A mini musician from Brooklyn is releasing her debut album which was recorded when she was unborn and still growing in the womb. Michael Robinson, SPUC Director of Communications, said: “The capabilities of unborn children never cease to amaze us. They are constantly growing and developing, it appears that they are now stepping into the spotlight via music production.”
The album, Sounds of the Unborn, was recorded when toddler, Luca Yupanqui, was still inside the womb. Luca’s parents used biosonic MIDI technology to record the album. Using this technology, vibrations and signals were gathered from electrodes attached to the mother’s abdomen. This was then developed to generate sound.
The toddler’s Brooklyn-based label, Sacred Bones Records, has said that the toddler has shown great awareness towards her own development and existence inside the womb.
The label said: “Her awareness of what was happening was astounding. She would open her eyes wide and stare at her parents, seemingly recognizing her own sounds from the womb, knowing that they were revisiting those rituals that made them come together as one.”
Sounds of the Unborn is released on April 1st.
Mini musicians
In 2015, the Institut Marquès in Barcelona did pioneering research into the ability of unborn babies to listen and respond to music - they found that when it was transmitted intravaginally, babies responded to music from 16 weeks gestation.
During 2019, the Institute published a new study, where they studied mouth and tongue movements of 300 unborn children between 18 and 38 weeks of gestation whilst being exposed to 15 different songs of three different music genres: classical, traditional, and pop-rock.
The music genre causing the highest percentage of babies moving their mouth was classical music (84%), followed by traditional music (79%), and finally pop rock music (59%). Once the babies are able to stick out their tongues (protrusion), classical music is again their favourite music genre with 35%, followed by traditional music (20%) and pop-rock (15%).
SPUC’s Mr Robinson added: “Never before have we had so much access to life before birth. Unborn children truly are a marvel.”