What if the most important conservation message of our time could be delivered through a bass line?

That’s the quietly radical idea behind Shika Shika, a music project that pairs one electronic producer with one endangered bird, donating every cent of proceeds to organizations working to protect them.

The project comes from Robin Perkins, a UK-born musician and environmental campaigner who records as El Búho (“The Owl”). Following the success of A Guide to the Birdsong of South America in 2015, he turned his lens to A Guide to the Birdsong of Mexico, Central America & the Caribbean, a second volume featuring ten threatened species, each paired with a regional musician whose sound bridges the traditional and the electronic.

Working with the Xeno Canto birdsong community and the Macaulay Library, the team sourced authentic field recordings of each bird’s call, then handed them to artists with a simple brief: build something beautiful around this creature’s voice. Make people fall a little bit in love.

The birds featured include the Keel-billed Motmot from Nicaragua, the Ferminia from Cuba, and the Jamaican Blackbird. Species whose names most people have never heard. That’s precisely the point. It’s hard to fight for something you don’t know exists.

The album doesn’t feel like a fundraiser. It feels like a discovery. The electronic textures give each call a strange new intimacy, lifting the chirps and trills out of the background and into the foreground, as something with intention. Something worth listening to.

All proceeds go to BirdsCaribbean, La Asociación Ornitológica de Costa Rica, and Fundación TXORI in Mexico. The Shika Shika series has raised over $30,000 USD for bird conservation to date.

Stream and buy on Bandcamp. Some music makes you feel something. This music does something with it.

For the album we chose 10 endangered or threatened bird species and challenged 10 of our favourite producers or musicians from the region. Working with the Xeno Canto birdsong community and the Macaulay Library, we sourced a recording of each bird’s song. Each artist was then asked to create an original piece of music inspired by the bird and its song.

Created by Shika Shika, this is the second album in this vein, and an inspiration for animal lovers and music lover alike.

Read more about the album and purchase digital downloads on Bandcamp.