Brisbane biz cut single for orangutans

A group of mostly Brisbane musicians have released the single Nightingale Floor for the Orangutan Land Trust.

The idea is to highlight how orangutan habitats in South East Asia are being destroyed with the development of palm oil plantations.

Musician Sallie Campbell kick-started the project last year and brought in names as Kate Miller-Heidke, producer Daniel Denholm, John Rodgers, Rob Davidson and Keir Nuttall. It was released as a three minute single and a twenty-minute string orchestra opus written for an 11-piece string section, featuring three soloists and exotic folk instruments as nyckelharpa, baritone bowed psaltry, hammered dulcimer and five-string violin.

“Nightingale Floors were cleverly built in ancient Japanese castles to creak and sing when walked upon to warn of intruders,” explains Campbell. “Similarly, we need be the ’new nightingales’ who signal danger to our fragile ecology. 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.”

See nightingalefloor.com.au for full details.