Okay, class: today’s reading includes a short but inspiring passage by Estevan Carlos Benson , who has lately been suggesting we treat our musical listening biome in the same way that we do our gut. Along the way, we get birdsongs and whistle bottles from Ecuador millennia ago and Peru today.

I’ll just let Estevan take it away, as my head is buzzing from all that’s here:

Birdsong and Mimetic Instruments – from XILITLA NOTES, SOUNDS AND CULTURE

But birdsong could reduce anxiety and paranoia. (Okay, maybe don’t watch Hitchcock first, but yes!) And along the way, he reimagines how we might define instruments.

The video here is from modern Cusco, but the instruments are based on a much older Incan tradition that continues through these artists now and the results are mind-blowing:

My sense is that even in modern electronic instruments, a great deal of what makes something satisfying — given theoretically unlimited possibilities — is qualities from nature and the voice.…