Over the weekend, Kingston, New York, was home to a special music festival – one devoted to plants and the people who love them.
50 years ago, electronic music pioneer Mort Garson gave the world “Mother Earth’s Plantasia” – a record devoted to all thing green and earthy.
While his previous work was often trippy and maybe a bit darker – the Moog synthesizer-heavy Plantasia struck several especially green notes: joyous, bombastic and ideal for the ferns in your greenroom.
That’s according to Caleb Braaten, whose Sacred Bones Records has been promoting the re-issued album – one initially intended for two lovers of plants and their shop.
“Joel and Lynn Rapp were a married couple who opened a plant store for the stars in Los Angeles, California, in the 70s … and they were best-selling authors of plant care books, and their first one was the ‘Hassle-Free [Indoor] Plant Book.’ Braaten said, pointing to a copy on his merch table, which can often be found at other Plantasia events his organization puts on. “[The books] were huge, huge sellers and their store was very popular. As far as I know, they asked Mort Garson to make an album for them – a promotional item for their store.”
At first, the album didn’t see a ton of sunlight outside of the store and its customers. But, in the years to come, it sprouted up across the country and grew into an electronic music staple, with tracks like “Rhapsody in Green” and “Music to Soothe the Savage Snake Plant.”
It’s also inspired generations of musicians, like those playing at Seed Song Farm over the weekend, including Flore Laurentienne of Quebec. Flore’s Mathieu Gagnon said as much before exiting the stage and stocking up on Plantasia merchandise.
The electronic-heavy lineup played on as attendees browsed the farm – picking flowers, taking in the sunset from the fields or whittling carrot whistles.
One whittler, Henry Baum of Brooklyn, says Plantasia encapsulates an era where pioneers like Wendy Carlos and Jean-Jacques Perrey were testing the limits of synth and the synthesizer developed by Robert Arthur Moog in the '60s.
“… for me… it’s like this interesting place to look back to, [to] see where the creativity was and going forward with that,” Baum said. “The remnants… of music of that time is very much in everything you hear today, regardless of musician or venue.”
Few at the concert knew that as well as Tommy Grenas of Woodstock. Attending as a vendor with his wife, Abby Travis, Grenas says he’s built his fair share of synthesizers over the years while playing a few himself.
He also says that, some 30 years ago, he found a rare, thought-to-be-lost vinyl acetate containing Garson’s “Edgar Allen Poe” composition, which he later sold in hopes of it being re-released.
To Grenas, the Moog is something magical that still remains a vessel for the unthinkable.
“[Garson] played a giant Moog modular from what I've seen – same thing with Perrey and Kingsley and Dick Hyman and all those pioneers at the time - I just think it was unlimited, what they could do with it and still, to this day, it's unlimited,” he said. “The thing about technology is - it moved so fast [that] nobody had time to really use the full potential of what the instrument did. Still to this day, Bob Moog and his legacy lives on and people are still creating amazing sounds using them.”
Travis herself is also an accomplished musician. Like Plantasia, their Peacock Moss operation looks to blend the arts with the organic – complete with terrariums, carved rocks and mulleins – waxed plant rods that have been used as torches since ancient times.
“After working in music for so long, I'm really enjoying working with living three-dimensional things that exist in a less ephemeral realm than music does,” she explained. “I've been dealing with air or just computers for so long that this organic, living, slower-paced way of working with matter is really compelling to me.”
In Plantasia’s case, Travis says the album offers special qualities bordering on cerebral.
“I find it enchanting - that it operates on a high frequency - it tinkles my brain: there’s an effervescent quality to it,” Travis said of Plantasia.
Some of those qualities could be heard as harpist Mary Lattimore plucked and looped notes of all kinds.
As Travis added – plants themselves seem to enjoy a good tune. While they may not have ears, researchers have indicated certain floras seem to respond to good vibrations.
One example highlighted by the Yale Environment Review included 2023 research indicated Mung beans sprouted faster and grew better when exposed to what researchers called "religious rhythms."
How and why are still questions being asked. Another query raised at the festival – “what is plant music?”
The question was posed by Joe Patitucci, who demonstrated how, at his booth, if you put sensors on a plant and translate their “subtle electrical activity” into music – you can get some pretty unique, smooth-sounding plant sounds that lend themselves to different projects.
“A lot of tropical house plants are great for this,” he told one visitor, recounting how he’s worked with DJs to mix plants with beats. “I also made an album with cannabis plants.”
As he and others emphasized – plants and music remain a frontier still worth exploring, with plenty of opportunities to bloom, says Grenas.
“It's quite something - to be part of this,” he said of the festival. “To hear not only Garson's music playing, but some of the music that is just so vital to what became ambient music and postmodern synthesizer rock… I’m just so proud to be part of this.”
Seed Song, the venue itself, is no stranger to blending music with nature. The non-profit and its 215-acres have put a special focus on all things green and cultural over its past decade of operations, says Founder Creek Iversen. Creek himself added a folk flair between acts on Saturday.
Nearby was Daniel Woodham, who previously worked at the farm - and was back on Saturday to help with hay wagon rides.
“Where else would be the appropriate place to have a festival that is exactly blending music and plants? This is all about a guy who - back in the 60s and 70s - was trying to figure out ‘Well, if plants were talking and we could hear it, what would it sound like?’ And so, of course, here we are in the open air, under the open sky, amidst so many kinds of plants, both cultivated and not,” Woodham said, gesturing at the fields. “There's a lot of wild pasture here, native songbirds… there's a sugar bush where they do maple sugaring in the late-winter/early-spring, and if you can imagine kids running around here and growing up in a venue like this, right? This is what it's about.”
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Audio for this story came by way of the aforementioned artists, as well as the estate of Mort Garson and Sacred Bones Records.
