Monkey Music

[Brad Rose]

Christine liked working with the primates, but found it saddening and in some inexplicable way, desolate. The Red Monkeys, with their ever-escalating plaintive call, sounded to her like a deepening emergency that was being ignored by the authorities. When the Howler Monkeys ganged-up together, they sounded industrial, like a repeating punch press stamping out license plates in cold metal. Down the hill, where the smaller primates were caged, the little cheeps of the tiny marmosets, sounded like mockingbirds at dawn, and the Patas monkeys sounded like a rhythmic yawn of a wah wah pedal on a Stratocaster.

At home, after work, she would reflect on her day, and imagine herself, not an employee of the San Diego zoo, but a woman who had spent the day at a concert, where the prison orchestra had involuntarily played for the oblivious guards. The monkeys’ caged music, she now realized, was uncontainable even by the strongest of metal bars.

[Angela]

I enjoyed each of the descriptions, and the unusual setting. An orchestra of monkey noises!

[Brad Rose]

Nic, Gita, Paul, and Michael: Thanks very much. Originally I wanted to write something entitled "Monkey Barn" but I got into this and realized it was about music and prison. So I went where it led me. Glad you liked this.

Paul, that is fantastic that your brother is a zookeeper. I'd love it if he had a chance to read this.

Thanks again.

[Gita]

Damn this is good. I love "rhythmic yawn of a wah wah pedal on a Stratocaster." I know that sound! Of course, she is right about the prison aspect. That is what zoos are.

[Paul de Denus]

My brother is a former zookeeper and would love this- I'll tune him into it- nice work Brad

[Michael Brown]

Nice one here, Brad. I like how the title sounds as if you're going to deliver something metaphorical, and then you go literal. But of course, there's more to that music than meets the ear.