Having read an article from the BBC published July 2021, I was stunned at a wealth of knowledge covered so well on the topic of “Silbo” (the whistling language of La Gomera) and how it was condensed into a nice brief read…

You can read it for your own interest here

It’s quite amazing that it is actually thriving as a language on the island because it has been “officially declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage by Unesco in 2009” and has been a compulsory part of the island’s education system as of “1999 – and almost all 22,000 residents can understand it”.

I find this to be quite remarkable given present communication technology’s wide spread access and use worldwide to the point we use video call meetings to work and study remotely. The protection of this localised cultural phenomenon means in the event that wide telecom networks fail, these people will be able to communicate effectively over large distances in the worst of situations.

The article quickly brushes over the origins of the language leading me to dig deeper elsewhere as it states… “History books suggest the whistle dates back to at least 1402 during the initial Spanish conquest of the Canary Islands, but Silbo Gomero’s earlier heritage is often up for debate.”  

It continues to reveal that the indigenous peoples before Spanish colonisation used whistling languages more than 3000 years during periods of roaming North Africa and that “Spanish settlers on the island adapted the whistling language of La Gomera’s early inhabitants to suit their native tongue.”

I understand the nature of the article being a casual informative read, thus it would be good to search for academic papers covering the historical origins of the language in depth, as well as possible indigenous proto whistling languages that may have existed upon arrival of colonisers.

My memory serves me well as it is correct a great benefit and definite purpose of the language owes itself to the island’s terrain “namely its deep ravines – allowing the locals to communicate with a drifting, piercing sound that could travel for several kilometres.”

The article fails to account the sonic properties of the language, and this is rightly so given the context of the read… I have other queries about the sonic nature of the language as a reductive listening exercise. Is the whistling comparable to native bird species’ calls of the islands? How does it differentiate to other whistling languages in tonal quality and in its means of sonic production? 

It would provide me plenty of satisfaction to know how the speakers or “whistlers” of this language feel or relate to it in their daily experiences and how it affects their lives. Do they dream having conversations in silbo? How much of an impact does it play on the populations psychoacoustics? Can it be placed in a musical context or does it simply not work as well given the tonal rigidity limiting the language? 

I feel at the end of this article well informed but greatly unsatisfied. I plan to move forward by trying to find academic papers covering the subject in hopes some of these answers fulfilled. I feel if I were to continue to read more news articles that it will not cover the subject in a deconstructive method but simply to broadly educate readers. 

In another way, I wonder if my efforts of investigation are pointless apart from my own education. My only hopes for a unique take on the matter seem to lay within peering into the language from the perspective of a sound artist through the lens of Shcaefferian theory, drawing attention to it’s sonic properties as a natural art practice rather than from a strictly straightforward anthropological mindset.

There must be a question that I can ask that points back to somewhere within sound art for the appreciation of how it sits within our culture!