THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF MUSIC: PAUL BARTON AND HIS ELEPHANTS

I'm sure many of you have heard the sentiment that music is the universal language. No matter what our mother tongue is, we can all but impacted in the same way by the same kind of music regardless of the language that piece of music is sung in or derived from. Not only can the aforementioned sentiment be attributed to people across the world, but we can apply it to animals as well. It's no surprise that animals have the ability to respond to music; there have been many studies conducted to prove it as well. For example, a 2001 study at the University of Leicester found that cows tend to produce more milk when listening to slower music. In another example, a 2012 study done at Emory University found that the parts in a bird's brain that react when listening to music is similar to the parts of a human's brain that reacts as well. I can go on and on about more fascinating studies because they are all really quite interesting. However, in this post, I'm going to specifically be talking about one animal in particular, the elephant. 

The elephant is quite the intelligent creature. Its memory is practically unrivaled, it has shown the ability to use tools and can distinguish different human languages. With a brain like that, elephants has expressed a keen aptitude for listening to human music. Just take the Thai Elephant Orchestra as a prime example of this. Musician and neuroscientist Dave Soldier along with conversationalist Richard Lair founded this orchestra back in 2000, which features up to 16 elephants playing instruments specifically made for them such as steel drums or harmonicas. You can read more about the founders and the orchestra via this link. Personally I thought stuff like this only existed inside the pages of a picture book, yet here I am amazed and sorely mistaken. We are going to venture back to Thailand to talk about the amazing story of Paul Barton and his elephants.

Barton's career in the arts started at the age of 16, but not the type of arts you'd initially think. He studied arts at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and one prizes in portrait painting and portrait drawing in student competitions and would soon have his work exhibited at various exhibitions. Despite his early success with portrait art, he decided to make a career out of being a concert pianist. His career started off strong with many great performances to his name, though he quickly decided that it wasn't the life that he wanted. This career change led him to travel to Thailand where he taught piano at the Thai Piano School; he would also go on to meet his future wife there as well and decided begin a new life there. On his 50th birthday, his wife asked him what it is he'd like to do and that was when this fascinating story began. He decided he wanted to play piano for elephants.

Thailand was infamous for subjecting elephants to hard labor, specifically logging. After deforestation was declared illegal a number of years ago, those elephants were set free from their lives of arduous labors. Many of those elephants were of old age, injured or handicapped and would end up at Elephant's World, a safe haven for these elephants that offer them a place to recover and relax. Barton decided that these elephants needed more than just an open space to relax and took it upon himself to offer his services to these wounded animals. His first client was an elephant named Plara, who's work in logging caused her to go blind and was tossed aside like nothing after she was no longer useful. Barton recalled his previous work with blind children and how music impacted them and applied this to Plara, playing the piano live for her. Plara had been in the middle of eating (and elephants will eat to no avail), but when Barton started playing some Beethoven, Plara stopped eating just to enjoy the music.

This was the start of his YouTube channel, which to this date has amassed over 540k subscribers. A lot of his content involves piano playing and portrait painting, but his most popular content by far is when he posts videos of him out in the open with a piano comforting a handicapped elephant. It's definitely interesting to watch the interactions between Barton and the elephants, especially given the PTSD the elephants must be suffering at the hands of humans. Elephants can be violent and with the way humans have treated these creatures, they should have resentment towards humans  Because of this history, Barton makes it a point of emphasis to move the piano all the way to where the elephants are (which is in the mountains), just to comfort them. "What is the little thing I can do as a human to say sorry, for my species for what we have done to them?," Barton said. "I'll carry this heavy thing myself and play some music for the elephant while it is having some breakfast.

Barton is truly a kind soul and the work that he's doing is altruistic and amazing. I highly encourage that you check out his YouTube channel and see his interactions with elephants for yourself. You can see it all here. I'm glad that these elephants have Barton, after the life they've endured, it's the least they deserve.