The Whooping Cranes — Cori MacNaughton / Yan Frenkel

This video is part of The Singing Poetry Project. Each video in this project combines a poem from the English-Speaking world with a melody from outside that world.

This not-for-profit project is not copyrighted. Any part of this project or the project as a whole may be freely reproduced, modified, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without requesting prior consent. In all such cases, however, attribution should be made to The Singing Poetry Project, and its online address should be provided.

Video contributions to this project are warmly accepted and should be sent to: Dr. Moti Nissani (Moti.Nissani@wayne.edu). Besides abiding by existing copyright laws, at the moment we can only consider poems in English combined with non-copyright melodies that originated outside the Anglosphere (U.K., U.S., Canada, Australia, or New Zealand).

The present poem focuses on the magnificent Whooping Cranes of North America. By 1941, the numbers of these once-numerous birds reached a nadir of just 23. Since then, protective measures and conservation efforts led to a precarious recovery: by early 2023, the total number of whooping cranes in captivity and the wild rose to 836.

Credits:
Lyrics (2015): Cori MacNaughton
Melody (1969): Yan Frenkel
Musical Inspiration: Mark Berns
Vocals and Recording: Andrey Lavrushkin
Video Montage: Maria Ignateva
Technical Supervision: Donna Nissani
Producers: Donna and Moti Nissani
Project Conceptualization and Oversight: Moti Nissani