When the singer Sandi Thom uploaded a tearful video to YouTube, in which she despaired at the need to appease monolithic radio playlist committees, the clip went viral for all the wrong reasons. However, it did find support from musicians routinely faced with the unenviable task of pleasing notoriously picky tastemakers, radio playlisters and music journalists. Meanwhile, in the US, composer David Teie has set his sights on the only crowd more difficult to impress than clapped-out rock hacks: cats.
“I know, it sounds like a joke,” says Teie on his Music for Cats Kickstarter page, where he outlined his need to raise $20,000 to finish his first cat album. But plenty of people have taken it seriously: more than 7,000 investors have put money in. At the time of writing, the fund stands at more than $167,000 and the campaign doesn’t end until 28 November. “Cats have had to listen to music they often didn’t actually like,” says the accompanying video. “Until now.”
Teie, a cellist with the US National Symphony Orchestra, has been working on species-specific music since 2009, and previously tested his theories on tamarin monkeys. Music for Cats is his first major project (more people, he reasons, own cats than monkeys). He emphasises that his work is proven by science — the basis being that, as humans, we like to hear a pulse in our music “because we heard a pulse constantly for four months before we were born”. Cats, on the other hand, develop this sense after birth. Tei says: “Suckling is a reward-related sound that all cats hear as the brain structures responsible for their emotions [are] forming. The musical swishing sound heard in the cat music is one example of something that will have no relevance for us, but will be strongly relevant for a cat.”
Looking ahead to “difficult second album” territory, Teie wants to create music that will soothe captured whales or abused dogs, and he will have a $147,000 Kickstarter surplus to play with as long as he doesn’t blow the lot on expensive videos and Iggy Azalea guest verses.
For the time being, and in the name of research, I find the nearest feline, next door’s 10-year-old black-and-white cat, Trudie. (Full name, I learn today: Trudie Princess Fiona.) To start my experiment, I give TPF a blast of the current No 1 single — Adele’s Hello. Her quintessentially feline response is to wander into the next room. Having established a control, I then play her a clip of Music for Cats.
It sounds like something you might find on a relaxation CD from Poundland, but don’t forget I am a stupid human and am not meant to understand. Trudie, meanwhile, responds by swishing her tail. She stares at me. She jumps on a chair, then stares at me a bit more. The clip ends. Trudie is still in the room. Has Music for Cats been a roaring success? Not quite, but it purred a little.
