Kate Miller-Heidke, Keir Nuttal, Sallie Campbell, and more talented local artists have joined forces to help save the orangutans through the power of music. The team have released the single “Nightingale Floor” alongside two short films to raise funds for the Orangutan Land Trust.
The project is the brainchild of Sallie Campbell, who composed the song as well as playing mandolin, five-string violin, nyckelharpa, hammered dulcimer, and baritone bowed psaltry on the recording. She enlisted a bunch of friends to join her to raise awareness of the impact of palm oil production on the world’s orangutans.
“Nightingale Floors were cleverly built in ancient Japanese castles to creak and sing when walked upon to warn of intruders. Similarly, we need be the ‘new nightingales’ who signal danger to our fragile ecology,” she explained. “The situation is urgent; the last wild orangutans on the earth live in Malaysia and Indonesia and their habitat is being threatened by the development of palm oil plantations. Unsustainable palm oil is in 50% of supermarket items and if people knew the food and products they were consuming everyday were wiping out forests and all the beautiful creatures there, they wouldn’t buy them.”
Nightingale Floor is dedicated to those beautiful creatures, and being released as a three minute single and a twenty-minute string orchestra opus written for an 11-piece string section, featuring three soloists and those exotic folk instruments Sallie loves.
Visit the Nightingale Floor website to learn more about palm oil, make a donation, and download the song and short films. All money raised with benefit Orangutan Land Trust.
Image used with permission from On the Map PR