian writer Edmond Jabès have appeared in Bomb, The Fortnightly Review and 3:AM Magazine. In January 2023, Bloomsbury Academic will publish a collection of his writing titled Negative Work: The Turn to Provisionality in Contemporary Art. Since 2008 he has been Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Houston School of Art.