The Whistled Valley
3rd Order Ambisonics
Duration: 20 min 18 s
Click to Play (binaural version available online only)
Please listen with headphones.
Please listen with headphones.
The Whistled Valley is a 20-minute Ambisonic sound composition exploring Silbo Gomero, the whistled language of La Gomera, Canary Islands. The project is presented in 3rd-order Ambisonics (16-channel spatial audio), and is designed for immersive playback in multichannel speaker arrays. It invites audiences to engage with the echoes of a vanishing oral tradition and to experience how sound, space, and culture intertwine in the resonance of the island’s valleys.
During a two-week field trip on La Gomera in June 2025, I conducted location recordings, interviews, and participatory listening sessions with Silbo Gomero speakers and educators. These materials, combined with environmental soundscapes of the island’s valleys and villages, form the basis of the composition. Once on the verge of extinction, Silbo Gomero was recognised by UNESCO in 2009 as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
The composition is structured around poetic narrations, fragmented testimonies, and reconstructed acoustic environments, seeking to foreground both the affective and archival dimensions of a language at risk. Silbo Gomero is not only a communicative tool but also a sonic marker of cultural identity and intergenerational memory. As both an artistic composition and a cultural document, by embedding its fragile presence within immersive spatial sound, the piece invites listeners to engage with the emotional and historical weight of this unique form of human expression. It stands as a call to remember, to listen, and to protect such fragile intangible heritage before it disappears into silence.
Special Thanks:
Jiajing Zhao, Loreto Herrera Vizcaíno, Quico Correa, and the CELBO Association.