Rockers no dinosaurs with school act

IT IS the theory of evolution, but not as we know it. Charles Darwin’s famous ideas have been reconstituted into a rock music show with the worthy ambition of encouraging more kids to study biology.

Science and music merge in Amoeba to Zebra, a multimedia performance put together by rockers Being 747, a band who have also evolved into what they term a "theatrical education production team". They describe the show on their website as "A natural history musical, 4.6 billion years in the making".

Being 747 are on a short tour of Ireland as part of ScienceWeek Ireland. They have already played the Institutes of Technology in Limerick and Waterford and deliver their last performances at Dundalk Institute of Technology at noon and 2pm today.

“We set this up a few years back to do something different with music – to teach biology with music,” said bass and keyboard player, Steve Morricone.

Being 747 continue to perform as a regular three-man band but they enjoy the added dimension provided by the science. None of them have degrees in the sciences. “We are musicians first but have a particular interest in science and, in particular, biology,” he said.

There is meaning in the show’s title. “The underlying theme of the show is evolution,” he said. “It covers quite a bit.”

This comes through in the show's original music, including The Microscopic Universe, which covers the billions of years when life was single-celled, Raining Reptiles, which talks about the rise of dinosaurs, and Shake Your Backbone, a song that celebrates the appearance of vertebrates. Other songs cover cell division, plant classification and photosynthesis.

The song Milkcelebrates the first appearance of mammals with lyrics including: "Many years ago – around 65 million, There came an end to the tyranny reptilian."

The advance of the mammal continues in a song titled We Are the Mammalian:

“After a catastrophe there are sole survivors that will breed,

With the strength that saved them in their genes.

And those that gain advantage will succeed,

We are the mammalian, we are variations on a theme.

Evolution runs on greed!”

Listen to Being 747 playing Shake Your Backboneon YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puX2qt8pOvc, or visit the band's website amoebatozebra.co.uk