Transhumantzia is soundscape by Oihana Iguaran and Amaia Gabantxo, which imagines a sonic journey from the mountains to the sea. An aural echo left by the transhumance of sheep from
Oihana’s farm on the slopes of the Atxurbi mountain, between Mount Aizkorri and Mount Aralar, to Amaia’s fishing village in the Urdaibai nature reserve, in the Bay of Biscay, every sound in Transhumantzia has been recorded by Oihana Iguaran and Amaia Gabantxo in their respective geographies.
Oihana recorded her sheep as she herded them across fields, taking them through rivers and over bridges and roads; she recorded them deep in the forest, high in the windy mountain and as they placidly chomped on the grass. She also recorded the birds and dogs that inhabit her world.
Amaia recorded the landscapes around her fishing village, Bermeo. The wind on the cliffs where the lighthouse is, in Cape Matxitxako; the rivers that come from high up in the mountains to meet the sea, like Infernuko Erreka, where frogs croak at the moon; crickets singing in the meadows by Aritzatxu beach; the lap of waves against rocks and against boats; boats clanging and mumbling together as they float, tied together in the pontoons; church bells ringing on the water in the quiet of the night; the seagulls’ calls. She also recorded underwater sounds, experimenting with a new hydrophone.
Oihana Iguaran, a bertsolari, created the lyrics for the two songs you’ll hear in this soundscape. She sings traditional bertsos in the first part of the recording, which she improvised around a tune, like bertsolaris do. For the second part of the piece and, keeping the beautiful and – for Basques – iconic chorus lines of the original, Oihana adapted the lyrics of Itsasoan laino dago, a traditional Basque sea song, to reflect on this eternal motion, this journey of transhumance from the
mountains to the sea that repeats across the ages.
Echoing that idea of repetition and return, Amaia sings this reworked Itsasoan laino dago over a looped snippet from a 1985 recording of that same song, Iosu Urkidi’s saxophone/sea horn and the coastal sounds that she gathered, which act as a sort of natural instrumentation, like the mountain and forest sounds did for Oihana’s singing.
By using mostly voice and nature sounds inTranshumantzia, Oihana and Amaia hope to bring
focus to the beauty of Euskara, its permanence, innate musicality and unique textures, and reveal it in its natural acoustic habitat for others to enjoy. Transhumantzia also exists in the context of ecological art, aiming to open space in the imaginarium for the possibility of more harmonious relationships between humans and the environment.