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http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050426/NEWS08/504260392/1010

People/Places
 
Ape Trust's Bonobos show their musical flair

Rocker Peter Gabriel says two of the ape trust's bonobos have shown a musical 
flair.

By PERRY BEEMAN
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
April 26, 2005 
It made perfect sense for musician Peter Gabriel, a big fan of experimental 
and world
music, to jam with two bonobos at an Atlanta ape-language research center 
several years
ago.

Those two bonobos, Panbanisha and Kanzi, are among eight moving to the Great 
Ape Trust of
Iowa in Des Moines. On Monday, Panbanisha, 19, and her sons, Nyota, 7, and 
Nathan, 4,
arrived in Des Moines after a 20-hour van ride from Georgia.

The bonobos became excited when they saw their sprawling new home in 
southeast Des
Moines, said Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, the trust's lead bonobo scientist. 
Savage-Rumbaugh has
spent weeks preparing the apes for the move from a Georgia State University 
research
center.

Five more bonobos will arrive from the Atlanta center in early May.

Savage-Rumbaugh and an international team of collaborating scientists will 
study the
apes' communication, memory and forgiveness behaviors, among other things.

Gabriel said in a telephone interview last week that he has no doubt the 
bonobos have a
sense of music and composition. He hopes to visit them in Des Moines to 
continue pursuing
his curiosity about ape-language research.

"In my mind, there is no question that they responded with great musicality 
and responded
musically," said Gabriel, a co-founder of the rock group Genesis. "When I 
play the tape
to other musicians, they are just amazed."

In a video that has not been made public because of copyright issues, Gabriel 
and his
band interacted musically with the bonobos; each ape got a turn to play a 
keyboard along
with music Gabriel was playing from an adjoining room.

A Register reporter viewed the video last week. Panbanisha appeared to 
carefully pick
notes one at a time with both index fingers. Kanzi seemed more interested in 
rhythm. Both
kept time well.

"I was always interested in the reports of apes learning our language," said 
Gabriel, who
called bonobo researcher Savage-Rumbaugh and asked to visit her project at 
Georgia State.
"She said, 'Come on down!' " said Gabriel, who lives in England.

Patricia Gray is a professional pianist as well as a clinical professor and 
senior
resident scientist of biomusic at the Music Research Institute, a new center 
at the
University of North Carolina- Greensboro. She did a technical analysis of 
Panbanisha's
improvised composition with Gabriel and was startled at how well the bonobo 
played.
Biomusic is the study of how various species use sound to communicate.

"If this had been done by a human, there would be no question," Gray said. 
"We'd say,
'Wow, that was brilliant!' Because they are apes, we still need to do the 
scientific
research to show what they can do."

Gray's analysis showed that Panbanisha picked as her first note the root of 
the chord
Gabriel was playing, and followed it with the third, played on the index 
finger of her
other hand. Later, she improvised a section that embedded a passage Gabriel 
had played
earlier in the jam. "At times we were together, and at other times, maybe not 
as well,"
Gabriel said.

The apes had a keyboard for a couple of weeks before Gabriel came, and had 
not been
taught to play. At Gabriel's request, Savage-Rumbaugh told the apes only that 
they should
use one finger at a time and play the white keys.

Gabriel said he also hopes to work with parrots and dolphins, two other 
species that have
shown strong communication abilities.