Spring has sung, and the birds are back. And not just the songbirds either, but naughty little fuckbirds1 too. Black-Capped-Fuckadees that go fuck-a-dee-dee-dee2. Songless Woodfuckers3 who can only drum out their love. Bluefucks and yellow-tailed whippoorfucks. Perhaps they are speaking the divine dirty ‘language of the birds’. Or just letting their harmonic throats do the squawking. Zoomusicologists will contend the latter. But they don’t know why the caged bird sings! Who knows why the caged bird4 sings?
I know why,
So, occasionally this blog is relevant—like really relevant. Topical too. Like when a new fictional bird is introduced to the public consciousness, and within the fortnight, the relevant bloggy and widgets are up and running.
Below is a short yet striking scene from The Hunger Games (2012). I’m pretty sure it’s the climax of the movie. No spoilers. Click on the youtube to play it.
The mockingjays aren’t very tonally reliable. Not like my singing telegram guy. These birds change the key on you. Maybe it’s just the dopplers shifting around while they fly and sing at the same time, or maybe they purposefully mock the melodies of the humans below them. And why not? Just at look at what these girls melodisize as their distress call and answer!
The first girl begins singing a D Major scale, rising up in thirds from D to E. However, the second girl sings in G Minor, and instead falls down on the final note, resolving to a D, the initial tone. It has a kind of fearful symmetry you see. Each four-note melody has two notes in common (G and D), that mirror each other at the beginnings and ends of the melodies. Both melodies fit nicely into the key of G Melodic Minor (G A Bb C D E F# G).
The second melody acts like a reverse picardy5. Instead of resolving to the G Major as was expected, the bird call picardies to a G Minor, subtly setting the viewer up for tragedy, sweet glorious tragedy, that lifts one up and drops one down like the dirty little fuckbirds that ferry our births and peck us unto death.
Oh, and Happy Harry Hundos! This here blog is an hundred blogs old.
Notes:
[1] Joyce, James. Dirty Love Letters to Nora Barnacle. http://loveletters.tribe.net/thread/fce72385-b146-4bf2-9d2e-0dfa6ac7142d
[2] Black-Capped Bloggy https://www.losdoggies.com/archives/14
(with quaint myspace hyperlinks)
[3] Major Laugh Made Ya Laugh https://www.losdoggies.com/archives/2354 (not about woodpecker’s song)
[4] The Musical Cryptogram “CAGED B” resembles the locrian scale, the 7th mode of C major, but really it’s a scale all its own. Also of note, the cryptogram spans greater than an octave, starting on a C and descending down a C Major Pentatonic scale, only to resolve to a B, defiantly passing over the root, as is to be expected from caged birds, a game of melodic leapfrog (similar to musical chairs), that tinges the modal mood with just the right amount of longing, sweet longing to be free from the tonic king.
[5] Picardy Party https://www.losdoggies.com/?s=picardy
