Elephants are social animals – but can they also be encouraged to make music together? And with ‘real’ musical instruments, no less? Composer Dave Soldier tried this out in 1999 together with Richard Lair. At the time, Lair had already been working for many years at the Elephant Conservation Centre in Lampang in northern Thailand. There, the two had instruments built that were modelled on traditional Thai musical instruments. They had a sound familiar to the animals and were also adapted to their size. Six elephants then experimented with them.
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