Search - Bernie Krause :: Kalimantaan: Heaven Before Time

A place of compelling beauty at the time this recording was made in 1992, Kalimantaan (the ancient name for the island of Borneo) comprised one of the last truly ancient rainforest habitats left...a wondrous heaven before time. Birds, insects and mammals vocalized in special and intricately symbiotic ways that took many millenia to learn. It was the first time I became aware of just how fabulously musical the whole environment could be when still in its unspoiled state. I never wanted to leave. Gibbon duets signal the arrival of first light as the birds awaken in the luminous dappled forest. Toward the end of the first sound sculpture, a passing cloudburst quiets things down. Then, in the heat of late afternoon, an orang-utan gives a long call as proboscis monkeys scamper through the canopy above our dugout canoe tethered to the mangrove roots along the river bank as they begin to settle into their evening nests high in the trees. Frogs join gentle afternoo! n biophony as daylight begins to fade and rain starts to fall again.