Emmett Dunham.

Animated musical short · Coming Fall 2026

A whistle that's loudest once he's gone.

El Silbón · the love song buried beneath the legend

Type Animated musical short
Status In development · Fall 2026
Source Venezuelan folktale · Los Llanos
Language Spanish-language adaptation planned

The signature device is the sound itself. Faintest when he is near, loudest when he is already gone.

Cross the plains of Los Llanos after dark and you may hear it: a whistle, rising and falling — a man calling for a wife he'll never find. El Silbón reimagines the infamous specter of the Llanos as the love song buried beneath the legend: a husband cursed to wander the night forever, his whistle the last trace of his long-lost wife's voice.

It begins on a wedding night. A jealous patriarch, soured by drink and certain his new daughter-in-law has come to poison his fields, drags her from the marriage bed — and one rash judgment curdles into a horror that swallows three generations whole. What's left is the boogeyman the plains still whisper about: a wanderer, a sack of his father's bones, and a tune that travels backward through the dark — faintest when he is near, loudest when he is already gone.

The project's journey is part of its story

  • Part One performed live, staged with Enzo J. Leone at UMBC.
  • Now in development as an animated musical short.
  • A Spanish version is also in the works, returning Los Llanos's legend to its own tongue.

In the tradition of

Folk-horror that takes the legend seriously: La Llorona, the weeping-woman myth turned to grief, and the broad line of del Toro's dark fairy tales.

Asset needed: art & key frames

Concept art, animation development stills, and key art for the animated short. A polished recording of the live performance will return here once it's recorded. Add assets to src/assets/images/work/ and swap this block.

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