Overview

Cloquido. m, GC., Tf. Characteristics of somebody’s voice, considering its accent and timbre, which permit the person to be identified.

Por el paso inseguro conocí a Juan “er cachucha”, por el cloquido a Pedro el de Carmen la que cose.

Juan Luis Calero, Piel de grillo, p. 19

El Cloquido. Canary Islands Sound Library.

The main aim of El Cloquido Cultural Association (non-profit, NCI G1/S1/16963-11/GC) is to build a sound library in which all those representative sounds of the Canary Islands—some of them unique—will be gathered for them to be shown, preserved and put in value as they constitute its sonic identity. By doing this, the sound archive which is being built serves not only to describe sounds but also to enjoy listening and getting to known them and, at the end, to appreciate and protect sounds as they are part of our sound heritage, recognised by UNESCO since 2003 through the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The whole website is written in Spanish but in this section all our contents are presented in English using four tables which divide and classify them in a condensed way, with plenty of links to the original posts.

Two authors must be taken into account before studying the sonic identity of the Canary Islands. On one hand, Canadian composer Raymond Murray Schafer, who first related soundscapes and identity in his book The soundscape. Our sonic environment and the tuning of the world, settling down the theoretical basis behind sounds and identity on the late 70′s. On the other, Canarian psychologist Manuel Alemán started to talk on the early 80′s about the relationship between psychology and environment applied to the Canary Islands and its society in his book Psicología del hombre canario. Since then, this field has been widely studied by other authors and the sonic identity concept is well-established as those sounds produced in a particular place that are recognised as characteristic by its inhabitants. Sounds are divided into three categories: language, soundscapes and music.

Apart from this tables, sounds can also be listened to via our sound map (Internet Explorer is not recommended).

1. Canarian Spanish informants

As well as in English language, Spanish is spoken in different ways—varieties—depending on the region, and these differences are explained by considering the fact that spoken and written language are always different, including Spanish. In particular, and bringing spoken language into focus, Canarian Spanish characteristics are defined by philologist Marcial Morera as being central, with features at the halfway point between the Spanish spoken on the two Atlantic shores.

Regarding our sound library, Canarian Spanish can be heard by means of several recordings with an approximate duration of five minutes in which an informant talks about some topic, most of the times based on past experiences, work or hobbies. Phonetic, lexical and grammatical characteristics are shown taking also into account the differences which appear between different islands that make Canarian Spanish richer and more valuable.

Historic and geographic reasons yield in small-scale variations in the Spanish spoken in the different islands; sometimes words are the dissimilar elements and, most of the times, this variations are observed in the phonetic structure of the language. The attentive listener, whether proficient or novice, will soon discover this differences that make the Canarian Spanish a living language.

2. Soundscapes

The second part of the sound library consists of field recordings which show the most characteristic ambient sounds of the archipelago. There are innumerable ways of classifying these sounds according to different criteria. Here, four divisions are made: footsteps, natural, social and lighthouse sounds. The first contains the sound of various surfaces which are very common and representative of our territory, which is of volcanic origin. The second allows us to listen to nature as its best, without any acoustic interference made by the human. By contrast, the third one focuses its interest on those sounds made by the people and its activities. In closing, marine soundscapes recorded from lighthouses are included in “Lighthouses of the Canary Islands” collection.

Soundscapes and its analysis often yields to concepts like sound ecology or sound heritage, both being related to how sounds, whether natural or social, disappear.

What does… sound like? table gathers the best recordings available at freesound.org, an international project with which El Cloquido contributes with its sounds. The aim is to compare our sounds and extract differences and similarities worldwide.

2.1. Footsteps

2.2. Natural Sounds

2.3. Social Sounds

2.4. Lighthouses of the Canary Islands

2.5. What does… sound like?