The First Songs

This bird is known for mimicking its acoustic environment and transforming it into countless variations of sounds and melodies. A group of international musicians interprets an improvisational score composed by multidisciplinary artist David Zink Yi and his longtime collaborators, inspired by the red-spotted thrush’s remarkable musical repertoire, which is considered one of the most extensive in the world. Drawing on the bird’s singing style, they embark together on a process of live composition that relies not on invention but on imitation as a form of essential renewal. In this way, notions of originality and authorship are questioned, as are the processes through which they come about. The artists draw on compositional strategies from jazz and Latin jazz, as well as from Afro-diasporic folklore and the popular music of the Caribbean—particularly Cuba—and use wind instruments, hybrid percussion sets, homemade instruments, and sound objects. In this way, they explore new possibilities for expressing musical stories and traditions.

The red-spotted thrush provides the project with a conceptual framework based on the animal’s nomadic nature as well as its constant imitation, reinvention, and reappropriation of the world around it. Starting from this point of reference, the artists explore the origins of music in the Afro-Caribbean context and how, against this backdrop, it has developed its own Creole sound language through strategies of appropriation and adaptation.

By designing this sensory space, Zink Yi and the other participants invite the audience to experience a sonic environment within and through the body. They offer insights into how cultural practices rooted in lived experience contribute to new forms of understanding between communities and societies.

Part of Bwa Kayiman: Crossing the Mangrove.