Man Booker Prize-winning author DBC Pierre is writing a musical tribute to a bizarre and near-extinct species of salamander which he kept as a pet when growing up in Mexico.
The maverick author of Vernon God Little will narrate his story Live and Roar, about the axolotl, in a live premiere at the Natural History Museum this month.
The work was written in an appropriately Mexican style with folk musicians Andy Mellon from Bellowhead and Ben Nicholls, who is in the band of fiddle-player Seth Lakeman, after a visit to London Zoo.
DBC Pierre, who is currently working in London, said axolotls were extraordinary creatures because of their capacity to regenerate limbs.
This put them at the forefront of medical research even as they were dying out in the wild. “I used to have a bunch of them when I was growing up,” he said.
But he was “hazy” about how he agreed to write the words for the composition because “a great deal of alcohol would have been involved that the next morning made me want to be an axolotl and grow a new liver and brain”.
Mellon said the zoo had been a great starting point. “Being able to witness the axolotl in the zoo’s bug house really inspired us to devise something which celebrated the slightly trippy surroundings, the predominantly sedentary nature of the axolotl and its Mexican roots.”
The project was devised by the PRS for Music Foundation, which funds new music, and Pestival, an arts festival celebrating the natural world, as part of the London 2012 Festival.
Bridget Nicholls, Pestival’s creative director, said they wanted to create a new way of relating to the natural world. “Through this medium we can raise awareness about a little-known, really cool endangered species,” she said.
Tickets for the performance on June 23 are free but must be booked in advance. Go to Live and Roar: An Axolotl Odyssey
