Rare Song

Taken from Volume 5 of Common Thread, available for free in our Savile Row and Canal St stores.

Text by Bridget Arsenault

Illustration by John Molesworth

Midway through the period film The Dig, starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan, a young woman tells the story of how, in 1924, a musician named Beatrice Harrison was sitting in her garden one summer evening practicing her cello, when a nightingale started to accompany her, responding to her melody and chords. Startled, Harrison called the BBC, suggesting they should record it and in short order the haunting, mesmerising duet of a songbird and a cello transfixed the country, so much so that it made her an international sensation. And for years after, on one night each Spring, the BBC would send a crew to Harrison’s garden where she would perform live—and inevitably, a nightingale would always join her.  

Improbable as Harrison’s recordings seem, almost one-hundred years later Sam Lee, a 44 year old environmental activist and folk singer, now helps Brits experience similar magic. Lee is something of a master at the art of the unexpected. His 2018 single “Let Nature Sing” marked the first time a flock of British birds had a top-20 hit. Mixed by Lee and two other musicians, it was two minutes and 32 seconds of unadulterated birdsong from a cuckoo, a nightingale and a great spotted woodpecker. 

Now, each Spring, Lee leads a small band of seekers into the green fields of Kent at twilight. It’s there, under the stars and with a campfire burning that Lee will softly sing old British ballads and, in short time, a nightingale—or a group of them—will begin to accompany him. The result leaves many who witness it speechless.  

“You’re completely drenched in sound,” says Lee of the experience. “You’re so close; they are so loud; it’s kind of like taking drugs. It totally knocks your mind out because it’s such a rich sensation.”

Nightingales are among the most-loved birds in the U.K., deeply entwined with the country’s culture. Across the centuries, hundreds of folk songs have been written about them. The bird’s own song—only the male sings—is haunting not just because it sings in the dark, but because its musical ability is so sophisticated. (According to some studies, it can arrange hundreds of musical phrases.) Yet there is an added layer of melancholy, one that informs Lee’s desire to raise awareness of the nightingale: the bird is threatened with extinction. Fifty years ago, there were  hundreds of thousands of nightingales in the U.K.; now there are 5,000 or so left, due in part to the climate crisis. A 2020 statistic warns that with the current rates of decline, the nightingale could be extinct from the U.K. by 2050. 

It was this reality that led to Lee’s next feat: his debut book. Earning him praise from the likes of actress Joanna Lumley and model Lily Cole, The Nightingale: Notes on a Songbird is part 

poem, part lyrical memoir, part homage, and altogether inspiring and engaging.

“Songwriting is a whimsical act of moments of inspiration and, you know, response and reflection,” says Lee of his process. The book, on the other hand, was an entirely different  experience. “This was about forced study. It was like being back at school! Like having 5,000 essays to write.”

But it wasn’t just the act of writing that was challenging, it was taking something auditory and experiential and harnessing it so it’s conveyed on the page. “There’s this extraordinary sense that you’re sitting with one of our makers, a sort of god-like being who has inspired and influenced our species’ entire journey,” says Lee of the bird. “That’s a powerful thing. So to try and translate that into a book…”

A fascination with nature but also with storytelling is far from new for Lee. It was something his parents fostered from the time he could talk, shepherding him for walks, taking him on camping adventures, and sending him to Forest School Camps. “I was always trying to learn as much as possible about nature,” says Lee. “Understanding the relationships, the medicinal, and the mythological side of plants and trees, that allowed me to grow up with a vocabulary and a language that I could use to communicate with the outdoors.”

Equally, at the start of his career, when other twenty-somethings were off getting repetitive strain injuries from downing shots, Lee was traveling the country knocking on caravan doors and listening to vagrants who had otherwise been overlooked. The idea was to capture and catalogue the music and song that had been passed down through the generations. And, in 2012, the resulting debut album Ground of Its Own, earned Lee a coveted Mercury Prize nomination.

“Everything we’re experiencing now is just an amplification of things that we’ve all experienced before,” says Lee. “That’s the joy of working with folk songs and updating and modernising them. 

I don’t take full creative ownership; I’m am an interpreter.”

Today, there is even more of an immediacy to Lee’s art and a message behind it. His music has often been used as a soundtrack to propel Extinction Rebellion—the environmental movement that uses civil disobedience and theatrical stunts to make its point. And while that affiliation is unofficial, Lee recently announced he would be working with the organisation EarthPercent and donating one percent of the profits from his tour to the charity.

“I am so aware of how difficult it is to write music that speaks about the situations we’re in without it being a bit didactic or doom laden. It’s a very fine line,” says Lee.

“All this music is about how to create a soundtrack to the progress and to activate and encourage artists to speak out and sing out and connect their music with climate change. So like all great revolutions, there’s always been anthems behind them. And this one has several playlists.”