Music has many virtues. It improves our psychological wellbeing, but additionally our cerebral plasticity and our cognitive capacities.
And it now appears that it may possibly assist elevate consciousness about threats to biodiversity, with albums resembling A Guide To The Birdsong Of Western Africa, impressed by the songs of endangered birds in West Africa.
For centuries, nature has been a supply of curiosity for musicians. Many of them, like Olivier Messiaen and Dominik Eulberg, pay tribute to nature by incorporating some of its sounds of their compositions. Shika Shika does the similar as half of its “Birdsong” mission.
Founded in 2014 by Robert Perkins and Augustin Rivaldo, the document label companions with famend musicians and producers to alert music lovers to the disappearance of many chicken species due to deforestation, world warming or poaching.
“We wished to deal with birds not solely as a result of of their historic hyperlink to people as a fellow musical species but additionally as a result of birds are identified to be very precious indicators of the well being of the pure world,” the document label explains.
Shika Shika has already launched two albums for which artists like Damon Albarn and Jeff Tweedy composed songs impressed by the songs of endangered birds round the world. The first was devoted to South America (2015), and the second to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean (2020). The label has now turned to West Africa for its newest quantity, A Guide To The Birdsong Of Western Africa.
The first step was to compile an inventory of endangered birds in the area with the assist of Birdlife Africa, the African Bird Club and the AP Leventis Ornithological Research Institute. Among them are the Black Crowned Crane, the Timneh Parrot and the São Tomé Grosbeak, with an estimated inhabitants of between 50 and 250 people, in accordance to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
“Our choice of birds doesn’t embody solely the most endangered or the most lovely songs, as a substitute, these species symbolize the wider story of species and habitat loss in the area and the want for motion,” Shika Shika states.
Birdsong extra in style than ABBA
Once the chicken songs had been chosen, the second step was to discover African musicians keen to participate (voluntarily) in making the album. Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré, Sierra Leone’s Allstar Refugees, Ivorian musician Ruth Tafébé and Afro-house producer Buruntuma all agreed to compose a tune for the album.
Crowdfunding totaling greater than €20,000 (RM92,000) was then used to cowl the manufacturing prices of A Guide To The Birdsong Of Western Africa. The earnings from the album will go to three biodiversity conservation tasks on the African continent.
This is not the first time {that a} musical mission has been created to combat for the preservation of endangered birds. Last December, the BirdLife affiliation launched an album known as Songs Of Disappearance to assist protect Australian fauna.
“This album is a really particular document with some uncommon recordings of birds that won’t survive if we do not come collectively to defend them,” Paul Sullivan, CEO of BirdLife Australia, instructed The Music Network at the time.
To everybody’s shock, the document was so in style that it stayed in Australia’s high 50 albums for 3 weeks. It even managed to beat Taylor Swift, ABBA and Olivia Rodrigo in the Oceanian nation’s chart throughout the week of December 20. Proof that conservation can promote data! – AFP
