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Instruments of Power: Musicalising the Other in Lowland South America

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17411912.2013.844440

1741-1920

Jonathan D. Hill,

Archaeology and Rock Art Studies

AbstractIndigenous peoples across Amazonia make and play a rich variety of flutes and other wind instruments in their collective rituals and ceremonies. These instruments are cultural tools for enacting semiotic transformations that are central to indigenous understandings of human and non-human powers to control social reproduction and natural fertility. This essay will explore collective performances of flutes and other aerophones as ways of harnessing powers of predation and reproduction in two Amazonian communities, the Wauja of the Upper Xingu and the Wakuénai/Curripaco of the Upper Rio Negro. My theoretical approach to musicalising the other is offered as a critique of perspectivism. I will demonstrate how musicalising the other, embodying intrinsic linkages between life-giving and life-taking forces, is a more nuanced process of making history through engaging others, sharing the space–time of others (rather than violently consuming them) and always returning to one's own identity.Keywords: Flute MusicTransformationsSacred RitualsCeremonial ExchangesAmazonia Notes1 A similar process of collectively experiencing shamanic visualisations occurs entirely through vocal musical performances among the Kayabi, a Tupi-speaking community living in Central Brazil. In shamanic healing rituals, maraca songs require groups of young male kin of the patient to repeat the shaman's sung narratives line by line in a dialogical, or call and response, style. This collective singing is said to allow shamans and male chorus members to perceive powerful spirits, events and places from the distant, mythic past. Listening to and participating in maraca singing allows participants 'to feel as though they "have been where the shaman has been"' (Oakdale Citation2005: 89).2 The concept of 'shamanic musical configuration' is a specific kind of 'musical configuration' (Beaudet Citation1997), which is defined as an analytical unit 'through which the musical and social spheres are systematically (because not mechanically) linked together' (Menezes Bastos and Piedade Citation2000: 150). In Burst of Breath, we developed the concept of 'shamanic musical configuration,' or analytical units in which 'shamanic and musical spheres are systematically linked together' (Hill and Chaumeil Citation2011a: 23).3 Musicalising the other refers to indigenous ways of producing musical sounds as a way of socialising relations with affines, non-human beings and various categories of 'others'. This concept of musicalising the other is explored in detail below.4 The Wakuénai also have a highly elaborate repertoire of ritual music played on sacred wind instruments that are regarded as parts of the body of the primordial human being of myth and that participate directly in shamanic powers of mythic creation and destruction (see Hill Citation1993, Citation2009b).5 See Fausto (Citation2012) for a nuanced argument about the meanings of friendship among the Tupian Parakanã of Brazil.6 In a related version of this distinction, the Carib-speaking Kuikuru of the Upper Xingu region in Brazil perform melodic passages on their kaguto flutes that are said to be non-verbal ways of saying, or 'pronouncing', the names of powerful spirit-beings (see Franchetto and Montagnani Citation2011, Citation2012).7 There are numerous differences between the ceremonial wind instruments and the flutes and trumpets played in male initiation rituals and other highly sacred contexts. I have documented and interpreted these differences in several earlier publications (Hill Citation1983, Citation1993, Citation2004, Citation2011).8 As I have explained in greater detail elsewhere (Hill Citation1987), the celebration of pudáli was ideally timed to coincide with the period of massive spawning migrations of Leporinus fish during the first weeks of the long wet season. The same verb, -irrapaka, is used to describe the spawning and mating behaviours of fish 'dancing' in the rivers and human men and women dancing in pudáli.9 See Graham (Citation2002) for a discussion of the importance of collective singing and dancing by the Xavante, Kayapó and other Gê-speaking and Tupí-speaking peoples of Central Brazil as they formed a multiethnic alliance in opposition to the proposed building of a hydroelectric dam on the Xingu River at Altamira in 1989.