Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time to go
Speaker 2: into the vault for an older episode of the show.
Speaker 2: This one originally aired August fourth, twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 2: it is part two of our series on whistling.
Speaker 3: Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production
Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
Speaker 2: of our series on whistling. In the last episode, we
Speaker 2: talked a bit about how whistling works physically, what happens
Speaker 2: when you're creating a sort of resonator cavity within the mouth.
Speaker 2: We also talked about the whistle speech of the Mastaco
Speaker 2: languages and in Mexico, and I wanted to start off
Speaker 2: today's episode by talking about some other examples of whistled
Speaker 2: languages and some of the common characteristics between them, because,
Speaker 2: of course, the Mezteko whistle speech is not the only
Speaker 2: example of a whistled language that carries information. In fact,
Speaker 2: I was looking at a paper by an author named
Speaker 2: Julian Meyer called Environmental and Linguistic Typology of Whistled Languages
Speaker 2: in the Annual Review of Linguistics twenty twenty one. So
Speaker 2: it's a very recent paper. And according to Meyer, there
Speaker 2: are reports of more than eighty languages around the world
Speaker 2: that contain a whistled lexicon, and about half of those
Speaker 2: have been confirmed by formal studies and published recordings. So
Speaker 2: really solid documentation of at least forty or so whistled
Speaker 2: languages around the world. And so I think it's worth
Speaker 2: mentioning a few more examples of these in describing how
Speaker 2: they work and seeing what we can compare in contrast
Speaker 2: with them. So one example I was reading about was
Speaker 2: in a really interesting twenty seventeen article in BBC Travel
Speaker 2: by Elliott Stein, and the story here goes like this.
Speaker 2: In Greece, there is a remote mountain village called Antia,
Speaker 2: which is found on the southern eastern coast of the
Speaker 2: Greek island of Evia in the Aegean Sea. And within
Speaker 2: this village there has long been a whistle based language
Speaker 2: called Spheria, which allows speakers to communicate across great distances,
Speaker 2: and it seems to have been passed down from parents
Speaker 2: to children among the shepherds and the farmers of the
Speaker 2: village for literally thousands of years, for more than two
Speaker 2: thousand years to read from Stein here quote. But in
Speaker 2: the last few decades, Antia's population has dwindled from two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty to thirty seven, and as older whistlers
Speaker 2: lose their teeth, many can no longer sound Spheria's sharp notes.
Speaker 2: Today there are only six people left on the planet
Speaker 2: who can still speak this unspoken language. Now this was
Speaker 2: five years ago as of this recording, so I don't
Speaker 2: know how that number six has changed since then. There
Speaker 2: are descriptions of some efforts to try to teach it
Speaker 2: to more people, but of course, whenever you're talking about
Speaker 2: a language with that few speakers, it's certainly extremely endangered.
Speaker 2: In fact, this is considered one of the most endangered
Speaker 2: languages in the world. Now. Apparently the existence of this
Speaker 2: language Spheria here was not documented anywhere in the outside
Speaker 2: world until the year nineteen sixty nine, when a plane
Speaker 2: crashed in the mountains nearby, and there was a rescue
Speaker 2: team that was attempting to locate the pilot and they
Speaker 2: reported hearing strange, melodious whistling echoing through the hillsides, and
Speaker 2: this led to investigation and brought the language to the
Speaker 2: attention of the media and two academics. So a big
Speaker 2: question here is where does a language like this come from.
Speaker 2: Linguists do seem to agree that it dates back to
Speaker 2: ancient times. It's been around for a long time, but
Speaker 2: exactly how it was created is less certain, and apparently
Speaker 2: local legends abound. So one story I came across this
Speaker 2: was described in some detail in a documentary piece on
Speaker 2: PBS News Hour that was about Spherea, and it claimed
Speaker 2: that the language was invented about two five hundred years ago,
Speaker 2: not by Greeks, but by Persians after they were defeated
Speaker 2: at the Battle of Salamis. So Salamis was a battle
Speaker 2: in four ADBCE during the Persian invasion of Greece under
Speaker 2: zerk Sees the Great, and so Salamis was It was
Speaker 2: a naval battle where the coalition of Greek city states
Speaker 2: was able to fight off and defeat the larger Persian
Speaker 2: allied fleet. And I think this is widely considered the battle,
Speaker 2: or one of the battles that turned the tide of
Speaker 2: the war in favor of the Greek defenders and pushed
Speaker 2: back the Persian invasion. But anyway, the legend about the
Speaker 2: whistle speech goes that the Persian survivors of the battle
Speaker 2: I guess they were, you know, their ship was sank
Speaker 2: or defeated in some way, and they managed to swim
Speaker 2: to shore on the island of Evia, where they had
Speaker 2: to survive hiding in the mountains inhabited by hostile native Greeks.
Speaker 2: And one way they avoided detection was by coming up
Speaker 2: with a way of speaking in whistles that would sound
Speaker 2: just like the birds, so they could communicate with each other,
Speaker 2: but their speech would not be intelligible and in many
Speaker 2: ways would probably not even be detected. Oh wow, but
Speaker 2: that story has a kind of legendary quality. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure how much there is behind that, but it's a
Speaker 2: great story nonetheless, and steinsit some other local legends as well.
Speaker 2: Some residents believe it was invented during the Busante Empire
Speaker 2: by locals who wanted a secret way to communicate that
Speaker 2: would elude the understanding of pirates and people from hostile
Speaker 2: nearby villages. And so a common theme here seems to
Speaker 2: be the idea that somehow this language was created to
Speaker 2: be a secret way of communicating, to allow the locals
Speaker 2: to communicate across distance and understand each other without other
Speaker 2: people detecting or understanding what they were saying. Now, the
Speaker 2: author of this BBC travel piece describes visiting the village
Speaker 2: and spending time with the handful of people there who
Speaker 2: still use the whistle language, and they apparently use it
Speaker 2: in many of the same scenarios described in that paper
Speaker 2: on the Mastako whistle speech that I've talked about in
Speaker 2: the last episode. A big scenario of use seems to
Speaker 2: be communicating across great distance on the mountain side and
Speaker 2: sort of greeting or summoning people from far away. And
Speaker 2: Stein cites a Greek linguist named Dimitra Hengen who studies
Speaker 2: Sphere and she says that Spheria is in some sense
Speaker 2: a whistled version of spoken Greek, where specific whistled tones
Speaker 2: correspond to specific phonetic syllables or letters, and you can
Speaker 2: build words out of them. Now, again, this is another
Speaker 2: way that it's similar to the Mezateeko example, because in
Speaker 2: both cases the whistled language is not like an totally independent,
Speaker 2: unique language. Instead, it is in some way adapting and
Speaker 2: existing spoken language to whistles.
Speaker 1: And of course that would lean us more towards the
Speaker 1: Greek origin story as opposed to the Persian one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought about that, but I don't know if
Speaker 2: it actually informs that one way or another, But yeah,
Speaker 2: I had the same intuition at least. So one of
Speaker 2: the most remarkable things about Spheria, again similar to the
Speaker 2: Mezteko whistle speech example, is that it is intelligible at
Speaker 2: a great distance. You can understand messages in Spheria update
Speaker 2: to about four kilometers away on this mountainous terrain, which
Speaker 2: Hingen says is about ten times farther than you can
Speaker 2: usually understand speech, loud speech or shouting. And I saw
Speaker 2: that number of the ten times distance multiplier mentioned in
Speaker 2: other sources, such as a Cambridge University press paper that
Speaker 2: I looked at. But there's a great part in this
Speaker 2: article where Stein quotes a local shop owner named Maria
Speaker 2: Cathalis who tells a story about some of the social
Speaker 2: opportunities offered by the whistle speech. And so her story
Speaker 2: goes like this quote. One night, a man was in
Speaker 2: the mountains with his sheep when it started snowing, he
Speaker 2: knew that somewhere deep in the mountains there was a
Speaker 2: beautiful girl from Antia with her goats. So he found
Speaker 2: a cave, built a fire, and whistled to her to
Speaker 2: come keep warm. She did, and that's how my parents
Speaker 2: fell in love.
Speaker 1: Well, that is a better ending than something like this.
Speaker 1: And the descendants of Persian soldiers slaughtered him in the woods,
Speaker 1: so I will say that much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the Greeks finally came for revenge.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I continue to just tell a lot of questions
Speaker 1: about the Persian origin theory. It just seems like it
Speaker 1: seems I could be missing something major here, but it
Speaker 1: seems like it begs more questions than it answers.
Speaker 2: Well. Yeah, as I said, it sounds more like legend
Speaker 2: to me than like an strongly evidence based explanation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I agree, away from being a full blown
Speaker 1: ghost story.
Speaker 2: But so I've described two examples here of whistled language
Speaker 2: in detail, and as I mentioned before, there are many
Speaker 2: others around the globe. There are something like eighty ish
Speaker 2: that have been reported somewhere around forty of them are
Speaker 2: very well documented. So an obvious question to ask is
Speaker 2: what do these languages have in common? What causes a
Speaker 2: whistled language to arise? So I was looking at a
Speaker 2: few sources here. One of them is that paper in
Speaker 2: the Annual Review of Linguistics by Julian Meyer already mentioned.
Speaker 2: Another is an article in Smithsonian Magazine from twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one by Bob Holmes which cites that paper and summarizes
Speaker 2: some other research in this area, for example, focusing on
Speaker 2: a whistled variant of Spanish that is used in the
Speaker 2: Canary Islands, on the mountainous islands of Lagomera and eliero
Speaker 2: In that are both in the Canary Islands. And that
Speaker 2: paper by Julian Meyer tries to gather together all of
Speaker 2: these languages and say, okay, are there common topographical or
Speaker 2: sort of geographical features that these languages tend to have
Speaker 2: in common? And he finds yes, indeed there are. Almost
Speaker 2: all of the whistled languages occur in two different types
Speaker 2: of environments, either in mountainous terrains or rugged mountains, or
Speaker 2: in dense vegetation like dense forest or dense savannah. So
Speaker 2: why would it be those two places mountains or in
Speaker 2: dense vegetation. Well, to focus on mountains first, Maya writes,
Speaker 2: that in mountainous terrain, settlements and the people living in
Speaker 2: the mountainous terrain tend to be much more scattered across
Speaker 2: larger distances that are more difficult to traverse quickly than
Speaker 2: people in other types of topographical settings. So Maya writes
Speaker 2: quote in Eliero and Lakomera in the Canary Islands, in
Speaker 2: the region around Kushkoi in Turkey, in the High Altus,
Speaker 2: or in the Pyrenees near the village of Os two points,
Speaker 2: only five hundred meters apart can easily represent an hour
Speaker 2: in walking time. Thus, whistled forms of languages serve as
Speaker 2: soon as the spoken forms become ineffective. Between forty and
Speaker 2: one hundred meters. Depending on terrain, whistles can be heard
Speaker 2: up to seven kilometers away in some vas okay. So
Speaker 2: the idea here is that in mountainous terrain you have
Speaker 2: the problem of people are often situated farther apart from
Speaker 2: each other, and those distances to cross are difficult to cross.
Speaker 2: They take a long time. So if you need to
Speaker 2: communicate actually coming to be close enough together that you
Speaker 2: could understand each other by shouting, that's a long that's
Speaker 2: a big time investment. So it's actually worth your time
Speaker 2: to learn a whistle speech that will carry better across
Speaker 2: longer distances and save you all of that climbing and
Speaker 2: walking time. Now, what about the forests or the dense vegetation. Well, here,
Speaker 2: Meyer writes quote the vegetation in dense tropical forests and
Speaker 2: savannahs restricts visual contact and limits the propagation of sound.
Speaker 2: In such contexts, Whistled speech frequencies are also well shielded
Speaker 2: against acoustic energy loss due to reverberation, which is particularly
Speaker 2: important in densely vegetated environments because the whistled frequencies belong
Speaker 2: to the most favorable frequency window, ranging from one to
Speaker 2: three killihertz, within which reverberation in forests varies less with distance.
Speaker 2: In dense vegetation, whistled language facilitates the coordination of individuals
Speaker 2: during group movements, especially during hunting and fishing. Whistling also
Speaker 2: allows human dialogue to go undetected by animals, blending in
Speaker 2: with natural sounds, since many animal species also use whistling.
Speaker 2: Other advantages are that whistles are easy to locate and
Speaker 2: difficult for strangers to recognize, especially other tribes, even those
Speaker 2: that speak different dialects of the same language. Whistled communications
Speaker 2: are used for distances from about ten meters up to
Speaker 2: five hundred meters, depending on the density of vegetation. Okay,
Speaker 2: so there are a lot of advantages in the forest
Speaker 2: or thick savanna. So the idea is that, of course
Speaker 2: whistling speech allows you to communicate kate without being able
Speaker 2: to see each other. Sitelines are limited by the vegetation itself,
Speaker 2: but also whistling just carries better in the forest. It
Speaker 2: propagates better through the forest without being drowned out by
Speaker 2: the sort of the reverberation effects of having all that
Speaker 2: foliage there. And it also seems to pierce through ambient
Speaker 2: sound much better. And Holmes also summarizes some of these
Speaker 2: advantages of whistling in the Smithsonian paper, saying that if
Speaker 2: you're good at whistling, and you've been practicing this all
Speaker 2: your life, sometimes you can reach one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: decibels with a whistle, which is loud. That's like he
Speaker 2: compares it to a car horn. It says it's actually
Speaker 2: louder than a car horn, and that whistles pack almost
Speaker 2: all of that energy into the perfect frequency range. The
Speaker 2: most piercing frequency range, which Holmes says is between one
Speaker 2: to four killer hertz. Meyer said between one to three
Speaker 2: killer hertz, roughly the same space which Holmes says is
Speaker 2: above the pitch of most ambient noise. And this is
Speaker 2: interesting because I was thinking about, why do we keep
Speaker 2: noticing that whistling sounds, the ones made by humans are
Speaker 2: similar to bird song. Well, one thing that occurs to
Speaker 2: me here is that bird song is probably shaped by
Speaker 2: natural selection to propagate through vegetation and to cut through
Speaker 2: ambient noise from the environment so as to be clear,
Speaker 2: you know, to be clear and audible at a distance
Speaker 2: where maybe a potential mate could hear it. So whistle
Speaker 2: speech probably sounds like bird song, having similar frequency ranges
Speaker 2: because similar forces are shaping them. In the case of birds,
Speaker 2: it would be evolution, and in the case of humans,
Speaker 2: it would be people intentionally selecting whatever noise they are
Speaker 2: able to make with their bodies that is the clearest
Speaker 2: at the longest distance, cutting through ambient noise, and losing
Speaker 2: the least energy to reverberation in the forest. And that
Speaker 2: just happens to be the whistle that sounds like a bird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is interesting to think think about on
Speaker 1: one hand, I'm a quiet whistler. My whistler, my whistle
Speaker 1: is not very loud, and therefore it can be a
Speaker 1: little surprising when I encounter someone who has a very
Speaker 1: loud whistle, and you're reminded just how loud a whistle
Speaker 1: can be. So that's important to factor into all of this.
Speaker 1: And another connection that came up in some of the
Speaker 1: research I was doing was that you end up encountering
Speaker 1: this whole realm of of non linguistic sounds that humans
Speaker 1: can make that can be used to communicate ideas or
Speaker 1: to gain attention, et cetera. And you also see things
Speaker 1: like yodling thrown in there. Yodling also an art form,
Speaker 1: if you will, or a performance or to a sound
Speaker 1: that developed that also had to do with communicating or
Speaker 1: calling animals, or communicating with other herdsmen across across long
Speaker 1: distances in the wild.
Speaker 2: When you're trying to speak normal phonemes like we're using
Speaker 2: in words here, I think a lot of that information
Speaker 2: probably easily gets lost at a distance, Like you might
Speaker 2: be able to hear that somebody is shouting, but you
Speaker 2: can't hear the difference between consonants or they making a
Speaker 2: T sound or a K sound like I don't know.
Speaker 2: At a distance, that kind of all disappears. But if
Speaker 2: you're judging more on sequences of pitches, yeah, then suddenly
Speaker 2: the confusion created by distance is reduced.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, just just yelling doesn't necessarily cut it, right,
Speaker 1: because if you can't, if your particular words are not
Speaker 1: going to be overheard, then you might end up having
Speaker 1: to do something like just some sort of rhythmic barking.
Speaker 1: And if you're doing some sort of rhythmic barking, well
Speaker 1: why not further develop that and get somewhere, get to
Speaker 1: somewhere where it is yodling, or you shift over into
Speaker 1: a whistling, and that develops into some sort of a
Speaker 1: whistling language. So yeah, it's just the more you look
Speaker 1: at it, the more sense it makes for this kind
Speaker 1: of purpose.
Speaker 2: Now, another thing going on with whistled languages is that
Speaker 2: most of them, perhaps all of them, but I'm not
Speaker 2: sure about that. So I'm going to say at least
Speaker 2: the vast majority of whistled languages appear to be not
Speaker 2: wholly independent languages of their own, but whistled versions of
Speaker 2: spoken languages. So this was true of all the examples
Speaker 2: I've talked about before. You know, the Mazteko whistle speech
Speaker 2: was a whistled variant of the tonal Mesteko language. Spherea
Speaker 2: appears to be a whistled system for encoding spoken Greek.
Speaker 2: The whistle speech system of the Canary Islands, called Silbo,
Speaker 2: is a whistled version of Spanish, and so forth, and
Speaker 2: for this reason, one of the main differences in whistled
Speaker 2: languages appears to be whether they are encoding a tonal
Speaker 2: language or a non tonal language, and based on that distinction,
Speaker 2: the encoding process is different. Tonal languages tend to be
Speaker 2: whistled in a way that preserves the tones of the
Speaker 2: spoken words, and in the last episode we talked about
Speaker 2: tonal languages. Tonal languages where you know the syllables of
Speaker 2: the words also carry information based on the tone you
Speaker 2: use when speaking them, So say, like a high pitched
Speaker 2: version of the syllable ma means something different than a
Speaker 2: lower pitched version of the syllable MA, or an upgliding
Speaker 2: tone on that syllable, and so forth, like the tone
Speaker 2: of the syllable actually makes a difference. Non tonal languages
Speaker 2: are not like so in English, we don't encode much
Speaker 2: information into the tones of syllables. It's just like, what
Speaker 2: are the vowels and consonants.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the tone can contain some information, but not nearly
Speaker 1: to the extent that you find in true tonal languages. Right.
Speaker 2: No, it's not lexical information, more like maybe sort of
Speaker 2: contextual mood information or inflection.
Speaker 1: Right, Like the difference between saying I would like you
Speaker 1: to walk the dog and I would like you to
Speaker 1: walk the dog. Well, that implies that maybe something the
Speaker 1: last time the dog was walked it was not it
Speaker 1: was not good enough it was or maybe you ran
Speaker 1: the dog, you know, like that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't change the actual yeah information contained in the
Speaker 1: word no.
Speaker 2: It's more like about the implied information about the attitude
Speaker 2: of the speaker or.
Speaker 1: Something, yeah, or I need you to walk the dog.
Speaker 1: It applies maybe you didn't walk the actual dog, maybe
Speaker 1: you took some other creature or item from the house
Speaker 1: with you on the walk instead.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you got a tonal language and you want
Speaker 2: to make a whistled version of that. In most cases,
Speaker 2: it seems like you preserve the tones of the spoken words.
Speaker 2: Non tonal languages that have whistled speech tend to involve
Speaker 2: a sort of approximation of consonants and vowels, and the
Speaker 2: Holmes article I mentioned quotes this scholar, Julian Meyer, explaining
Speaker 2: that we already use subtle differences in frequencies to distinguish
Speaker 2: between spoken phonemes, like the differences between certain vowels and consonants.
Speaker 2: So think about the vowels E and O. A long
Speaker 2: E vowel sound has a higher pitch than a long
Speaker 2: oh vowel sound, and if you say them back to back,
Speaker 2: you can listen to the descending melody of those vowel
Speaker 2: sounds EO, EO, And in fact, though it's harder to
Speaker 2: hear it first, the same is sort of true of consonants,
Speaker 2: Like a T sound contains more high frequencies than a
Speaker 2: K sound, and these differences can to some extent be
Speaker 2: reproduced in whistles. And so the discussion of this in
Speaker 2: the article got me thinking about, even without having an
Speaker 2: established version of a language like this, and without any training,
Speaker 2: can you sort of attempt to whistle English phrases and
Speaker 2: have people understand what you're saying. In some cases you can,
Speaker 2: and I actually tried this out with my wife Rachel
Speaker 2: before we recorded here. This was a kind of weird exercise,
Speaker 2: but I was like, hey, can you tell what I'm
Speaker 2: saying here? And so I tried things like which she
Speaker 2: took a minute on but decided I was saying hello,
Speaker 2: nice to meet you, which is what I was trying
Speaker 2: to say, so that one worked a few other phrases
Speaker 2: I tried did not work as well, but the ones
Speaker 2: that really seemed to work immediately were the ones where
Speaker 2: it was phrases she had heard me say before, especially
Speaker 2: when I tried to whistle, common phrases that we use
Speaker 2: with our dog, so immediately she heard as all buddy.
Speaker 2: And I think this ties into something we've talked about
Speaker 2: on the show before, the exactg CD musicality that humans
Speaker 2: tend to use when speaking to babies and pets. For
Speaker 2: some reason, there may be evolutionary reasons for this, that
Speaker 2: when we speak to cute things that need our care
Speaker 2: and attention, you know, babies or pets, says kind of
Speaker 2: it might be creepy to think about them this way,
Speaker 2: but to some extent, kind of psychologically surrogate babies that
Speaker 2: we speak with an exaggerated musicality, or tonal variation that
Speaker 2: we don't use when speaking to adults, and that stereotyped
Speaker 2: phrases within this kind of highly musical speech are much
Speaker 2: easier to recognize when you try to whistle them instead
Speaker 2: of say them phonetically.
Speaker 1: So are you going to keep whistling? Was it a
Speaker 1: big enough success?
Speaker 2: Oh? No, I think that would be a horrible idea. Also, strangely,
Speaker 2: the dog did not seem to get it. So when
Speaker 2: I whistled all buddy Rachel could tell what I was saying,
Speaker 2: but Charlie did not seem affected.
Speaker 1: I tried whistling to my cat whilst researching information for
Speaker 1: these episodes, and yes, you didn't care. And my wife
Speaker 1: was like, like, you can't speak to a cat in whistles.
Speaker 1: You have to use the kissie sound. That's what they understand.
Speaker 1: That's what that's the language they speak.
Speaker 2: It is known.
Speaker 1: But the kissie sound clicks, I mean, these are all
Speaker 1: these are not too far removed from whistling. Some of
Speaker 1: these type of sounds will come up again later on.
Speaker 2: Indeed. Now, one of the most interesting lines of thought
Speaker 2: emerging from all this is that some experts think that
Speaker 2: studying whistled languages might help us understand the origin of
Speaker 2: human language as a whole, because again, some linguists think
Speaker 2: that these whistled languages could be similar to the first
Speaker 2: languages that probably emerged in human evolution. Now why on
Speaker 2: earth would that be? Well, a couple of thoughts here. One,
Speaker 2: I just want to read a passage from the Holmes
Speaker 2: article in Smithsonian quote. One of the big challenges of
Speaker 2: language is the need to control the vocal cords to
Speaker 2: make the full range of speech sounds. None of our
Speaker 2: closest relatives, the great apes, have developed such control, but
Speaker 2: whistling maybe an easier first step. Indeed, a few orangutans
Speaker 2: in zoos have been observed to imitate zoo employees whistling
Speaker 2: as they work. When scientists tested one ape under controlled conditions,
Speaker 2: the animal was indeed able to mimic sequences of several whistles. Okay,
Speaker 2: so that's one line of evidence. Seems that our closest
Speaker 2: biological relatives are better able to imitate and reproduce sequences
Speaker 2: of whistled tones than they are to imitate and reproduce
Speaker 2: vocal phonemes like we make with speech. But there's another similarity.
Speaker 2: What is whistled speech especially good for it's communicating across distance,
Speaker 2: and as I mentioned earlier, especially in the densely vegetated
Speaker 2: contexts for hunting and fishing. And in these cases some
Speaker 2: but not all, of course, but some whistle languages tend
Speaker 2: to rely more on kind of formulaic sentences like you know,
Speaker 2: go that way, go toward it, et cetera, than on
Speaker 2: like full lexical representation, which is also commonly thought to
Speaker 2: be how languages first emerged. That there were probably stereotyped signals,
Speaker 2: you know, a sort of more limited range of signals
Speaker 2: and ideas that you could express with sound that carried
Speaker 2: common meanings. Before there was like a complete and endlessly
Speaker 2: variable lexicon where you could make a sentence meaning anything. However,
Speaker 2: I think it's important to point out that even if
Speaker 2: it's true that these whistled languages might have some things
Speaker 2: in common with the earliest proto languages, that does not
Speaker 2: mean that today's whistled languages are descended from any hypothetical
Speaker 2: whistled proto languages, Because if there were whistled proto languages,
Speaker 2: they long go turned into speech and then you know,
Speaker 2: many thousands of years past, and then that speech in
Speaker 2: some cases transformed back into a whistled very end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So sort of imagining like just the basic sounds
Speaker 1: one could make and how one might draw from that
Speaker 1: palette to communicate things. Some of those sounds become encoded.
Speaker 1: Many of those sounds, if not all, those sounds, then
Speaker 1: evolve into more complicated forms. But then we never completely forget,
Speaker 1: we never completely abandon these other modes of auditory communication.
Speaker 1: The palette remains there for us to dip back into. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So one last common feature of these whistled languages
Speaker 2: is that in basically all cases, with maybe a couple
Speaker 2: of exceptions, their use is declining. Most of them are disappearing,
Speaker 2: and so we might wonder why. Well, several causes are
Speaker 2: cited in the Holmes article. One is strangely roads. You
Speaker 2: tend to find whistle speech only in places that are
Speaker 2: very remote, and that apparently the presence of well paved
Speaker 2: roads tends to cause whistle speech to fall into disuse.
Speaker 2: Now you can imagine that could be for a couple
Speaker 2: of reasons. One could be well paved roads to a
Speaker 2: place increase the connection of that place to the rest
Speaker 2: of the world. So just sort of in the same way,
Speaker 2: that sort of connection to global culture would cause the
Speaker 2: would tend to cause the disuse of all types of
Speaker 2: local customs, and so the whistle speech would just be
Speaker 2: one of them. But another reason I could think of
Speaker 2: is that, like we were saying earlier, a lot of
Speaker 2: the use for whistle speech tends to be communicating across
Speaker 2: distances that are difficult or time consuming to traverse. And
Speaker 2: if you make it easier to get from place to
Speaker 2: place in a shorter amount of time, there's probably just
Speaker 2: less incentive to whistle across great distances.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I also imagine that it's quite useful in
Speaker 1: communicating with the not yet seen. So if you're having
Speaker 1: to travel traverse a distance and there are no roads involved,
Speaker 1: there's no reasonably fast travel, there's going to come a
Speaker 1: point where you're approaching somebody and maybe you can't even
Speaker 1: see them yet, and it might be nice to just
Speaker 1: sort of check in with them to like, and the
Speaker 1: mere fact that they can speak the whistle language gives
Speaker 1: you a certain amount of information on top of anything
Speaker 1: they provide then via the whistling.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another hypothesized explanation for the decline of whistle speech,
Speaker 2: especially in places maybe like Brazil and Central Africa densely
Speaker 2: vegetated areas. Is that deforestation seems to be playing a
Speaker 2: role in eliminating it, but mainly by eliminating one of
Speaker 2: the types of environmental pressure that tends to motivate its
Speaker 2: use in the first place, which is the need to
Speaker 2: coordinate hunting and other survival subsistence activities within thick forest.
Speaker 2: Remember the motivations, the sort of iioacoustic motivations we talked
Speaker 2: about earlier. But despite these pressures, these languages don't have
Speaker 2: to disappear. I was reading about that there are efforts
Speaker 2: in some places to to like set aside special attention
Speaker 2: and care to preserve them. I believe in the Canary
Speaker 2: Islands the whistle speech is like is to some extent
Speaker 2: being taught in schools to help preserve it. And obviously
Speaker 2: that could be could be instituted in other areas as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's great. I mean, it's wonderful that there
Speaker 1: are these these efforts to keep it alive, because of course,
Speaker 1: once once a language is no longer properly spoken, it
Speaker 1: becomes so much harder to bring it back. Not to
Speaker 1: say that it can't be, but you know, but clearly,
Speaker 1: like holding on to languages. Keeping them alive are important
Speaker 1: even and even when they are not, you know, the
Speaker 1: traditional spoken languages, but they are these whistling tongues.
Speaker 2: However, despite all this talk we've been using about how
Speaker 2: whistles can be used just like speech, to encode mundane information,
Speaker 2: to just transmit information between people, there's another way of
Speaker 2: understanding whistling, one that goes I think way back and
Speaker 2: you know it has been around since ancient times, that
Speaker 2: whistling is also it has a kind of power, and
Speaker 2: that whistling is different than normal speech, and that in
Speaker 2: many ways it may be kind of divine or may
Speaker 2: have a may bring in magical danger with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this, if you've listened to everything we've discussed so far,
Speaker 1: you might you might be inclined to think, well, whistling
Speaker 1: sometimes we do it, sometimes it's useful, but that's it.
Speaker 1: We never have any additional values added to it. It's
Speaker 1: never infernal or celestial, it's never vulgar or anything of
Speaker 1: that nature. But of course this is this is far
Speaker 1: from from the truth. There's this deep well across pretty
Speaker 1: much every culture here we can look to where whistling
Speaker 1: has some sort of added meaning. It takes on various
Speaker 1: supernatural tones, and some of these will we'll get into
Speaker 1: more in the next episode. But I wanted to dive
Speaker 1: in sort of almost really just go right to the
Speaker 1: deep end and dive into this subject of transcendental whistling,
Speaker 1: particularly Chinese transcendental whiz whistling. But this is a topic
Speaker 1: that also has connections to some other areas, So this
Speaker 1: should this should be a fun journey we'll take and
Speaker 1: then again come back in later and discuss some more
Speaker 1: examples of whistling and Chinese culture from a broader standpoint,
Speaker 1: as well as a great number of whistling related superstitions
Speaker 1: that involve everything from you know, ghosts and monsters to
Speaker 1: more sort of societal pressures.
Speaker 2: Take me there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this markes us to the topic of cheng shao,
Speaker 1: which I believe translates to something like lengthy always or
Speaker 1: forever whistling. It's an ancient Dallas practice that involves the
Speaker 1: use of long, drown drawn out whistling as a means
Speaker 1: of cultivating and balancing one's vital force or chi. And
Speaker 1: I think that just that that one nugget of information there,
Speaker 1: like I feel like that kind of balance as well
Speaker 1: with sort of a broader experience of whistling. There is
Speaker 1: something about whistling that certainly takes you out of out
Speaker 1: of your thoughts and kind of puts you in the now,
Speaker 1: even if you're just if you were to say, sit
Speaker 1: there and focus on whistling a single tone and sort
Speaker 1: of concentrate on it without even you know, bursting into
Speaker 1: song and so.
Speaker 2: Forth, yes, I would agree with that. And I guess
Speaker 2: one of the first things that comes to my mind
Speaker 2: is that whistling seems very similar to breath. And of
Speaker 2: course many sort of traditional meditation practices involve manipulation of
Speaker 2: breath in one way or another that seems to have
Speaker 2: some kind of power of focusing in the mind in
Speaker 2: a certain way or unfocusing the mind if you want
Speaker 2: that that can. Control of breath is like that, And
Speaker 2: I guess in a way though, speech is also control
Speaker 2: of breath. So I'm not sure why it's that different,
Speaker 2: but it seems a different kind of control of breath
Speaker 2: that's more akin to the slow, steady breathing exercises that
Speaker 2: you would be more likely to find in a meditative practice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes this whole sort of suite of ideas is
Speaker 1: sometimes referred to as like breath magic, and yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you could. You could throw whistling in there, but
Speaker 1: also some of the various sounds that are made in
Speaker 1: meditative breathing practices, such as ohm, such as there are
Speaker 1: also various meditation practices where the exhale takes on more
Speaker 1: of the form of an animal noise like a roaring, etc.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in this case, yeah, we definitely are talking
Speaker 1: about some form of breath magic and the chang shao.
Speaker 1: It frequently pops up in Chinese literature, with one classic
Speaker 1: example being Rhapsody on Whistling by Ching goong Si, who
Speaker 1: lived two thirty one through two seventy three. It's too
Speaker 1: long of a work to read here in full, but
Speaker 1: key passages about whistling as a practice of the secluded
Speaker 1: gentleman are as follows. I'm going to skip over many
Speaker 1: lines here, so this is not a full experience of
Speaker 1: the translated text. Distancing himself from the exquisite in the common,
Speaker 1: he abandons his personal concerns. Then, filled with noble emotion,
Speaker 1: he gives a long drawn whistle. He sends forth marvelous
Speaker 1: tones from his red lips, and stimulates mournful sounds from
Speaker 1: his gleaming teeth. The sound rises and falls, rolling in
Speaker 1: his throat. The breath rushes out and is repressed, then
Speaker 1: flies up like sparks. The whistle floats like a wandering
Speaker 1: cloud in the Grand Empyrean, And I'm told, hey, this
Speaker 1: is the transcendental void and gathers a great wind for
Speaker 1: a myriad miles. When the song is finished and the
Speaker 1: echoes die out, it'll leaves behind a pleasure that lingers
Speaker 1: on in the mind. Indeed, whistling is the most perfect
Speaker 1: natural music which cannot be imitated by strings or woodwinds.
Speaker 1: For every category, he has a song to each thing
Speaker 1: he perceives, He tunes a melody.
Speaker 2: Oh that's great. That gives me chills, dude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So this is the copy of the text
Speaker 1: I was looking at is in nineteen ninety four's The
Speaker 1: Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, and snologist Victor H.
Speaker 1: Meyer provides some additional details on what is being described here.
Speaker 1: So he describes the Chinese transcendental whistling as being quote,
Speaker 1: a kind of nonverbal language with affinities to the spiritual
Speaker 1: aspect of meditation. So it's a tool of the individual
Speaker 1: for self cultivation in search of enlightenment, and is mentioned
Speaker 1: in appendices to the Classic of Changes or the e Ching.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we actually, I think we did an episode
Speaker 2: on the eaching a long time ago. We did, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was like three or four years ago. Now maybe
Speaker 2: I think it was pre pandemic. So the mind controls
Speaker 2: the breath, and with his breath he whistles. And with
Speaker 2: his whistle, well, here's another quote from there. Quote from
Speaker 2: any given point of view, each object or situation fits
Speaker 2: into a category for which there is a corresponding hexagram.
Speaker 2: Each hexagram consists of yin and yang lines, which may
Speaker 2: be interpreted as patterns of sound. These are the songs.
Speaker 2: So whenever the whistler perceives something, he immediately transposes it
Speaker 2: into a melody. With his control of the vital breath,
Speaker 2: he can manipulate these sounds and thereby control any phenomena.
Speaker 2: So I'm trying to remember the eaching, of course contains
Speaker 2: the hexagrams. But I'm trying to remember the significance of
Speaker 2: the hexagrams beyond the divination purpose of the eaching. Do
Speaker 2: you recall more than I do?
Speaker 1: Well? I think the main thing to keep in mind
Speaker 1: is that these different these hexagrams come together and they
Speaker 1: mean things, and then they mean things in particular sequences.
Speaker 1: And so I think for our purposes here we might
Speaker 1: think of these as being sort of an encoding of reality.
Speaker 1: And then the whistle here, the Chinese transcendental whistling, can
Speaker 1: be used as a way first of sort of meeting
Speaker 1: the coded reality, but then also controlling the encoded reality.
Speaker 1: And it is said that the whistle alone can quote
Speaker 1: turn the pure yang hexagram inside out to form the
Speaker 1: pure yin hexagram. So we're getting into the vital energies
Speaker 1: of the universe here. And the idea here is that
Speaker 1: if someone is an expert in this, if they know
Speaker 1: what they're doing, then not only are they sort of
Speaker 1: confronting reality with the whistle, but then they're able to
Speaker 1: change things and flip things, alter the universal energy involved
Speaker 1: in a given situation.
Speaker 2: Okay, I see. So it's a kind of a meaning
Speaker 2: magic in the same way that language itself sometimes is used,
Speaker 2: you know, the traditions that ascribe sort of magical power
Speaker 2: to certain words or symbols signifying words. But it's just
Speaker 2: not the same as the language. It's like an alternate
Speaker 2: version of meaning. Magic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I have to to stress you idea this
Speaker 1: is we're talking about those kind of lofty dallist practice here,
Speaker 1: so you know, we're only sort of loosely describing it.
Speaker 1: But I believe this is the gist of it, and
Speaker 1: this is the way of looking at it that is
Speaker 1: useful to move forward, and again we'll come back to
Speaker 1: perhaps in the next episode, we'll get back into some
Speaker 1: other traditional Chinese ideas concerning whistling in general, and some
Speaker 1: of these ideas will sort of flow back into this
Speaker 1: topic of transcendental whistling. Now. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I've found really interesting about this, this idea of using sound,
Speaker 1: using the whistle, and then sort of changing something about reality,
Speaker 1: is that and ultimately the idea of breath, the breath
Speaker 1: becoming sound, and sound not only describing but transforming something.
Speaker 1: I this stirred something in my memory. So and I
Speaker 1: think another part was the e ching connection, because I
Speaker 1: was reminded of something that Terence McKenna discussed in his
Speaker 1: book True Hallucinations, a concept that his brother Dennis I
Speaker 1: think largely contemplated called the psycho audible warp phenomenon. And
Speaker 1: this is going to also get you know, we're going
Speaker 1: from from from from Dallas transcendental practices here into the
Speaker 1: work of Terrence McKenna and his brother Dennis. So you know,
Speaker 1: this is another sort of lofty idea, but it has
Speaker 1: to do as I've read. It has to do with
Speaker 1: the triptamine metabolism and the electro spin resonance of the
Speaker 1: psilocybin molecule. And I don't pretend to understand it entirely,
Speaker 1: but it does seem to boil down to a sort
Speaker 1: of voice sound based manipulation of reality while one is
Speaker 1: within an altered state of mind.
Speaker 2: Uh okay, So I when you're talking about McKenna, you
Speaker 2: never know exactly It's it's hard to tell exactly how
Speaker 2: magical he's claiming something. Are they talking about literally actually
Speaker 2: changing external physical reality by the use of sounds and
Speaker 2: hallucinations in the mind.
Speaker 1: That's hard to say, right. I mean it's when with
Speaker 1: a lot of this kind of stuff, one gets the
Speaker 1: idea of it's like the chasing of some sort of
Speaker 1: a of an idea that it's all about sort of
Speaker 1: you know, the ideas coming together things that they've read
Speaker 1: and taking on new forms within the psychedelic experience. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to say, but I was curious on
Speaker 1: reading somebody else's take on all this, so I found
Speaker 1: a paper titled The Weird Nowaturalism of the Brothers McKenna
Speaker 1: by Eric Davis for the International Journal for the Study
Speaker 1: of New Religions, published in twenty sixteen, and this is
Speaker 1: an excerpt. This is one of the things that Davis
Speaker 1: says here. Davis writes, quote, Dennis believed that a psycho
Speaker 1: fluid could be generated through the vocal effect. He had
Speaker 1: discovered a psychoaudible warp phenomenon that generated quote, a specific
Speaker 1: kind of energy field that can rupture three dimensional space.
Speaker 1: According to this wild theory, the buzz that Dennis heard
Speaker 1: in his head was caused by the electron spin resonance
Speaker 1: or ESR of the metabolizing psilocybin alkaloids inserting themselves into
Speaker 1: the base pairs of his neuronal DNA. This sound was
Speaker 1: picked up and amplified through the antenna created through the
Speaker 1: similarly resonating harmine alkaloids let loose from the ayahuasca vine
Speaker 1: that they nibbled. By imitating this sound with his voice,
Speaker 1: its harmonic frequencies would be canceled out calling the harmine
Speaker 1: silicybine DNA complex to drop into a stable, super conducting
Speaker 1: hyperdimensional state with apocalyptic results.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, I don't want to be unkind, but this
Speaker 2: reads to me as another one of these cases of
Speaker 2: somebody who's kind of a psychonaut having a profound, very
Speaker 2: personally meaningful, ineffable experience on a psychedelic and then trying
Speaker 2: desperately to sort of literally externalize that experience and say, no,
Speaker 2: it has some kind of literal, causative physical reality to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're they're I think that's that's fair. And
Speaker 1: then they're also of course, again you go into a
Speaker 1: psychedelic experience bringing all of these other pre existing ideas,
Speaker 1: and certainly they seem to be tapping into some alchemical
Speaker 1: concepts as well. Davis says that it's difficult to really
Speaker 1: figure out what Dennis is getting at here, but there
Speaker 1: are a lot of comparisons to the alchemical concept of
Speaker 1: the Philosopher's Stone and the creation of this. I believe
Speaker 1: that the quote from Dennis's quote, the ultimate technological artifact
Speaker 1: that would hold a great deal of power over reality,
Speaker 1: this getting into the apocalyptic results. So so yeah, there's
Speaker 1: more than a little alchemy tied up into this concept. Now,
Speaker 1: the idea of the psychedelic experience and all of this
Speaker 1: is interesting, and elsewhere mckinna does connect all of this
Speaker 1: to whistling in a more well, I guess, grounded manner.
Speaker 1: So this is a quote I believe this is from
Speaker 1: one of mckinna's many talks. He says, quote, ayahuasca is
Speaker 1: different by sound, by song, by whistling, and its ability
Speaker 1: to transform sound, including vocal sound, into the visual spectrum
Speaker 1: indicates that some kind of information processing membrane or boundary
Speaker 1: is being overcome by the pharmacology of this stuff, and
Speaker 1: things normally experienced as acoustically experienced become visibly beheld and
Speaker 1: it's quite spectacular. Unquote. This would definitely be I think
Speaker 1: an example of Terrence speaking about something with a little
Speaker 1: more of the science hat on as opposed to the
Speaker 1: psychonat hat right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think there he's describing the phenomenology of
Speaker 2: a drug induced synesthesia, the idea that when under the
Speaker 2: influence of some psychedelics, you can the perception of one
Speaker 2: normal piece of sense information can bleed over into another. So,
Speaker 2: for example, people on certain psychedelics often report being able
Speaker 2: to hear colors or see sounds and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now now getting into what Terrence is talking about
Speaker 1: here concerning ayahuasca. Ayahuasca, for anyone unfamiliar, is a psychoactive
Speaker 1: brew used for ceremonial purposes among various indigenous peoples of
Speaker 1: the Amazon Basin. Taking it can result in an altered
Speaker 1: state of consciousness, complete with hallucinations. And for a little
Speaker 1: more about whistling and all of this, I turned to
Speaker 1: a paper. This is a nineteen seventy one paper by
Speaker 1: Fred Katz and Mariline Dobken de Rios published in the
Speaker 1: Journal of American Folklore. Again, this is in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: and it's titled Hallucinogenic Music, An Analysis of the Role
Speaker 1: of Whistling in Peruvian Ayahuasca healing sessions, and in it
Speaker 1: the author's point out that drug induced states and music
Speaker 1: tend to go hand in hand in traditions around the
Speaker 1: world that involves psychoactive substances. They're talking about religious traditions here,
Speaker 1: but I think this also carries on into modern psychedelic
Speaker 1: culture as well. Only ancient societies they didn't have Steve
Speaker 1: Roach albums to listen to. They couldn't just play something
Speaker 1: on their iPhone. They had their traditional musical instruments. They
Speaker 1: had their voices, they had their songs, and they had
Speaker 1: their whistles.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it is totally not an accident that
Speaker 2: psychedelic drugs are widely associated with music in the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's a coincidence because I don't know,
Speaker 2: because The Grateful Dead was a band instead of visual
Speaker 2: artists or filmmakers or something. I mean, I think that
Speaker 2: there is sort of an inherent connection between psychedelics and music,
Speaker 2: that the altered state of consciousness, for some reason, is
Speaker 2: very well complemented by music. I don't know. The patterns
Speaker 2: created by music tend to be very pleasing to people
Speaker 2: in altered states of consciousness. And it's sort of a
Speaker 2: feedback loop too, right, that there's this idea that people
Speaker 2: on psychedelics often enjoy listening to music but also want
Speaker 2: to create music.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the psychedelic experience can change the way
Speaker 1: the music is heard, the way it's interpreted, and so forth.
Speaker 1: And they get into this a little bit in the paper.
Speaker 1: They describe the use of whistling incantations with these ayahuasca
Speaker 1: ceremonies which are thought to allow one to evoke the
Speaker 1: spirit of the vine for healing purposes. And they point
Speaker 1: out that on one hand, the uses of sacred music
Speaker 1: and a sit in these sorts of situations, this is
Speaker 1: not all that different from the use of sa Gregorian
Speaker 1: chant in medieval Christianity. You know, we also do we can't,
Speaker 1: we can't go into a scenario like this and forget
Speaker 1: that music on its own is already this powerful thing
Speaker 1: that alters thought, you know, and can make minds work
Speaker 1: in unison with each other. But we do have the
Speaker 1: added psychedelic factor here to take into account. And this
Speaker 1: is where it gets perhaps a little more interesting with
Speaker 1: the ayahuasca scenario. They write quote such phenomena as the
Speaker 1: slowing down or changing of time. Perception must be related
Speaker 1: to how music is perceived by the individual under the
Speaker 1: effects of powerful alkaloids harmine and harmaline present in the
Speaker 1: ayahuasca potion. The number of metronomic markings listed earlier the
Speaker 1: paper includes some sheet music notations of the whistling may
Speaker 1: not indeed be perceived as they would in an ordinary state.
Speaker 1: So that's we're thinking about the idea of music that
Speaker 1: is not only not only is it interesting when it
Speaker 1: is heard during this particular altered state of consciousness, but
Speaker 1: it is created to be heard in this altered state
Speaker 1: of consciousness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I would say that that there are other
Speaker 2: parallels to modern popular music there. What would you say
Speaker 2: about genres of music that are most often associated with
Speaker 2: psychedelic experiences. I would say they tend to be more
Speaker 2: sort of meandering and repetitive. And I think that's because
Speaker 2: you know, like jam bands and stuff, or or stone
Speaker 2: or metal or any of those things, that they tend
Speaker 2: to create these patterns that repeat a lot and are
Speaker 2: are less tight and focus than say a normal two
Speaker 2: and a half minute pop song, And that clearly has
Speaker 2: something to do again with the phenomenology of the psychedelic experience,
Speaker 2: that there's something about like sort of getting into a
Speaker 2: state of mind and lingering there and maybe changes in
Speaker 2: the perception of time and patterns and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point about the repetition, because you
Speaker 1: think you can think of various rather different genres of
Speaker 1: popular music today that have strong connections to psychedelic drug
Speaker 1: culture things. Is different to say cy trance and say
Speaker 1: doom metal. You know, you wouldn't mistake one for the other.
Speaker 1: But when you get into like long uses of repetition,
Speaker 1: there are similarities there.
Speaker 2: But so okay, that's music specifically and why certain kinds
Speaker 2: of music might traditionally be associated with these ceremonies that
Speaker 2: involve psychedelics. But like, what about the specific characteristics of
Speaker 2: whistling would come in.
Speaker 1: Right, So to bring us back to this ayahuasca scenario,
Speaker 1: you have someone taking the ayahuasca beginning to have this experience,
Speaker 1: and they're being guided by a shaman. The shaman is
Speaker 1: using whistling as part of their guidance. So the authors
Speaker 1: point out in the seventy one paper, the music seems
Speaker 1: to have an effect on the visuals that the individual
Speaker 1: under the influence of ayahuasca reports, and that the shaman
Speaker 1: leading the ceremony and guiding the individual through the experience
Speaker 1: will alter their use of melodies as needed, such as
Speaker 1: one example being in response to the patient the individual
Speaker 1: taking that has taken the drug experiencing nausea or vomiting.
Speaker 1: Different melodies are said to evoke different sorts of visions,
Speaker 1: and the music, the whistling is said to help push
Speaker 1: the individual past the nausea, past the vomiting, past initial
Speaker 1: anxiety that is a part of the experience, and into
Speaker 1: the desired alternate state that is often said to sort
Speaker 1: of exist beyond the nausea, beyond the vomiting, beyond the
Speaker 1: initial like physical reaction to the substances.
Speaker 2: I wonder if the specific potency of whistling there and
Speaker 2: not just any type of singing or drumming or anything
Speaker 2: like that. It might have something to do with the
Speaker 2: specific bioacoustic properties of whistling that we talked about earlier,
Speaker 2: like the ability of whistling to cut through other ambient
Speaker 2: sounds and to use a music engineer term, to cut
Speaker 2: through the mix in a way that many other types
Speaker 2: of naturally produced music wouldn't, say, you know, singing or
Speaker 2: drumming or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because you can imagine this scenario where the
Speaker 1: shaman is having to cut through probably quite a bit.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously this is not something that this experience
Speaker 1: is likely not taking place in an urban environment, but
Speaker 1: there may be the sounds of nature outside of the
Speaker 1: enclosure that one is having this experience in. There may
Speaker 1: be other sounds within the enclosure, and of course there
Speaker 1: is the physical experience that's going on that would be
Speaker 1: quite distracting. And here is the shaman with this whistle,
Speaker 1: this music that is cutting through all that, or.
Speaker 2: To cut through hallucinated sounds.
Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, I thought there's one more quote from
Speaker 1: the paper here I thought was key quote. It is
Speaker 1: possible that the patient's augmented suggestibility encounters in the presence
Speaker 1: of the healer a creative source and origin of music
Speaker 1: which deviates anxiety, tranquilizes, and causes a turning inward by
Speaker 1: the musical evocation of particular visions. And so that turning
Speaker 1: inward reminds me once more of those descriptions of Chinese
Speaker 1: transcendental whistling and the inward journey there, So in a way,
Speaker 1: I kind of feel like it comes full circle there.
Speaker 1: So this is all I think. It accounts for a
Speaker 1: handful of probably extreme examples of whistling that is not
Speaker 1: mundane whistling that takes on this heightened meaning. Be that
Speaker 1: heightened meaning reliant upon some sort of psychoactive property, or
Speaker 1: merely just some sort of an intense thought process and
Speaker 1: meditation ritual.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I was just looking back at those lines
Speaker 2: you quoted from the Rhapsody on whistling. The translation of it.
Speaker 2: And so I'm thinking about that with reference to the
Speaker 2: psychedelic experience, which you know, in many cases I think
Speaker 2: is thought to be largely associative. That a big characteristic
Speaker 2: of the religious psychedelic experience is maybe forming associations between
Speaker 2: things in the mind where the cause of that association
Speaker 2: is not obvious or is not literal. And to that point,
Speaker 2: I think of the line in the Rhapsody that says,
Speaker 2: for every category he has a song to everything he perceives.
Speaker 2: He tunes a melody the idea that there are certain
Speaker 2: whistles or sequences of whistles, maybe like tunes connected to ideas,
Speaker 2: even though there's no way that that tune that you
Speaker 2: just whistled actually means a leopard, or actually means a house,
Speaker 2: or means a tree, But for some reason in your mind,
Speaker 2: suddenly it does. And in fact, the same thing is
Speaker 2: true of language. That's you know, one of the weird
Speaker 2: fundamental features of language, when you stop to think about it,
Speaker 2: is that the word tree has nothing to do with
Speaker 2: the tree, that the association that you make between them
Speaker 2: is purely a learn association, that it's not to be
Speaker 2: found anywhere in nature. The same would be true of
Speaker 2: the melody, yet for some reason in your mind, you
Speaker 2: kind of create a language that suddenly that melody means
Speaker 2: the concept.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think on one hand, these examples are
Speaker 1: are the extreme, but they also do get to some
Speaker 1: of the core realities of whistling that we've been discussing
Speaker 1: all along. So yeah, this has been a fascinating journey
Speaker 1: thus far, and we're not done yet. We have so
Speaker 1: much more to discuss. In the next episode, we're going
Speaker 1: to get into whistling and antiquity. Basic questions like did
Speaker 1: the ancient Romans whistle? Well, it's a more complicated question
Speaker 1: than you might think, as well as.
Speaker 2: What happens when God whistled?
Speaker 1: Oh God, the whistling, the whistling and the divine Yes
Speaker 1: that that also, that was the whole question that took
Speaker 1: me off guard. But that'll be fun to discuss as well.
Speaker 2: Also, I think we want to talk some about the
Speaker 2: psychology of whistling. They might further inform some of the
Speaker 2: discussions we've had today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well, we were We hope that you're
Speaker 1: enjoying this journey as much as we are, and of
Speaker 1: course we'd love to hear from everybody because whistling is
Speaker 1: something that all or most of you are somewhat familiar
Speaker 1: with it, You're can have particular connections to it in general,
Speaker 1: or specific connections even to some of the traditions that
Speaker 1: we've discussed here. We'd love to hear from you, so
Speaker 1: definitely write in about your whistle and the whistling of others.
Speaker 1: In the meantime. New episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: The core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays
Speaker 1: we do a short form artifact or monster fact. On
Speaker 1: Mondays we do listener mail. On Fridays, we set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns and just talk about a strange film.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 2: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 2: to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Doft to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 3: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.