Presentation
The non profit association The World Whistles was created to develop scientific research on whistled speech and instrumental speech (talking drums, xylophones, flutes...), in order to contribute to documentation, safegarding and transmission of the oral patrimony of the concerned cultures.
Nowadays, studiing and highlighting the oral patrimony is an urgency as 96% of the languages of the planet are spoken by only 4% of the world population. The traditionnal knowledge born from the natural evolution of the cultures constitute an endangered biodiversity. This human aspect of the biodiversity is a multigenerational understanding of the best preserved middles of the planet. Whistled and instrumentally played speech develop mainly in such environments.
To answer to this situation respectuously and by preventing an attitude of stealing the oral patrimony, the following projects are the result of a collaboration with their local owners, trying to build a dialog between generations, nations, and scientific domains sometimes involved.
It is now established that currently the minority cultures living in well preserved environments disappear more rapidly than the biotopes that nurtured them (see the reference book of Nettle and Romaine: "Vanishing voices", Cambridge University press). The terrible consequence is that Humanity is less and less well informed about the places which have the highest biologic diversity of the planet (isolated mountains, deep forests)... and this in spite of the power of the tools of science. Therefore, for everybody, these cultures have a crucial and symbolic place for the future.