Transcript

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(transcribed by AI so there maybe some small errors!)

Marina Robb: Hello, and welcome to the Wild Minds Podcast for people interested in health, nature based therapy and learning. We explore cutting edge approaches that help us improve our relationship with ourselves, others and the natural world. My name is Marina Robb, I'm an author, entrepreneur, Forest School outdoor learning and nature based trainer and consultant, and pioneer in developing green programs for the health service in the UK.

So, hi Sam and welcome to the Wild Minds podcast. Thank you so much for coming.

Sam Lee: Thank you very much for having me, Marina.

Marina: I always start with gratitude and it really helps me land and I have a feeling that you'll be okay with this but I should check that I’m going to just share some and then whatever you feel to share after that would be great. Is that okay?

Sam: That's good for me.

Marina: Great. So, well, my gratitude for today, because I’m speaking to you, has to be music. I don't actually often share how grateful I am to music because it can change the way I feel. It can move me in so, many ways. And yeah, I don't know what I do without music. So that is my gratitude. How about you?

Sam: oh, I mean always grateful for music maybe it would be appropriate for me to then couple that with I’m grateful for silence for the quietness that we are not always afforded both externally and internally as well and for where we are allowed a peaceful interlude, the gaps between the songs, the gaps between conversations and those moments where we actually are able to hear the deeper, quieter things.

Marina: Thank you so much. Oh, that already made me take a breath and slow down. Yeah, it's so, true. What happens in the silence is very profound. Thank you so much. So I would really like to start with something that may seem so obvious to you, but I’m not sure I’m completely clear about which is actually what is a folk song and what is folk music because I have an Italian heritage and Yeah, I don't really know. I kind of I was thinking about do I really know what that even is? Because I think I’m used to the kind of Bob Dylan and then my partner said, oh, well, that's more American. So could you just enlighten me about that? And then we'll then we then we'll go into all these wonderful other things I want to ask you.

Sam: Okay, poor important place to start. And, you know, for many people, this is a similar thing, that folk music means many different things to many different people. I would start by saying that actually, it's a bit of a misnomer.

Marina: Okay.

Sam: Firstly, my great passion is of traditional song, which are often interchangeable. I sing folk songs, I sing trad songs.

Marina: Okay.

Sam: When you say folk songs, that could mean Bob Dylan, Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling, or it could be an ancient ballad from the 14th century sung in Suffolk or the Salento region of Italy. Ultimately, what I mean by folk music, when I use that term, is music of communities that's... that comes from an oral tradition that has been passed down intergenerationally and often is of no known narrator. So written by the great songwriter, a non anonymously kind of appeared, emerged, taken on shaped and succeeds on its own sense of beauty and, potency in the sir the inherent part of that song being important to the narratives of that community. And that can make them something that's incredibly rare, or it could make the song something that's incredibly prolific and known throughout many lands and passed on so folk songs are bob dylan songs they are beatles songs they are jenny mitchell songs they are blue songs they are italian tarantella songs as well as you know british broadside ballads these are all part of the folk tradition

Marina: That's really helpful, actually, because I I was getting confused about that. So that that's really interesting. And it's also really important, I suppose, that these songs, as you've intimated, is that oral tradition that gets passed on through generations as well, when we're thinking about the kinds of things... that you've gathered is that that's right yeah and I’m wondering as well then you know we gather songs and then we gather skills and we gather things from the past that live in the present that's quite something isn't it because so much gets destroyed

Sam: Indeed, and that composting is part of the natural process. thats folk Traditional songs are like species, that they go extinct and that they variegate and some become prolific and break away from each other and diverge into different songs and new songs. And there is an organic-ness to them, an evolutionary-ness to them. We live in an interesting time now where the whole idea of how passing on culture and tradition is very different because of the recorded digital internet-based way that we can source knowledge and ideas from anywhere and the integrity or the sense of worth or validity or that kind of power of each individual entity is very hard to value you know once upon a time the ones the songs and the beliefs that became most powerful ones that held weight for one reason or another, which is out of communal agreement or through... oppressive, you know, powerful structures that insisted on a particular concept or idea or practice being mandatory. But nowadays, this idea of an ancient culture being reinvigorated is very complex because a lot of folk songs nowadays are learnt off YouTube. And, you know, they aren't necessarily the most beautiful versions, but they are the ones that somehow have found their success or gotten the most streams. or And likewise, in terms of traditional crafts and that sort of thing, so much is learned and borrowed from all sorts of different places. And ideas are taken from books that have somewhat made them up in the first place to give a sense of, you know, validity. So it's kind of, you know, we're... where we live in this kind of difficult age of understanding what is authentic and what is real and what is old and what is, um, you know, valid. Um, it's very difficult to judge.

Marina: Yes, it is. And I want to ask you about that because you have this wonderful phrase that I heard, tending the flame and not worshipping the ashes. But before I go there, if I may, you know, I understand that u s you are... let's say a carrier of something because that you've gone and you've spent real one-to-one time with people and actually learned the songs not through the internet but actually directly in person And I would love to know a little bit more about that because many years ago, maybe 10 years ago, because I work outdoors with groups and I get funding, I worked with the traveller community. I went with the Irish travelling community and I worked separately with the gypsy community. and I immediately encountered the stigma around that. So we often don't hear about these people's without kind of bumping against a lot of the discrimination and the stigma. But I'd love you what you're bringing is their story and their music. And I, so how was that for you in this period of your life? I don't know whether you still do that, meeting these peoples that are both discriminated, but also very close to the land and a very, a people of great tradition.

Sam: lots of questions in there. And I kind of want to start with the with the earlier one, which was that, you know, how I went about trying to find the songs of the British Isles and that's England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, you know, or inclusively when I say British Isles, that I was I was in love with the folk songs. I was told that they had all gone extinct, i.e. there were no tradition bearers, i.e. the people who had learnt the songs in the oral way, not out of books, off manuscripts and off records and tapes and that sort of thing. Where was the song, where were the songs still alive in the landscape amongst people who knew it like their grandmother had taught them and their grandmother's grandmother had taught them? And I was told by the academics in the folk song studies that there weren't any old source singers, tradition bearers left. They had all passed on. And I I didn't believe this. And in all the recordings that I'd listened to, and that was thousands and thousands of hours, I became obsessed with these old field recordings made from the wax cylinder days of 1906 through till the and to that I I was hearing voices from all over the country and all different walks of life, mostly from the working folk, the working people, you know, that as it was as they were titled, the peasant classes, who were the kind of the people to keep the songs alive. And I was aware that this was a music that existed only within that those echelons of society. It's a class thing. But I was also hearing within those recordings made of gypsy travellers, Irish travellers, Scots travellers and English gypsies. And I I had no prejudice. I didn't grow up with a sort of stay away from the gypsies. I lived in central London. There were travellers, There were Irish non-travellers living in my area. I was sent I was in Camden Town. it was like a an area filled with multiculturalism. So there was no stigma over one community. So I didn't, approach that all the travellers all know we don't like the travellers type attitude that I realize is massively prevalent in our country in endemic lee so and you know with acceptable racism associated so when I first heard these voices I was like holy crap these are the best singers in the whole world that I’ve ever heard this is soul this is the British blues

Marina: Wow. Amazing.

Sam: And more so in the Travellers, the Gypsy Travellers, than any of the other settled singers that I was listening to. These were the big voices, the vibrato, the decorative styles, the modal tunes. I was captivated by these songs because they were so exotic and more so much more beautiful than... the settled English British singers. And then very quickly, I was very lucky and encountered a Scottish traveller who was really one of the last of the travellers to still be alive, who remembered the songs and was a a sort of equivalent to a sort of she shamanic medicine man of Scotland had lived a very unusual an extraordinary life and became apprentice to Stanley Robertson. His aunt, Jeannie Robertson, is one of the greatest singers that has ever been recorded by Alan Lomax and Hamish Henderson and many others toured the world, became very famous in her time for her singing within the folk realm. probably and And Stanley introduced me to a whole other way of singing and that culture.

Marina: Okay. Okay.

Sam: And that led me then into the journeying for 15 years of song collecting and trying to find members of the Gypsy and Irish Traveller community who may, like Stanley, have remembered some of the old ballads. Now, nobody I met had as many songs as Stanley. He was like the last of the great, you know, Leviathans, you know, was a phenomenal... thousands of years of songs distilled into him and an extraordinary knowledge. And, you know, with I was very privileged to have lived with him for the for the last four years of his life. But I did encounter many prolific singers who still remembered many, of them the old songs and had never been heard, never, unlike Stanley, had never been recorded, had never been given that platform and pedestal of an institution or a university you know doing the work or yeah so I had a great privilege to sit at the feet of some elders you know several hundred elders and listen to them record quite obsessively as many songs as I could because I knew they would all be dead soon as they are now so

Marina: Yeah. there's really something so strong around and again I’m drawing on some of the things I’ve listened to in doing some research for this podcast around preservation and conservation because so Meaning in some sense, there's an aliveness, there needs to be an aliveness in the music, because here it is in this moment. And yet, so I’m hearing this quality of conserving, remembering, and at the same time, needing it to be present and alive and I'd love you to speak about that because that's one of those threads I think in what you meant by tending the flame by not worshipping the ashes but this very aliveness that feels something of what you're talking about Yeah. So you've used the right word that I’ve always interested in conservation and not preservation.

Sam: And I think there's been a general attitude in the past of preserving these old folk songs, capturing them as they are and, um, and thus inhibiting their natural progression and their growth. Now, in some ways, one would argue that their natural progression is towards disappearance because that's what's happened. They became irrelevant. Times change. Other songs, mediums take over. Popular music comes in. It's bloody great. It speaks about... you know, many of the same things, but in to a slightly different rhythm and, you know, and great. We have a, you know, an extraordinary expressive world cup, you know, legacy now of many decades of recorded music in all sorts of sounds and it's mind blowing. But this idea of like, tradition, that phrase tradition is tending the flame and not worshipping the ashes, I should firstly honour that that's a Gustav Mahler quote, so it's not mine. But I have

Marina: I only heard it through you, sorry. Yeah, I only heard it through you, yeah.

Sam: what I’ve probably said it more times than Gustav Mahler has ever said it. He probably said it just the once rather dismissively as a as a little quip. And I have latched onto it and dedicated much of my life to with that concept because it fits so well within this idea of like, well, what does it mean today in the 2000s to be a folk singer, to sing songs from the past, from a time that has very much gone... and, you know, and from a community that never really had a voice at all. And what do those songs mean for today? And, like, that's a massive question. What does keeping it alive mean? What does it mean for me? what What's my intention with this stuff to become a singer? Is it because I want to find a song, type of song, that's going to make me really famous and lots of money? No, it's done me all right, but it's not why we're into this, unlike much of the rest of the music industry, which is about fame and success. Is it about making a difference, about retrieving an old knowledge, an old way of thinking? and Yes, and I'll come back to that in a minute. But what folk music isn't for me is reenactment. It's not for me think pretending that I was a knight in shining armour with a pretty fair maid. It's not about singing horrid songs of big grisly subjects like incest and murder and rape and fanciful kind of, you know, sort of twee little things just because they're old. I don't care that they're old. What I care about with the songs is that they hold a very important truth that for me is something that in our forgetting of that truth, we have got ourselves as a wider society, as a civilization into deep shit. And I think the forgetting of folk song and the dismissing of all that they, of the, of the culture that they sit pivotally at the center of as the glue for maintaining identity sovereignty attunement to the land to nature and about holding ourselves and each other to account has been eroded and they have disappeared in response to that or as a consequence and led us to this unbelievable state where we have destroyed a vast percentage of nature and the natural world that we depend on, et cetera. I could, you know, I could totally, you know, repeat everything that you and the listeners probably know is where we're at right now.

Marina: I know. Yeah.

Sam: And I feel very strongly that these songs sit at the heart of the journey of reclamation and retuning that we need to do to get back to being responsible stewards of the world. And our loss of identity and our loss of sense of landedness and place that has not come just as a consequence, but it's through the machinations and the policies and the practices of brutal colonial civilisation, you know, culture that we live in British Isles, that we've exported those attitudes globally, but we did brilliantly on ourselves to suppress and sever us from the land itself. is that these folk songs are a little bit of the key code to getting ourselves to want to care again and wanted to re invite healthier form of being human

Marina: Can I ask you about, love what you just said, songs hold an important truth. Am I right in understanding, because I don't want to misinterpret you, that I have a sense of deep listening to the land, that somehow the song is coming through you or could have come through the people who sung the song and therefore it is this relationship, it's a deeper relationship. Is that kind of what you said about important truth and there's something I’m wondering around other voices other than the human voice somehow as well that come through. And I know you've talked about song dreaming, which I hope we can talk about as well, but there seems to be a connection between that, is that, am I on track here?

Sam: Yeah, completely. It's very difficult to, you raise a really important point. This is the really tough thing of the communication of this, that to speak about song separate, from land justice, you know regenerative forms of agriculture, from you know communities that have a strong sense of collective identity and our connection to the land and our living solidarity with the land in that sense. To separate them all out is kind of what's happened. obviously and weakens both entities and I you know kind of I get a bit kind of I’m gonna get on my high shy horse here because like these songs come from a community that lived in amazing sympathetic relationship of deep knowing. So the songs themselves don't always hold the entire ecological textbook of how to, you know, treat the land right. But there's an implied knowledge within them. There's a vast amount of knowing that those people for generations who sang them every gesture within the song, every narrative, little kind of note to a particular species or where they were held for those singers, an incredible activation of a map of knowledge they had of their world and the way they lived on it. And some of that was absolutely beautiful and romantic. Some of it is devastating. The poaching ballads about the fear of being caught and hung or transported for just going catching the food that you forever had the right to access because of Enclosure Act. So they hold with them both a love and a pain and the trauma. And when we start to recognise what those traumas were, Ancestrally, we start to realise how impoverished we are today and how, yeah, how deprived we are from the access to clean water, to healthy food, to food that isn't destroying the land in its extraction. And to and to community and accessing of the nation, all the things that have for profit have been taken away and monetized and exploited and extracted. are all the things that go hand in hand with some of the stories that the old folk songs actually are the first bits of evidence if one forensically looks at the kind of journey. So but I what am I trying to say here is that the songs are part of the healing work And when we reclaim them and we rewrite them and we sing new ones and we take them back to the land, they work as really powerful, really powerful tools in building new vision of how we want to live in the future, bringing some knowledge of the past, practices, traditions, and also some of the techniques and brilliances of modern technology that combined can make the world absolutely flourishing and abundant.

Marina: well I do share that quality of that energy of and hope I suppose of what it could be but perhaps before we go though I I’m really sitting with sound as a healer, but as a healing technique. But also, I remember in some old stories that I’ve heard, not from this culture, but of how the universe was created through sound, right? So I’ve kind of, my brains jumped from the extraordinary thing about sound. And I and I don't really understand that. I don't know if that's a rational, if it's rationally possible to understand that. But there's something here for me around not just the words, but the sound and how that it goes beyond... you know it changes the way you feel, which is in a way where I started with gratitude without even understanding. And a lot of your music, what when I sit and listen to your music, I often feel it in my body, you know like the sound is very particular. Yeah, there's a real... I’ve noticed, I mean, I I don't know all your music, but there's a sense of this quality of As you said, healing, but there's also a bit of sadness there, but there's a longing. Yeah. So I keep jumping around because that's what I do, I’m afraid. But there's a sense of sound as creation and sound as, you know, just being able to affect and influence and have a relationship with that is not just rational, for sure.

Sam: I have no proof that any of this works. But actually, I have no evidence, but I have lots of proof. Maybe that's the way. Can I start that again?

Marina: Yeah, go for it.

Sam: I have no evidence that it works, but I have lots of proof. And the work that I do with creating song initiating it both in myself and others to sing has only ever shown me that it's an act of prayer and that for us to think that we're the only people the only things entities that can hear it that sound is foolish. When we sing with the land, we are, we have the greatest audience and participants one could ever imagine for. And the response is palpable. And that's on my lived experience, but also in the stories that I have had the pleasure of hearing tales of where song is the key to a healthy relationship with land. And that is... so prevalent within so many indigenous cultures that their song is their way of manifesting, of communicating with a higher power that loves, that loves and that song is our way of showing love. And when songs are stopped singing, when the songs are stopped sung, let me say again, when the songs are no longer sung, there is a cascade of impoverishment, of decline that happens. And when the songs are re-invited and re-invoked, the rains come, the land blossoms, the birds sing. And we and I just and I would just say that is, I think, part of the reason why humans are on this planet and why we have evolved is that in not to shy away from the brutality and the horrors that we have always inflicted on each other, but we have been... an extraordinary creator of abundance in all the places that we have reached, um, with the odd extinction. Yes. In the history books, but actually we have learned how to keep balance and song has been the barometer of that balance and the, yeah, the air conditioning system, the, whole kind of, Yeah, the wand in which we've wielded to make that happen.

Marina: That's amazing. I love to hear that and to yeah spend more quiet time thinking around that and feeling into that. You mentioned earlier being captivated by song and I want to ask you about that because in my and because I feel like we're playing a little bit here around, well, do you captivate? what kept you know It's like the song captivates you and I was really thinking around obviously birds and I really want to talk to you about the Nightingale project that you're not just part of I think you initiated the whole project and it's quite near to me because I’m in Sussex and there's this invitation as I’ve understood it to really listen to go and listen and actually sing with the nightingales. And there's something here around, well, just around connection again and the song not just coming from humans, as you well know. I know that you're also an ornithologist in your past, but this sense that the song is obviously also coming from the soundscape of our land. And yeah, so tell me a little bit about being captivated by the nightingales because I imagine you were am I that right did they capture you as well did they capture you as well

Sam: Yeah, hook, line and sinker. And just to clarify, and I I never have been an ornithologist. I’m unstudied, untrained.
Marina: who oh I took that from somebody else sorry I’m completely self-taught in that. And my knowledge of birds is holed and ropey, many times inaccurate.

Sam: But with the Nightingale, I think I know a little bit or two.

Marina: You probably do, yeah.

Sam: and that's from, you know, in like all the best ornithologists from lived experience, you know, an ornithologist, the ones that I’ve spent time with, lots of great ones and, you know, their ability to identify people a species just by the flit of a wing that they catched, you know, behind a tree is extraordinary. Their attunement to being able to identify and know differences and have the stories. We call it a science, but it's a storytelling. The best ornithologists are the ones that, can see the story happening where we are in the tale and I enter into that skill a little bit with nightingales but I’m not really scientifically minded as much as I aspire to be and love knowledge and love learning I’m aware that the power that we can have in change comes through the heart and stories work with the heart and science works through the head but one I think there's a Very important in way that we have to work with the two hand in hand to be able to get the message out as far as possible. But with Nightingales, they got me when I first heard one, not far from where you are.

Marina: That's okay.

Sam: In Pulborough Brooks, where I first... Sorry, edit that. It's not where I first heard them. I totally forgot the name of the reservoir.

Marina: It's no not Nolan's, not Alfriston.

Sam: No, I that's where I go for them now, but where I first heard them. Anyway, they I'll just go back and say, yeah, the Nightingales, you know they did they caught me when I was in my 20s and fell in love with this song because it spoke to me as it as an artist because they were late night, they were they were hiders in the shadows they were expressive they were improvisers they broke all the rules they were very shy and so many other qualities I could go into about the night and get out that I was like I get you And then after years of listening every year, I entered into this sort of dead into the correspondence with them, the making music with them, as there is great legacy of globally across the Northern hemisphere of musicians throughout history and artists being inspired and having conversations. And what I realized is that They are and in many ways our kind of, they're our like spirit bird, our great muse. You know, they're the bird that has provoked so much poetry and literature written about them and so many folk songs. And also that they hold this capacity for tolerating and singing with artists in very close proximity in the way that no other bird does. and I think I think there's something I think there's something magical in this. And I don't mean magical in the way that it's just it's really pretty cool. I mean magical in that there is something that happens when nightingales and humans connect with nightingales and humans connect that I know has been happening for tens of thousands of years, possibly for longer, that suggests to me that they are a bird that in the very short window of time that humans have evolved, And the very long window of times that nightingales have been singing for, I e millions of years, probably not that much difference in their song in those millions of years, that in the tens, hundreds of thousands that we've evolved as a from you know ape to as we are now. Nightingales have been a bit of a teacher and a bit of a an inviter for us to start to grapple with what we what communication is and how it can be so I think there's a role that they play deep in our dna and our genetics epigenetically speaking that makes them very incredible and we owe a lot to And so the practice that I enter into of making music with them, with an audience every night for eight weeks, 40 people a night, is about honoring that ancient legacy.

Marina: Amazing.

Sam: And that gratitude that I have for them, for what they've given to us, that we may never know or be able to evidence, but one can't discount how vital they are.

Marina: And I understand that when you're in when you're in these woods, perhaps if it is woods, I think it's sometimes the edges of woods, but that you have this you can actually, when you slow down enough, I suppose, you can, you see that they're responding. there's There is this music making at some level, which is amazing, isn't it? Because it's across species. Yeah, which is amazing. Maybe it's not that amazing, actually, when I think of the creatures, how we respond to each other as animals, perhaps. but it seems amazing in terms of the tunes and the attunements and, yeah.

Sam: it Yeah, exactly. I think the but thing is that we've forgotten what species interspecies communication is and how incredible humans are. And we can see this in indigenous communities present today, our indigenous cousins, and then also... the hunter-gatherer legacy that we come from as well, is that we spoke to all the species and not just, you know, the lions and tigers and bears, but, you know, the birds and the soil and the wind and the water, particularly the water, you know, that this was all part of the interconnectedness that we were tuned into. And we survived off that and we nip manipulated and we adapted ourselves in accordance. It's how we've managed to you know live and survive in the Arctic and the desert and extreme environments. It's through having a very powerful correspondence with nature. And we have very much lost that in the Western world, with a few exceptions and places where we have these wonderful stories of humans who've somehow managed to create an amazing connection with a fox or a bear or a robin in their back garden. What the nightingale kind of does is indiscriminately welcome us all in very close proximity and discriminately welcomes the musician and the artists. And that's the bit that I love about this bird is that they will say, yes, come sit by my side, play music with me, if you're good and you're alive and you're you are you know and oh awake as an artist, I will dance with you. And we as an audience get, an eyes and I as a singer get to do that. And it just for a moment, well, it's not just for a moment, And I think that what happens to the participants who are there in presence is that suddenly everything about the division between us and the natural world or how inanimate the world is suddenly ceases to hold any weight. And that is the power of that bird is to just remind us that we are part of nature and nature is part of us. And we can say that and we can repeat that term, but we can't often go, and I can tell you where and why that has happened and how proof of that. And so it just, it's a little bit for me of presence of God in that respect, acting in, you know, proving that there is there is a deeper spirituality around us.

Marina: Absolutely. and as you say, I think in a way it's an experiential process. experience I don't know you know you can't you can't actually tell someone you know this is you know you can't both put words to it that adequately describe that but you have to experience it and then maybe not have words just be with that and what you make of it is a story again isn't it in some ways in some ways so I want to just a little bit just talk about this extinction because The songbirds, the nightingales, there are less of them. And I think I’ve heard you suggest and I’ve heard it elsewhere that, you know, where we could be talking as little as 20, 25 years max before we may never hear those songs again. and I kind of have to say that in that way because I can't, because I can I feel sad you know about la and wonder around, well, a couple of things in the work that you've done in terms of environmental activism and what are some of the things, that are worth knowing about, both in terms of the challenges and the pain of that, the grief of that, as well as the opportunities. And I'll help you just thinking about, you mentioned about Berlin and lots of nightingales, but also the diversity of the land. Like, what can what do you think... we together as the community little steps or larger steps could be doing to have that different imagination to bring in something different because I do have a sense we are we are part of a a very large community that really do care is there any insight that you could bring in any in any way just to kind of share as we as we kind of come to the end

Sam: Yeah. Well, I am very boringly practically minded. And, you know, although I love entering into this whimsical romantic sort of like, let's just forget our lives and our problems and go and dance naked in the wilderness. I also am aware that These are critical times and the window and we are at the moment in a place of whatever we do now is salvage work.

Marina: Absolutely.

Sam: So the Nightingale's events themselves are there. They're about generating impact and change. And change comes through the heart first, not through the head, as I as I shared earlier. And I sort of want to default to just saying that there are such simple things that we can do. And the first thing is about rewilding ourselves. about getting ourselves back to nature and finding those moments of awe and enchantment, be that with a nightingale or be that walking in your local park and just observing the crocuses coming out as they are right now and snowdrops and daffodils and just the wonders of that cycle of life, but also about recognising the precariousness, starting to see the unseeable. And the nightingale, feel so reliable in their return, but they're not guaranteed to be returning. And this is it. I think we have a limited numbers of years left with nightingales. Already the habitat destruction that's happening on there to their wintering grounds in and Africa is so devastating that more and more of them are not going to be able to feed enough to make the journey back. So we have to start looking at this is not just about planting more blackthorn bushes in a bit of land in the southeast of England to try and make more habitat for them. Although that is absolutely vital because habitat and food source here is... half the half the problem solved. But we just have to look about what's happening on a wider climatic level and fossil fuel extraction and burning, which is out of control at the moment, is going to push us over tipping points that are going to see massive changes. And that will render most of our migratory birds chances of surviving journeys and wintering grounds and summering grounds so erased that they will just not be coming back. And we're going to see what I call the alopecia, the kind of sudden chunks of nature not reappearing, nightingales in their masses not coming back one spring where we sit there waiting for them to come. That's how I expect it's going to be, not little by little decline as we're experiencing because of, you know, British crap environmental protection stewardship, you know, unbelievably. inept environment agency taking any action for any sort of ecological crime be that habitat destruction or river pollution whatever so wait we have to sort of act as individuals here a little bit I think and start to go what can I do in my world and the things I share are simple. They are where possible, eat organic, buy from regenerative farms, invest your money, that makes the land we is that grows our food, that sustains us throughout the year, as much as possible, make that land that's... but living healthily and inviting nature eat more wild venison because deer populations in this country are exploding and destroying our woodland and we're really seeing the impact of that particularly on nightingales but so much land is being nature is being destroyed because of deer because they have no predators so eat more wild venison not farm venison go to your deer local deer stalkers

Marina: Yes. Actually, the woodland, which is Lawton Greenwood, which is a community woodland near I am, that's exactly what's happening as well. I want to ask you about the quietness, because you really brought that to my attention in your gratitude. and I’m also wondering about that in terms of inner rewilding, inner healing, inner because I do think there's a link between the noise, the never-ending noise of the machinations, as you said, of our world and this wandering around when we I’m thinking of the song, I’m thinking of the spaces, the quiet and that might also have a role and I yeah, to bring us back to that quietness in your experience and also song and the arts and the beauty, you know, just maybe to close with anything you'd like to say around that, which I really felt was important. I often forget the quietness.

Sam: Yeah, well, this is line that I love sharing about the Nightingale, that they are the decorators of silence. The nature of their song is that they sing and then they go quiet. and there's this long gap, and then they'll sing again. And it just creates this wonderful sort of tied in, tied out of how they carve space. And, you know, for you, Marina and myself and maybe our listeners, you know, we are, we're soulful creatures and we like, we like quietness and, but also there is a whole other world of people who that would be deeply confrontational. so how can we bring people into a state of accepting quietness as a beautiful thing and that's a big challenge about slowing people down and uh nature does that wonderfully but it doesn't She doesn't do it on her own. And I think it needs human stewards. I think this expectation for people just who don't have it you know, vocabulary of and a comfort and being in being nature and no species and I can identify trees and birds and songs and that sort of thing. It can be a bit of a green noise. and also much of nature is just monoculture and pretty scrappy sad I get very depressed most country walks if I’m honest I have to be very careful where I go otherwise I get really angry and I’m supposed to be you know tuning in so how do we create an institution and a national service of nature connectors and providers it's what you do And actually, there's vast amount of enterprises of people who are working as those bridges, as those agents for inviting people to see nature and connect with nature in a way that they have not known they had the skills to do or provide them with the skills to do that. I was lucky that I had stewards, but I know that if you don't have it as a child, it's several times harder as an adult to be able to root yourself in. and it's takes so much more work and intention and determination to do that. Yet, if you work with children and they have an enriched, nature-enriched childhood, they are so much more likely to want to have more of it as an adult and do the work to protect and stand up for the rights of nature.

Marina: Oh, thank you so much for this conversation. do feel we're part of a community in the making. So, you know, I will be sharing, you know, everything and much more on the show notes and obviously links to Nightingales, your album and all the wonderful things that you do. So once again, yeah, thank you, Sam.

Sam: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Marina.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Wild Minds Podcast. If you enjoyed it and want to help support this podcast, please subscribe, share and leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. Your review will help others find the show. To stay updated with the wild mines podcast and get all the behind the scenes content. You can visit theoutdoorteacher.com or follow me on Facebook at the outdoor teacher UK and LinkedIn. Marina Robb,

The music was written and performed by Geoff Robb.

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