Do you want to hear about the dangers of the declining Florida oyster population? Well, what if it was set to song?
Professor Heather O’Leary,of the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, is hoping you might agree to the latter. As The Guardianreports, O’Leary’s students have teamed up with the school’s music department to create a jazz piece detailing the oysters’ predicament.
O’Leary hopes that the piece, titled Oysters Ain’t Safe, will help bring awareness to an issue that may be hard to comprehend through just numbers and data.
“When you’re staring at the scariest numbers, the black-and-white figures in front of you, that can feel pretty intimidating,” O’Leary tells The Guardian. “But if you’re experimenting with ‘what color would that number be?’ or ‘what kind of instrument would pick up how I feel when I see that statistic?’, it’s more creative. That’s what we need, more things that bring people together.”
Oysters Ain’t Safe is set to premiere at USF’s January concert and will be accompanied by sheet music, artwork and a music video.