Creation and Creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America: Anthropological Perspectives 9781805390077

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Part I. Creation and the Original Conditions of Being
Chapter 1. Creation, Creativity, and the Times of Origin: Th e Multiplicity of Transformative and Transcreational Processes in Amazonia and the Isthmo-Colombian Area
Chapter 2. Th e Maize Bringer’s Creative Potentials: How People and Maize Coactively Ensure the Continuous Existence of Maize in the Yukpa Territory of Sokorpa, Northern Colombia
Chapter 3. What Does It Take to Be a Singer? Ritual and Creativity among the Pume People of Venezuela
Part II. Creating and the Genres of Transmutation
Chapter 4. How to Charge a Voice with Power? Transmuting Nonhuman Creativity into Vocal Creations in the Western Amazon
Chapter 5. From the Songs without Names to the Stories inside a Name: On the Poetic Creation of Normativity among the Ayoreo from the Northern Paraguayan Chaco
Chapter 6. The Chant-Owner and His Music: Musical Creativity and Verbal Artistry in the Ritual Life of an Amazonian Community
Chapter 7. How to Transform the World(s): Generating Transactive Timescapes through Myths, Songs, and Magic Formulas in the Guianas
Part III. Creativity and Shifting the Context of Signification
Chapter 8. Basketry, Mythology, and Shamanism in the Amerindian Cultures of Venezuela: An Ancestral “Art” Facing Innovation
Chapter 9. Yuruparí’s Disappearance: Women’s Laughter and Organology without Musical Instruments in Vaupés
Conclusion. Creation, Creativity, and the Genres of Transmutation and Transhuman Communication
Index

Citation preview

Creation and Creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America

Creation and Creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America Anthropological Perspectives

   Edited by Ernst Halbmayer and Anne Goletz

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2023 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2023 Ernst Halbmayer and Anne Goletz

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Halbmayer, Ernst, 1966- editor. | Goletz, Anne, editor. Title: Creation and creativity in indigenous lowland South America : anthropological perspectives / edited by Ernst Halbmayer and Anne Goletz. Description: New York : Berghahn, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023000970 (print) | LCCN 2023000971 (ebook) | ISBN 9781805390060 (hardback) | ISBN 9781805390077 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Indians of South America—Amazon River Region—Social life and customs. | Indians of South America—Amazon River Region—Music. | Amazon River Region—Social life and customs. | Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) Classification: LCC F2519.1.A6 C67 2023 (print) | LCC F2519.1.A6 (ebook) | DDC 305.898—dc23/eng/20230216 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023000970 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023000971

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80539-006-0 hardback ISBN 978-1-80539-007-7 ebook

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781805390060

Contents   

List of Illustrations Introduction Creation and Creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America Anne Goletz and Ernst Halbmayer

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Part I. Creation and the Original Conditions of Being Chapter 1. Creation, Creativity, and the Times of Origin: The Multiplicity of Transformative and Transcreational Processes in Amazonia and the Isthmo-Colombian Area Ernst Halbmayer Chapter 2. The Maize Bringer’s Creative Potentials: How People and Maize Coactively Ensure the Continuous Existence of Maize in the Yukpa Territory of Sokorpa, Northern Colombia Anne Goletz Chapter 3. What Does It Take to Be a Singer? Ritual and Creativity among the Pume People of Venezuela Silvana Saturno

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Part II. Creating and the Genres of Transmutation Chapter 4. How to Charge a Voice with Power? Transmuting Nonhuman Creativity into Vocal Creations in the Western Amazon Bernd Brabec Chapter 5. From the Songs without Names to the Stories inside a Name: On the Poetic Creation of Normativity among the Ayoreo from the Northern Paraguayan Chaco Alfonso Otaegui Chapter 6. The Chant-Owner and His Music: Musical Creativity and Verbal Artistry in the Ritual Life of an Amazonian Community Jonathan D. Hill

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Chapter 7. How to Transform the World(s): Generating Transactive Timescapes through Myths, Songs, and Magic Formulas in the Guianas Matthias Lewy

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Part III. Creativity and Shifting the Context of Signification Chapter 8. Basketry, Mythology, and Shamanism in the Amerindian Cultures of Venezuela: An Ancestral “Art” Facing Innovation Marie Claude Mattéi Muller

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Chapter 9. Yuruparí’s Disappearance: Women’s Laughter and Organology without Musical Instruments in Vaupés Juan Carlos Castrillón Vallejo

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Conclusion Creation, Creativity, and the Genres of Transmutation and Transhuman Communication Ernst Halbmayer and Anne Goletz Index

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Illustrations   

Figures 4.1. Three levels of charging one’s voice with power.

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5.1. Three Ayoreo women carrying caraguatá plants, 2009. Photo by Alfonso Otaegui.

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5.2. Ayoreo man sitting in front of his house, 2010. Photo by Alfonso Otaegui.

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6.1. Musicalization of mythic imagery and spirit-naming in chanted speeches (malikái) during female initiation ritual.

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6.2. Lexicalization of sung speeches (malikái) into mythic images of celestial umbilical cord.

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6.3. Musicalization in shamanic curing songs (malirríkairi).

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6.4. Lexicalization of sung speech (malikái) into counterwitchcraft narrative.

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8.1. Nutmeg (Roth [1924] 1970: 356), Woroto sakedi, the devil’s face paint (Guss 1989: 123).

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8.2. Kutto, frog; Kwekwe or kikwe, toad; or Washadi, tapir? (Hames and Hames 1976: 20).

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8.3. Amana, anaconda-coral snake (Panare, from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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8.4. Awidi, coral snake (Ye’kwana, from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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8.5. Mawari e’sadi, the interior of Mawari’s house (from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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8.6. Yanomami woman painting Watha drawing. Photo by Marie Claude Mattéi Muller.

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8.7. Young Panare weaving the jaguar in Turiba. Photo by Marie Claude Mattéi Muller.

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8.8. Mado fedi, jaguar’s face (Ye`kwana waja; from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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8.9. Woroto sakedï, the devil’s face paint (detail from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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8.10. Arkon, capuchin monkey (Panare, from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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8.11. Ke’kwe the frog or Wanadi hiñamohüdï, Wanadi’s wife (Ye’kwana, from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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8.12. Itiriti leaf (Warekena, from Natalia Díaz Peña 1993: 97).

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8.13. Murankinëto, initiation of young Panare boys. Photo by Marie Claude Mattéi Muller.

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8.14. Crimson-backed woodpecker’s shoulder (Warekena, from Natalia Díaz Peña 1993: 95).

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8.15. Kalidama, sieve with wapa (from Natalia Díaz Peña 1993: 183).

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8.16. Panare wapa with tapir drawing (from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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8.17. Panare wapa with helicopter drawing (from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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8.18. The new wïwa basket with frog design (Ye’kwana, from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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8.19. Warao Basket made from moriche palm fibers (from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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9.1. Nadiezda Novoa. Photo by Juan Carlos Castrillón Vallejo.

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Map 9.1. Mitú and adjacent communities along the river Vaupés and Cuduyarí. Drawing by ~Miariki Enrique Llanos, 2012. Picture by Juan Carlos Castrillón Vallejo.

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Table 5.1. Comparison between laments and war songs.

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INTRODUCTION

Creation and Creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America ANNE GOLETZ AND ERNST HALBMAYER

  

The question of creation and creativity is linked to major theoretical positions and thematic issues in Lowland South American scholarship and hints at the highly selective if not rudimentary reception of the broader anthropological theorizations of these issues to date. Recent contributions on creativity (Hallam and Ingold 2007; Svašek 2016; Wilf 2014) have provided an overview of the topic in Western intellectual history. From medieval times, the concept’s history has been shaped by early Judeo-Christian (a divine creator), Renaissance (a human creator of timeless beauty), Romantic (the individual’s creative imagination), industrial (the creation of capitalizable products), and postindustrial (neoliberal creative industries) understandings of creativity. All of these have contributed to the prevalent notion of “creativity as the solitary, ex nihilo creation of products of self-evident and universal value . . . by highly exceptional individuals” (Wilf 2014: 397). This dominant notion of exceptional individual creators, who create innovative and highly valued products out of their genius or intellect, has also impacted anthropological engagements with creativity. Yet, anthropology has developed alternative approaches that locate creativity not only in the realms of god, genius, or economic intellect but in human everyday practice (cf. McLean 2009: 215). Thus, anthropology has slowly begun to expand the narrow understanding of creativity. Efforts range from Claude Lévi-Strauss’s (1966) notion of the engineer and the bricoleur as two types of creators, to Victor Turner’s (1967) notion of the creativity of liminality (cf. Lavie, Narayan, and Rosaldo 1993), Edmund Leach’s (1977) notion of creativity against current systems (cf. Rapport 2000), Roy Wagner’s (1975) concept of the invention of culture (cf. Murray and Robbins 2002; Pitarch and Kelly 2019), and to Ulf Hannerz (1987) creolization and creativity approach (cf. Eriksen 2003). Although not all of these works specifically explore the topic of creativity, they—and their reception—have contributed to the current anthropological discourses on creativity. This introduction aims to provide a basis for the local processes of creation and creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America presented in this

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book. To do so, it first takes a look at the notion of creation and creativity in Lowland South American anthropology, then outlines recent shifts within the anthropology of creation and creativity, and finally introduces this book’s contributions.

Lowland South American Anthropology and Notions of Creation and Creativity In Lowland South American anthropology,1 creation and creativity were never a core issue of theoretical reflection. Traditionally associated with the study of myth and notions of creation and transformation,2 the topic has, since the 1990s, become associated with specific styles of analyzing Amazonian sociality, such as the symbolic economy of alterity (Viveiros de Castro 1996), the moral economy of intimacy (Overing and Passes 2000), or the more recently proposed Amerindian economy of life (Santos-Granero 2010). Moreover, aspects of creativity played a role in discussions on the creative and life-giving forces of music and associated rituals (Brabec de Mori and Seeger 2013; Brabec de Mori, Lewy, and Garcia 2015; Hill and Chaumeil 2011); the fabrication of (proper human) bodies (Conklin 1996; Londoño Sulkin 2005; Rival 2005; Santos-Granero 2012; Seeger, DaMatta, and Viveiros de Castro 1979; Vilaça 2005); kinship (Costa 2018; Vilaça 2002); and objects (Santos-Granero 2009, 2012); as well as in debates on verbal art, speech acts, and song composition (Graham 1994; Münzel 1992); shamanic practices (Cesarino 2016); or, more recently, on property, mastery, and ownership (Brightman 2010; Brightman, Fausto, and Grotti 2016; Fausto 2012). Authors of the “symbolic economy of alterity school” link the notion of creation first of all with classical Christian-technological understandings of an almighty god, creation ex nihilo, and the separation of humans and an objectified nature (Descola 2013: 66). Viveiros de Castro considers the notion of production, that is, “the imposition of mental design on inert, formless matter” as a “model” for the dominant Western notion of creation (2004: 477). Creation as production is contrasted to notions found in Amerindian mythology, where, according to Viveiros de Castro, creation ex nihilo is inexistent. Instead, “the origin of cultural implements or institutions is canonically explained as a borrowing—a transfer (violent or friendly, by stealing or by learning, as a trophy or as a gift) of prototypes already possessed by animals, spirits, or enemies” (2004: 477). The logic of transfer, he argues, “belongs to the paradigm of exchange” and constitutes a relation without an absolute beginning, in which each exchange is “always the transformation of a prior exchange event” (2004: 477). Viveiros de Castro therefore reinforces a key distinction between the dominant

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Western paradigm of “creation/production/invention” and “transformation/ exchange/transfer,” a logic that “suit(s) the Amerindian and other nonmodern worlds better” (2004: 477). The notion of creation thus is restricted to monotheistic versions of so-called modernity and the production of objects. In the Amerindian exchange model, by contrast, “the subject’s ‘other’ is another subject (not an object)” (2004: 477) as the focus is neither on a produced nor on an exchanged item, but on the other, with whom something is exchanged. Thus, “production creates; exchange changes” (2004: 477–78). The “emphasis on transformation/exchange (over creation/production)” is, according to Viveiros de Castro, “organically connected to the predominance of affinal relations (created by marriage alliance) over consanguineal ones (created by parenthood) in Amerindian mythology” (2004: 478). A distinct view on creation and creativity is taken by the “moral economy of intimacy school” established by Joanna Overing. Here, creation and creativity are not associated with Western Christian notions of production but with the creation and maintenance of conviviality in Amerindian community life. Based on the quality and intimacy of personal everyday relations among those sharing the same lifeworld, the creation of conviviality leads to the creation of “the good life,” a feeling of well-being among those who are living together and the creation of a common morality of “good/beautiful” people who share a tranquil, sociable life (Lodoño Sulkin 2005; Overing 1989, 2003; Overing and Passes 2000). While “all forces for life, fertility, creativity within this world of the social have their origin in the dangerous, violent, potentially cannibalistic, exterior domains beyond the social” (Overing and Passes 2000: 6, emphasis in the original) in contrast to the “economy of alterity” approach, these forces “are not conducive to sociality, but destructive of it, and they cannot be generative of human social life until transformed through human will, intent and skill” (2000: 6). The principle of life therefore relies “upon the proper mixing of elements and forces, which must of necessity be different each from the next for society to exist: it is only through such ‘proper’ mixing that safety can be achieved in society and danger averted” (Overing 1983/84: 333). Peter Rivière adds an important aspect to this argument by claiming that, what creativity requires is the transcendence of worldly similarities and dissimilarities. Transcendence is not simply achieved through ritual, but ritual time itself is transcendence. It is the temporary transcendence, during which the divisions of the ordinary world are suppressed, that constitutes creativity, not just the differences themselves. (Rivière 2001: 42, translation by authors, emphasis added)

Transcendence is of crucial importance, as we will see, but there are forms and processes of creativity that cannot be reduced to it.

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More recent studies often aim to expand the analytical axioms based on either the economy of alterity or intimacy. Starting from an understanding of Amazonian sociality based on affinal relations, Carlos Fausto proposed the concept of “familiarizing predation” as “the main schema of appropriation in Amazonian symbolic economies” (1999: 937). Starting from the intimacy perspective, Fernando Santos-Granero added a new twist to Viveiros de Castro’s distinction between an Amerindian transformation paradigm and a Western creation paradigm by framing the difference in terms of “constructional” Amerindian cosmologies that are based on notions of fabrication and “creationist” cosmologies such as the Judeo-Christian tradition (Santos-Granero 2009: 4). Like Stephen Hugh-Jones (2009), Santos-Granero argues that Amerindians may indeed conceptualize an initial creation ex nihilo, which may be “described as being constructional, insofar as subsequent creative acts assumed the form of creations via transformation” (Santos-Granero 2009: 4). In Santos-Granero’s view, artifacts appeared not just as prototypes borrowed or appropriated from nonhuman beings, “they are often attributed a crucial function in the creation and constitution of humans, animals, and plants” (2009: 5). Thus, for him the “creation of life is a constructional process” (2009: 6) and “it is craftsmanship rather than childbearing that provides the model for all creative acts” (2009: 8). Elsewhere, Santos-Granero states that creativity “can assume a variety of forms” (2016: 45). He mentions the production of material things, the appearance of extraordinary things through ritual activities, things obtained through negotiations, barter, exchange, and purchase, including women and the social production of bodies, including one’s children, but also “collective initiatives originating from one’s abilities as a leader and organizer” (2016: 45). This is why “one can own pots and weapons, houses and gardens, names and spirit familiars, children and prey, ritual ceremonies and fishing expeditions, but one cannot own the land, the rivers, the forests or the wild animals—none of which are of human creation” (Santos-Granero 2016: 45–46). That “creativity begets ownership” in Amazonia is a central argument by Marc Brightman (2010: 144). Together with Vanessa Grotti’s re-examination of nurture in hierarchical interethnic contexts (2007) and Fausto’s elaborations on mastery in Amazonia (2012), a novel understanding of property in Amazonia has been developed (Brightman et al. 2016). It is based on the assumption that human creativity produces a “relation of ownership which is exceptional in Amazonia” (Brightman, Grotti, and Ulturgasheva 2012: 15; see also Brightman 2010 and Fausto 2012). It is not an exchange event that is always the transformation of a prior exchange event, but rather a hierarchical relation in which the creativity of the owner sets the initial act and brings the relationship into being. It is, however, not just familiarizing predation that transfers affinity into consanguinity (Fausto 1999); recent discussions have added the notion of

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feeding (Fausto and Costa 2013; Strathern 2012). Feeding is not just “a hallmark of parent-child relations” but also of “relations of meta-consanguinity,” that is, “relations of adoptive filiation characteristic of relations of mastery and idioms of dependence in Amazonia” (Brightman et al. 2016: 14–15). The debate on creativity and ownership is ultimately framed by the axiom of alterity as the base of Amazonian sociality. “Instead of ownership, we would better qualify the Amazonian case as one of altership” (Brightman et al. 2016: 19). In contrast to such meta-consanguinity made from affinity, Santos-Granero stresses its filiative dimension, when he reflects on the relationship between makers and their products, which “involves a transfer of soul substance from the creator to his or her creation . . . by which the ensouled objects become, as it were, an ‘extension of their owners’ bodies . . . and their products (viewed) as related in terms of filiation” (2016: 45). The fact that filiation and ancestry assume precedence over affinity is even more pronounced among the Arawakspeaking groups (Hill and Santos-Granero 2002) or in the Isthmo-Colombian Area (Halbmayer 2021, and Chapter 1) where it includes relations between deified ancestor-like beings and humans and creates a mutual dependence between humans and ancestral parents or gods. Authors like Halbmayer (Chapter 1) argue that focusing on the great binary divergence between Western and Amerindian notions of creativity3 may obscure the different cosmological operators at work within Indigenous Lowland South America and render the gradual differences between creation ex nihilo and affinal appropriation/transformation invisible. As in large parts of the Amazon,4 creation processes among the Yukpa and the Chibchan groups outside the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta are not based on creation ex nihilo. Yet, these groups stand out for their detailed cosmogonic narratives in which deified creator figures play a central role. In these cosmogonic narratives, as well as in the world-sustaining everyday practices, predatory appropriation, exchange, or gift-giving are just some of the manifold possibilities of creative processes.

Recent Shifts in the Anthropology of Creation and Creativity James Leach (2006: 152) noted more than fifteen years ago that there was relatively little written on creativity in anthropology, but the situation has significantly changed in recent years.5 In the context of this introduction we focus on recent shifts that align with general trends in Indigenous Lowland South American anthropology, such as the questioning of nature-culture and subject-object dichotomies, as well as with the views held by the contributors of this book. These essentially concern three shifts: from exceptional individual creators to relational creativity, from innovative products to processual creativ-

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ity, and from contingent to generative creativity. These shifts were most explicitly proposed by Tim Ingold’s phenomenological (Ingold and Hallam 2007; Ingold 2014) and James Leach’s (2006) and Maurice Bloch’s (2014) comparative approaches to creativity.6 What these approaches have in common is that they stand in opposition to the dominant Euro-American understanding of creativity outlined above, based on a naturalistic-, art-, economy- and individualism-bound perspective. From Exceptional Individual Creators to Relational Creativity While the prevailing notion of creativity emphasizes individual creators and their highly creative, imagination-driven minds, recent anthropological contributions highlight the relational dynamics of creativity. Elizabeth Hallam and Tim Ingold (2007: 3) stress that creativity is not individualistic but relational, as it does not “pit the individual against either nature or society” (2007: 3). Creativity, they argue, is “always attuned and responsive to the performance of others,” not only because its recognition is dependent on social constraints and conventions (Friedman 2001: 59; Hastrup 2007: 200), but also because the creative potential lies within the entire field of relationships rather than within the individual mind and imaginative capacity (Ingold and Hallam 2007: 7). People who are attuned to one another respond to society, and they and their creative potentials (imagination, ideas, etc.) do not only grow by themselves but are also grown by society (2007: 8). This attunement is not limited to human society but also includes the energies and forces of the material world and the “world’s creative transformation of itself ” (Ingold 2007: 21; cf. Ingold and Hallam 2007: 7).7 It thus transcends the distinction between a creativity originating in the imagination of humans and a creativity contained in biogenetic substances or the so-called material world (Leach 1998; McLean 2009: 216). By shifting creativity from an individual to a relational endeavor, Ingold’s phenomenological notion breaks with the nature-culture, mind-matter, and subject-object dichotomies. Yet, it highlights forms of human and nonhuman agency that are decoupled from personhood. Hardly any of the contributions that follow the shift to relational forms of creativity address personalized creative potentials of nonhuman forces that would do justice to our empirical findings from Lowland South America. A notable exception is James Leach’s (2006) contribution on a mode of creativity he found among the Rai Coast People of Papua New Guinea and called “distributed creativity.” Distributed creativity is not characterized by creative (mindful) subjects and created (material) objects but by relations between kin, spirits, and the “intersubjectively constituted landscape” (Leach 2006: 170). Through collective work these (human and other-than-human) social relations create, or rather combine, dif-

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ferent kinds of subjectified creations, namely, persons or person-like objects. Creativity is thus a “socially distributed phenomenon” (Leach 2012: 29) that blurs the contours of creative (human) subjects and created (material) objects. This finding led Leach (2006) and other anthropologists (e.g., Brightman et al. 2016; Coelho de Souza 2016; Hirsch and Strathern 2006) to question the universal applicability of Western notions of ownership and property right rules. Furthermore, Maurice Bloch’s (2014) study on creativity among Malagasy carvers in Madagascar highlights the involvement of the ancestors in the collective creative work. Roger Lohmann (2010) most explicitly points to the central role of otherthan-human beings in creative processes in Oceania. These other-than-human beings might be sources of inspiration for human creators or even the original creators of a specific song, design, or the like. However, Lohmann discredits their role as creative agents as “folk theories” (2010: 222) and cultural worldviews that do not inform his “etic”—and apparently exclusively scientifically correct—understanding of creativity as human imagination. His discreditation is at odds with the approach to Lowland South American forms of creativity we contribute to, that assumes that there are different, equally valid understandings of creativity based on plural epistemologies and ontologies (Brabec de Mori 2016: 48–50; Kelly and Pitarch 2019: 8). In some notions of creativity, including those we identify for Lowland South America, interaction with other-than-human beings represents a central component of creative work. From Innovative Creative Products to Processual Creativity While the prevailing notion of creativity emphasizes innovative and highly valued products, many recent anthropological contributions point to the processual quality of creativity. Ingold and Hallam (2007: 2) challenge Liep’s (2001a: 2) distinction between true novelty-enhancing creativity (innovation) and more conventional everyday creativity (improvisation). For Ingold and Hallam, Liep’s distinction does not represent a matter of true or conventional creativity, but a matter of perspective. While the focus on innovation is a backwardreading of creativity “symptomatic for modernity” (Ingold and Hallam 2007: 2) and entangled with commodity capitalism’s obsession with created objects (Ingold 2014: 128–29; cf. Hirsch and Macdonald 2007: 190), improvisation is a forward-reading that focuses on creative processes. Ingold and Hallam, as well as Svašek (2016), focus on the forward-reading creative (or improvisational) process that is able to capture the “growth, becoming, the actual forming or making of things, or in a word, ontogenesis” (Ingold 2014: 128, emphasis in the original). They further argue that creativity is not just about the supposedly new, but that there is also creativity in copying, imitating, and the maintenance

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of traditions (Ingold and Hallam 2007: 5; cf. Wilf 2012). In the Heraclitean sense, the reason is that one can never reproduce, repeat, or imitate something in the same way as it already exists or has existed at some point (Ingold 2014: 130). Moreover, even continuing established tradition in an everchanging world requires active regeneration and improvisation in order to adjust to changed conditions (Ingold and Hallam 2007: 5; cf. Lohmann 2010: 216). Thus, Ingold and Hallam (2007: 7) challenge the opposition between continuity and change and the assumption that creativity is about change rather than tradition (Rosaldo, Lavie, and Narayan 1993: 5). Shifting the focus from the product of creativity to the creative process, Ingold’s and similar process-focused notions of creativity highlight the continuity between and the interdependence of innovation and copying (Svašek 2016: 2–3), invention and repetition (Rosaldo et al. 1993: 5), improvisation and imitation (Wilf 2012), and change and tradition (Lohmann 2010: 216). The processuality inherent to these approaches, however, remains a linear one (cf. Ingold and Hallam 2007: 10), without reflecting on the possibility of other notions of temporality than that of moving from a past to a present that extends further into the future.8 A possible understanding of time, in which the time of mythical beings and ancestors do not only belong to a distant past but is copresent and accessible through interventions and practices of human and other-than-human beings (cf. McLean 2009: 216–23), is not systematically considered. From Contingent to Generative Creativity While the prevailing notion of creativity emphasizes its contingency, that is, its potential possibility, but non-necessity (cf. Leach 2006: 154), several recent anthropological studies (Bloch 2014; Ingold 2007, 2014; Ingold and Hallam 2007; Leach 2006; McLean 2009) point to its generative quality, an aspect that is closely entangled with its relational and processual character. It has been argued that creativity cannot be reduced to the genius of particular individuals, such as in the dominant art-focused understanding of creativity, nor to a capacity evoked or facilitated by particular conditions, such as in the dominant economy-focused understanding of creativity (cf. Leach 2006: 154). Instead, creativity should be understood as a potential underlying society and the world itself. Therefore, it does not depend on the judgment about its novelty or value (Ingold and Hallam 2007: 3). Creativity thus is not only “a cultural imperative,” as Ingold and Hallam cite Edward Bruner (1993: 322), to maintain traditions, but is a generative capacity of people and other living organisms to “continually surpass themselves” (Ingold 2014: 128) in the “never-ending and non-specific project of keeping life going” (Ingold 2007: 48, emphasis in the original). This

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generative form of creativity is bound to the notion of a world always in the making (Ingold and Hallam 2007: 3). Ingold’s focus on generative creativity is probably most clearly elaborated in his article on the “creativity of undergoing” (2014). By shifting the focus from contingent to generative creativity, Ingold foregrounds the intrinsic creativity of the world and puts the agency of humans or other personalized life forms in a secondary position. Leach and Bloch, by contrast, combine the notion of generativity with personalized agency. Leach (2006) argues that distributed creativity is not dependent on an exogenous incentive such as property relations, because what is created in the collective work of creative relations (e.g., spirit and their songs, people, land) has itself an intrinsic reproductive potential, whose constant regeneration is a necessary aspect of its personhood. Distributed creativity is not a possibility, nor is it merely generative, but a necessity “to keep the world in human form” (Leach 2006: 165). Bloch (2014) also stresses people’s responsibility for maintaining the generative creativity of life, but without using the term generative. He states that human reproduction, feeding, planting, tending and harvesting crops, cooking, eating, educating and similar activities that “are about the business of growing life and moving it forward” (2014: 116) constitute creativity in the Malagasy sense. Malagasy creativity is thus an omnipresent notion shared with the living family and also with the past generation and the future generations, and there is a “continual effort to ensure that this forward process is not halted” (2014: 116). Lowland Amerindian notions, as we will see, focus less on the intrinsic creativity of the world (but see Rival 2012) than on specific and necessary forms of creativity imbued with value, and even morality.

The Book’s Contributions The book’s contributions focus on specific characteristics of Indigenous Lowland South American notions of creativity such as the crucial role of otherthan-human beings as creative agents, the need to maintain relationships with these agents in order to sustain creativity, and the relevance of creative processes that transcend different genres, worlds, and times. Before discussing these specific characteristics in more detail in the conclusion, we offer a brief introduction to the contributions. The book aims to highlight the diversity of Lowland South America Indigenous practices and their underlying logics in relation to creation and creativity.9 Two of the contributions apply a comparative perspective (Mattéi Muller, Chapter 8; Halbmayer, Chapter 1) while the others present ethnographically rich case studies. The book covers Indigenous groups living in the Guiana

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shield (Pemon—Lewy, Chapter 7; Panare, Yekuana, Yanomami and Warao— Mattéi Muller, Chapter 8), Northwestern Amazonia (Wakuénai—Hill, Chapter 6; Tukano-speaking groups—Castrillón Vallejo, Chapter 9), the Isthmo-Colombian Area (Chibcha- and Carib-speaking groups—Halbmayer, Chapter 1; Yukpa—Goletz, Chapter 2), and the Venezuelan Llanos in-between these first three areas (Pume—Saturno, Chapter 3). Otaegui (Chapter 5) deals with the Ayoreo of the Paraguayan Gran Chaco and Brabec de Mori (Chapter 4) with the Shibipo-Konibo of the Peruvian Ucayali River. Thus, the book’s ethnographic scope focuses on the western and northern parts of Amazonia and reaches out beyond the isthmus in the north and to the Gran Chaco. This focus on circumjacent regional examples is a strength, which allows highlighting the diversity of Lowland South American Indigenous creative logics beyond unified notions of Amazonian sociality and focuses on the aural, acoustic, musical, verbal, gestural, and iconographic dimensions of creativity. The book is organized in three parts. The first part deals with the (re)creation of the original conditions of being in terms of mythical narratives as well as ritual practices aimed to secure sociocosmological reproduction (Halbmayer, Chapter 1), food supply (Goletz, Chapter 2), and sociability (Saturno, Chapter 3). Ernst Halbmayer’s chapter explores the different ontological principles underlying the creative processes of Carib-speaking groups in Amazonia and Chibcha-speaking groups in the Isthmo-Colombian region. His points of departure are mythical processes and the creation of the original conditions of being as reflected in and sustained by contemporary practices. Taking a comparative perspective, the chapter highlights the multiplicity of creative processes, which may manifest themselves in creation ex nihilo as among Chibchan groups of the Sierra Nevada and some groups in the Northwestern Amazon, appropriative transformation of existing prototypes as prevailing in much of Amazonia, and transcreation, a term that encompasses all those creative processes that are neither reducible to transformation nor to a creation from nothing. Halbmayer associates transcreation with the Chibcha-speaking groups. Distinguishing it from Amazonian creativity that is based on alterity, appropriation, and transformation, he identifies key ontological principles like homologic continuities with original beings, the prevalence of agricultural logics of care, and a symbiotic hierarchical relation with deified beings. These ontological principles are illustrated by four dimensions of transcreation: the materialization of thought, the adjustment of the world, the shift from sterility to fertility and reproduction, and the notion of morality and associated forms of temporality. Anne Goletz’s chapter focuses on the maize bringer Unano and the creative processes between Unano and people in Sokorpa, a Yukpa territory in Northern Colombia, which aim to ensure the continuous existence of maize that is

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considered vital not only for physical but also for cultural continuity. Unano is not only the main protagonist of the narration about the origin of maize and maize-related agricultural and ritual activities but also an agent in the present whose creative potentials are essential for the handling of the highly valued maize. Goletz starts her analysis from the narration about the origin of maize that she juxtaposes with three ethnographic vignettes of practices aimed at mobilizing Unano’s creative potentials: nourishing Unano and encouraging his reproductive potential; dancing for Unano and activating his rewarding potential; and transmitting knowledge to maize specialists, thus stimulating the latter’s and Unano’s instructive potentials. Goletz notes that the creative process of ensuring the existence of maize is dependent on the creative potential of people and Unano alike, subject to “mimetic co-activity” (Pitrou 2016) and coordinated not only by human ritual activity but also by Unano himself. Silvana Saturno’s chapter explores the learning process through which men among the Pume of the Venezuelan Llanos become singers and thus (re)create the essential condition of sociability. The learning process is based on the tõhe ritual, in which singers improvise verses and experience liminal states through dreams and illnesses. Saturno argues that the interwoven experiences of singing, dreaming, and being ill are crucial for gaining creative power and knowledge. She shows how the acquisition of creative power necessarily involves the interaction with spiritual beings whose mythical past is only superficially alluded to in Pume myths, yet experienced in close relationship. One of these spiritual beings and the quintessential singer is the trickster-like Icˆiai, who is one of the creator gods while at the same time resembling neighboring cattle ranchers. It is he who contacts young men to initiate them as tõhe singers and punishes singers with feelings of illness and powerlessness when they have failed to sing for some time. The interaction with Icˆiai causes suffering but, as Saturno notes, is necessary for the (re)creation of sociability and thus, for the condition of being. The second part of the book looks at translation/transmutation processes between different creative genres like quotidian speech, myth, songs, and rituals. All contributions build on Roman Jakobson’s (1959) identification of different types of translation and follow either the ethnolinguistic perspective on intralinguistic translation of William Hanks (Otaegui, Chapter 5) or an ethnomusical perspective on Carlo Severi’s elaboration on intersemiotic translation/ transmutation (Brabec de Mori, Chapter 4; Hill, Chapter 6; Lewy, Chapter 7). Bernd Brabec de Mori’s chapter focuses on the vocal techniques used by the Shipibo-Konibo from the Peruvian lowland forest to charge their voice with power and eventually access the creative faculties of powerful mythical beings. Brabec de Mori employs a two-layered notion of creativity in which the techniques used by human singers constitute the first layer, and the creative energy

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released by the nonhuman entities, who are considered the main creators, are the second layer of creativity. He illustrates the vocal techniques of charging the voice with power in terms of three levels: speaking, getting drunk, and dieting represent the first level; singing the second; and transforming, which is reserved for well-trained singers, the third. Considering the voice as a privileged medium for interspecies communication in terms of Carlo Severi’s (2014) idea of transmutation, he argues that through their transmutation into the realm of sound, mythical beings become real and perceptible and their creative energies vocally tangible for human singers. Through the release of second-layer creativity, the nonhuman beings instruct the singers on what to sing and these in turn reproduce and transmit the songs to their human listeners. In his chapter, Alfonso Otaegui addresses the creative processes through which people of the Ayoreo community of Jesudi in the northern Paraguayan Chaco transpose everyday events into verbal art in order to ensure normativity and eventually conviviality. Based on the ethnography of domestic interactions and the study of verbal art, he describes three of these creative processes: first, the expectations and regularities in the composition of wailing songs; second, the attribution of unusual happenings to the narration of a myth; and third, the creation of name-stories on the basis of conspicuous behavior or utterances. Otaegui identifies commonalities behind these processes in terms of the recursive relationship between domestic life and verbal art, and the fact that the songs and stories are not inventions but repetitions with variations. Building upon William Hanks’s (2014) take on intralingual translation he argues that Ayoreo creativity and verbal art are based on constant translations of conversations, utterances, and names into wailing and love songs and stories and vice versa. Jonathan Hill’s chapter offers a theoretical approach to the complex interrelation between music and language that is at the core of Amazonian creativity. Hill integrates the concept of intersemiotic translation/transmutation of Jakobson (1959) and Severi (2014) with his own concepts of musicalization (the translation of verbal signs into music) and lexicalization (the translation of music into verbal signs). Using two ethnographic examples, an initiation ritual and a shamanic healing ritual, from the Arawak-speaking Wakuénai of the Upper Rio Negro region of Venzuela, he shows how these processes complement each other in a meaningful way. Musicalization serves as a means of releasing creative and transformative forces by providing spaces for transition in the human life cycle and relations with human as well as nonhuman others. Lexicalization, by contrast, serves as a means of stabilizing and channeling these ambiguous forces in a constructive way to ensure the transition of people and the transmission of their verbal artistry across generations. Hill understands musicalization and lexicalization as concepts that account for the

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systematics of translation across different semiotic codes as metacommunicative processes. In his chapter, Matthias Lewy explores the creation of temporary transactive timescapes among the Pemón of southern Venezuela, southwestern Guyana, and northern Brazil through different forms of formalized sound, namely, speaking (myth), singing (ritual), and chanting (magical formulas). In his approach he complements Ernst Halbmayer’s (2004) concept of coexisting timescapes, each of which is inhabited by specific human or nonhuman beings, with temporary transactive timespaces that transcend the already existing timescapes and leave room for transspecific communication and interaction. Moreover, Lewy builds on Severi’s (2014) notion of intersemiotic translation/ transmutation as a method to understand the interaction between auditory and visual code systems. Taking myth as a manual for the operating of songs and magic formulas, Lewy illustrates, with regard to shaman songs, orekotón rituals, and magic formulas (tarén), how shamans, ritual participants, or any trained person can create restricted and unrestricted transactive timescapes by either including or excluding and impacting specific beings through the strategic use and influence of auditory and visual code systems. The third part of the book deals with processes of shifting the context of signification of creation and creativity, either by integrating creative processes into the national commercial market (Mattéi Muller, Chapter 8) or by using creative powers from mythical ancestors to modify societal roles of gender and work (Castrillón Vallejo, Chapter 9). Marie Claude Mattéi Muller’s chapter looks at Amerindian basketry, its relation to mythology and shamanism, as well as recent changes in its manufacture and use. She draws on classical studies on basketry (e.g., Guss 1989) and her own research among five Indigenous groups of Venezuela (Panare, Ye’kwana, Warekena, Yanomami, and Warao). In a first step, Mattéi Muller presents mythical masters of the materials and techniques that are used in basketry as well as the “mythical bestiary” depicted on the baskets and describes the range of geometric, metonymic, and figurative designs used by the different groups. In a second step, she illustrates recent changes in basketry, which initially led to a creative boom and the adoption of new techniques, materials, forms, colors, designs, and figures, which are now turning into a struggle for basketry’s survival. These changes were introduced through exchange relationships with neighboring and distant Indigenous groups as well as through the use of the baskets for commercial purposes, which has been halted by Venezuela’s current economic crisis. In his chapter, Juan Carlos Castrillón Vallejo addresses the connection between Tukanoan women’s involvement with yuruparí ancestors and their empowerment in social life and the labor market. He thus takes a novel direction

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in the research of yuruparí instruments in Tukanoan communities across the Northwestern Amazon, which had been dominated by an exclusively male and visual perspective. Castrillón Vallejo’s approach, by contrast, takes a sonic perspective that focuses on women’s listening to yuruparí sounds. He uses sound recordings of initiation rituals and ethnographic research with women. Building on John Tresch and Emily Dolan’s (2013) “new organological taxonomy” that emphasizes the ethical work of instruments, and Elizabeth Povinelli’s (2006) notion of enfleshment, he argues that the agency of the ancestral yuruparí voices and their effect on the flesh of female listeners sets their creative forces in motion. Women use these creative powers to symbolically recover the yuruparí flutes that belonged to them in mythical times before having been stolen by the men, and to assume new roles in society and in the labor market. Based on these contributions the conclusion of this book summarizes the specific forms creation and creativity assume in Indigenous Lowland South America, including the continuities of creative potentials from mythical time to the present, the crucial role played by other-than-human creative agents, and the importance of transmutation, or intersemiotic translation, between different creative genres.

Anne Goletz is doctoral student and research associate at the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Marburg. Currently she is part of a German-Polish research project about Indigenous graphic communication systems between Mexico and the Andes, funded by the German Research Council (DFG). Her doctoral research project focuses on communication between people in the Yukpa territory of Sokorpa in the Serranía de Perijá in northern Colombia and various other-than-human communicators. Ernst Halbmayer is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Institute for Social Anthropology and the Study of Religions, University of Marburg, Germany. His research focuses on Carib-speaking groups, especially the Yukpa of Venezuela and Colombia and the Isthmo-Colombian Area. Among his recent books are Objetos como testigos del contacto cultural: Perspectivas interculturales de la historia y del presente de las poblaciones indígenas del Alto Río Negro (Brasil/Colombia) (coedited with Michael Kraus and Ingrid Kummels, 2018), Indigenous Modernities in South America (2018), and Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo-Colombian Area (2020). His research interests include Amerindian and Afro-Cuban sociocosmologies, environmental relations and conceptions beyond “nature,” and the anthropology of conflict.

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Notes The book originated from the project “Yukpa Language and Myth in Context: On the Location of an Outsider in the Carib Language Family and the Northern Andean Lowlands,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (grant HA 5957/11-1) and carried out between 2016 and 2021. Initial thoughts on the anthropology of creation were developed in a seminar on “Creativity in Lowland South America” and presented in a colloquium at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology in Marburg. 1. Lowland South America is used here in terms of non-Andean South America, including the Chibchan- and Chochoan-speaking Amerindian groups south of the Mesoamerican linguistic area (Campbell, Kaufman, and Smith-Stark 1986), while Amazonia is used in relation to the studies and theories primarily focused on Indigenous groups in the broader Amazon-Orinoco basin, including the Guiana land mass. 2. See also the work of Dorothea and Norman Whitten (1988, 1993) on creativity and arts and aesthetics in the Americas, which also takes mythic dimensions into account. 3. To overcome classical understandings of modernity and tradition, see also Halbmayer (2018) on Indigenous modernities. 4. For exceptions, see Halbmayer, Chapter 1. 5. See, for example, the anthologies by Hallam and Ingold (2007), Hirsch and Strathern (2006), Lavie, Narayan, and Rosaldo (1993), Liep (2001b), Svašek and Meyer (2016); the monographs by Wilf (2014, 2019); the special issues by Lohmann (2010) and Hirsch and Macdonald (2005); the individual articles by Bajič (2017), Bloch (2014), Graeber (2005), Ingold (2014), Leach (1998), McLean (2009), and Wilf (2012, 2014), or the work of Haviland (2016). On collaborative work and co-creativity and the manifold contributions that deal, among other issues, with anthropological research and creativity, of both researchers and research collaborators in the field, see, e.g., Ferrari-Nunes (2015), Pandian (2015), Rival (2014), and Wagner (1977). 6. In contrast to a notion of creation that is restricted to modernity, the phenomenological and fictionalizing approaches aim to redefine a general understanding of creativity (cf. Leach 2006: 151), and the cross-cultural comparative approach aims to show different modes of creativity that may even coexist within one society. 7. The notion of an open flow of creativity has been criticized for ignoring power dynamics (Ferrari-Nunes 2015), social and economic inequalities, and political differences (Bajič 2017). 8. This also applies to the contributions in Hirsch and Macdonald (2005) that engage particularly with the issue of creativity and temporality. 9. A first discussion of arguments in a panel organized by the editors at the 12th Conference of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America (SALSA) in Vienna initiated the work of this book.

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Part I   

Creation and the Original Conditions of Being

CHAPTER 1

Creation, Creativity, and the Times of Origin The Multiplicity of Transformative and Transcreational Processes in Amazonia and the Isthmo-Colombian Area ERNST HALBMAYER

  

The times of origin in Amerindian mythology are both highly transformational and the source of new formations and relations. My central argument is that by looking at the mythical time of origin among Chibcha- and Carib-speakers, different ontological principles are made visible. This chapter is an attempt to develop this argument by asking how the times of origin relate to the present and which logics of creation, transformation, and creativity can be identified. My choice of Chibcha- and Carib-speaking groups as examples for Amazonian and Isthmo-Colombian logics results from ethnographic work with the Yukpa, a northwestern outpost of contemporary Carib-speakers, living in the Venezuelan-Colombian border region in the Sierra de Perijá. The Yukpa live in close proximity to Chibchan-speaking groups like the Kogi, Ika, and Wiwa of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the Ette, living at the middle reaches of the Ariguaní River, and the Barí who are settled south of the Yukpa. Only the Yukpa’s northern neighbors, the Wayuu, are of Arawakan linguistic stock. This contemporary Carib-speaking group’s unique location stimulated my work on Carib-speaking groups (Halbmayer 2010, 2012) and my more recent engagement with the Isthmo-Colombian Area (Halbmayer 2020a, 2021). It has also triggered my reflection on differences between Chibcha and Carib mythologies and the intermediary position of the Yukpa.1 Myths are polysemic and multivocal. Structural myth analysis and research on myth motifs has shown mythical transformations and relations across language families and the whole American continent. Nevertheless, neither the major comparative endeavor of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Mythologiques nor Johannes Wilbert’s collections of folk literature considered Chibcha-speaking groups or the mythical complexes of the Andes or Mesoamerica in a systematic way. In the following I go beyond structural transformations and myth motifs—which are indeed not fundamentally different among Chibchan groups as Marcos

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Guevara Berger (2014) has argued—and focus on the creative principles and the actors involved. Thereby differences within Lowland South American creativity are uncovered, ones that offer alternatives to the great universalizing theories of Amazonian predative sociality. Such alternatives were pointed out, for example, for Arawakan (Hill and Santos-Granero 2002), Tukanoan (Hugh-Jones 2013), but also for Carib-speaking groups (Halbmayer 2012). I will argue that these differences go hand in hand with alternatives to flat Amazonian notions of time and go beyond appropriative creative transformation. In the second part of the chapter, I will present forms of transcreation and creativity prevailing among Chibchan groups and in the Isthmo-Colombian Area.

The Times of Origin and Cosmogony As Constenla Umaña notes, among the Chibchan groups “cosmogony constitutes a substantial part of all mythologies, that is, the act or process by which the universe originates and acquires its present characteristics. . . . The cosmogonic has an absolutely predominant character, encompassing almost all mythology” (1990: 66).2 This is not necessarily the case among Amazonian Indigenous groups that frequently lack elaborated cosmogonies. As Vilaça stresses for the Wari, there is a “complete absence of divine figures in the traditional cosmology and above all [a] lack of anything like a cosmogony. The beings populating the universe, whether animate or inanimate, have always existed,” and creation “was never apparently an issue for Wari’ philosophy” (2011: 250). This statement expresses a notion of time that is “crushed, flattened, without relief or depth (and) unscathed by the weight of history and the memorialization of ancestors,” as Descola (2011: 88–89) argues. In other words, as Chernela and Pinho have noted with regard to the Brazilian Caboclos, “the profound linkage between everyday lived experience and the creation narratives . . . break(s) with received notions of a distinct, and past, creation period. Instead of recounting creation that was then, these narratives recount creation that is now” (2004: 86). Caboclo narratives contain “no single act of ‘creation,’ no moment of world ‘origin.’ Instead, these mythic narratives are . . . not fixed in time; they are ongoing” (Chernela and Pinho 2004: 97). However, there is multiple evidence that such a flat notion of time is not the only possible logic, and elaborated cosmogonic mythical explanations are found in central parts of Northwestern Amazonia, parts of the Guianas, and among the Western Arawaks of Peru (Civrieux 1980; Hill 2009; Hugh-Jones 2009; Wright 1998, 2013). Santos-Granero, for example, explicitly states that the Yanesha “have a highly structured notion of time, conceived of as a linear sequence of events organized in fixed eras” (2007: 48). “The first two eras, cor-

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responding to the times of creation and re-creation of the cosmos, are thought of as a closed cycle. They are eternal and, therefore, timeless times that are hermetically sealed and closed to the present-day Yanesha . . . . In brief, the Yanesha conceive of the present, time-riddled era as an interlude between a timeless past and a timeless future” (Santos-Granero 2007: 50).3 An underlying difference concerns the fact that flat time is apparently mainly associated with the human/animal dichotomy, where the shape of the Other is theriomorphic, while in deeper notions of time the relationship of humanity to divinity apparently takes center stage. Thus, hermetically sealed times of origin are not the only possibility. Rather there seems to be a need—as among many Chibchan groups—to continuously connect to original times (of darkness) and reinvigorate ancestral powers through ritual enactments, as part of ongoing and relational material world-making processes. Affinal Transformational Creativity and the Antagonistic Twins A key idea popular throughout Amazonian anthropology claims that creativity is “thought to result from the interaction with alien subjectivities, not from the individual’s mental activities” (Fausto 1999: 940). And, the idea of creation ex nihilo is virtually absent . . . . Things and beings normally originate as a transformation of something else . . . . In Amerindian mythology, the origin of cultural implements or institutions is canonically explained as a borrowing—a transfer (violent or friendly, by stealing or by learning, as a trophy or as a gift) of prototypes already possessed by animals, spirits, or enemies. (Viveiros de Castro 2004: 477)

Fausto calls the underlying logic “familiarizing predation” and states, “In this universe in which nothing is created and everything is appropriated, different groups . . . seek to capture people in order to turn them into relatives” (Fausto 2007: 502). This transformative appropriation relates to the importance of alterity and potential affinity as given in Amazonian sociality (Viveiros de Castro 2016) and the resulting openness to the other. The notion of transformation itself becomes “the structure that reveals apparent socio-cosmological continuities across time and diverse areas of Amazonia” (High 2015: 95). The idea that affinity stands in the center of Amerindian cosmologies goes back to Claude Lévi-Strauss (1995). In the final chapter of The Story of Lynx he expounds on the difference of twins in the Americas, whose “inequality is maintained and gradually takes over in all domains” (1995: 227) and stands in contrast to the indistinctiveness of twins in the Indo-European tradition. Amerindian thought, Lévi-Strauss claims, “rejects this notion of twins between whom there would be a perfect likeness (1995: 229) and explains “the world on

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the model of a dualism in perpetual disequilibrium, whose successive states are embedded into one another” (1995: 239). Building on Lévi-Strauss, Viveiros de Castro characterizes twins “as beings that must be differentiated . . . mythic twins always drift towards difference, thereby reproducing the self/other polarity” (Viveiros de Castro 2001: 32, emphasis in the original). Among Carib-speaking groups, the mythical complex of the twins’ revenge on the jaguars, who had killed their mother, can be found in several variations. Characters like Kwatïngï (Kalapalo) (Basso 1987) or Kuantini in the upper Xingu (Kuikuru) (Carneiro 1989; Villas Bôas and Villas Bôas 1993: 73–90), or Kuyuli among the Wayana (Chapuis and Rivière 2003; Magaña 1986: 86, 88–89), and Aparai (Rauschert 1967), the caiman among the Makushi (Amodio 1989: 120–21), or Kuwai among the Karihona (Schindler 1979: 56–57), are all fabricating substitute daughters in order to evade a marriage arrangement with the jaguar (or the sun among the Makushi). The substitute daughter becomes pregnant and is killed by the jaguars, who find twins—or eggs from which the twins emerge—in her womb. These twins, whose description always features their differences, are often directly associated with the sun and moon (Steinen 1892: 209–24), or the sun is considered their father, as among the Pemón (Armellada 1964; Koch-Grünberg 1916). They become antagonists and, among the Pemón, the ideal/typical Makunaima tricksters (Armellada 1964; Koch-Grünberg 1916; Thomas 1982: 189–201), widely popularized by Mario Andrade (1984). The jaguar’s mother, often a toad and owner of the fire, raises the twins, who become aware of their real mother and revenge her death by killing the toad. Finally, the twins go—over a bridge crossing a river—into the sky and transform themselves into stars or celestial beings. In these stories we meet original owners and their prototypical possessions, ranging from the toad possessing the fire to owners of artifacts, songs, and dances. Different forms of transfer are based on exchange, robbery, and gift-giving, and they include the transfer of objects, practices, knowledge, and skills. The making of substitute daughters exemplifies forms of fabrication and ensoulment (Santos-Granero 2009b), which are followed by corporal transformations and multiplication through pregnancy induced by sun beams (Yukpa), arrow-bones (Baikiri), flutes, or fish bites (Aparai), and finally, by giving birth. Last but not least, we find forms of self-transformation, for example by shifting to a celestial existence and a discrete agency and the transformative power of body parts that act on their own and transform into other entities (KochGrünberg 1916: 77–78; Viveiros de Castro 2012a). All of this comes hardly as a surprise to Amazonianists and concerns features that are widespread beyond Carib-speaking groups (e.g., Hirtzel 2010, 2012; Uzendoski 1999, 2014). Thus, central mythical dimensions of the time of origin among Caribspeakers condense multiple relations with alterity and difference. Among

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Carib-speakers and beyond, such alterity may even be present when an elaborate cosmogony exits (cf. Hill 2009). While affinal relations with alterity, like for instance robbery, are not entirely absent among Chibchan groups (see the section below¸ From Sterility to Fertility and Reproduction) and the Yukpa, among them key forms of transcreation become significant that go beyond such affinal interactivity and the continuous, nonlinear, transformational, emergent, and relational cosmogonic processes of eternal becoming that go hand in hand with it. In contrast to such a transformational focus on affinity, there is an extensive discussion on the existence of a creation ex nihilo found among different Indigenous groups and language families (Sullivan 1988: 26–42), such as the Selknam or Tehuelche (Gusinde 1931) in the very south of the continent in Tierra de Fuego, the Guarani (Grünberg 1995: 83–84; Nimuendajú Unkel 1914), or the Witoto (Preuss 1921: 21–22). The idea of a creation ex nihilo is also present among the Tukano-speaking groups of Northwest Amazonia as mentioned by Reichel-Dolmatoff (1987: 3) and Indigenous authors (Gentil 2000; Kumu and Kenhíri 1988). Such an assumption is apparently also implied by Goldman (2004) and Wright, who cites a jaguar shaman with the words that in the beginning there was nothing except a little ball of stone (2013: 152). Hugh-Jones states that Tukanoan creation myths depict a creation ex nihilo in which gods create the world through their thoughts (2009: 35). These myths play patrilineal “lineal inheritance and transmission off against themes of affinity, violence, and theft” (2009: 34). Additionally, there is also clear evidence for creation ex nihilo among the Chibchan groups of the Sierra de Nevada de Santa Marta and among the Pumé of the Venezuelan Llanos (Saturno, Chapter 3). Homologic Continuities among the Chibchan Groups of the Sierra Nevada The key differences to the affinal transformational creativity become most obvious with regard to the groups of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the Kogi, Ika, and Wiwa. Among them prevails the explicit idea of the creation of the universe by a unique original being that is conceptualized as Great Mother, identified with the sea and darkness, existent only in aluna, as thought, when the world was still inexistent and had yet to materialize. Everything originated from this original mother as the only existing entity, in a materialization of thought and an act of self-fertilizing masturbation. Consequently, the myths (Fischer and Preuss 1989; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985) provide a detailed cosmogenesis as well as elaborate theogenesis of the Great Mother’s sons, daughters, and grandchildren, today’s spiritual fathers and mothers, their different qualities and associations with places, the cardinal directions, or human clans.

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As stated by Reichel-Dolmatoff, we are facing: long lists of temples [and] ancient priests, [which] provide important points of historical reference . . . . An often-mentioned image is that of a creeping squash plant, the slow spread of which provides a ready model for the propagation of the Kogi people in mythical times. The bifurcating branches . . . are explained in terms of a huge, all-embracing genealogical tree which, in those times, began to cover the mountains and valleys of Kogi territory. A dendritic structure like this combines the concepts of exact place and relative chronological distance, matters that are of considerable concern to Kogi thinkers. (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1990: 7)

In such ontologies, on the one hand, analogistic features with regard to the temple, the universe, the human body, the sierra, the loom and the universe, or the spindle and the cosmological layers abound. On the other hand, there is an all-integrative identity of physicality and interiority, because everything emerged from the original mother, her children and children’s children, from the different clans to the contemporary people. There is a process of continuing differentiation associated with genealogical distance, while the identification with the ancestral parents is taken as a given and permanently re-created. I have called ontologies that are integrated in this way homological (Halbmayer 2020b: 16–17). Thus, the sameness of physicality/substance and interiority may not only be the property of specific clans (totemism) but may permeate the whole conception of the cosmos (homologism) and integrate different matrilineal- or parallel-descent clans on a higher conceptional or mythical level. Human relations with these spiritual fathers and mothers are explicitly conceptualized as filial in terms of a continuity of substances and genealogies. Genealogies extend from the origin to the present in the clans and the lineages of mamas, the priestly spiritual leaders. This process of creation is expressed in terms of gestation and fetal bodily development. It is a process of internal differentiation, leading to nine superimposed worlds and a range of over thirty spiritual fathers and mothers, children and grandchildren of the Great Mother. All is framed by a notion of progression from darkness to dawn—“the coming of the sun,” as Tayler (1997) had called it. Significantly, there are several Chibcha groups among whom we find no evidence of the twin myth. It seems to be absent among the contemporary Colombian Chibcha groups of the Sierra Nevada (Kogi, Ika, Wiwa), as well as among the Ette, Barí, and U`wa. Among the Ngäbe, twins (mügïn) are socially and ritually important (Le Carrer 2010), but I could not find any indication of the twin myth. In addition, among those Chibcha groups where the twin myth is present, it seems to stress not the antagonism between the twins that must be distinguished but other aspects (see the section below).

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Between Radical Dualism and the All-encompassing Great Mother: On Isthmo-Colombian Creativity In contrast to the Kogi, Chibchan groups outside the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta do not view the differentiation of a single original entity as the source of the whole cosmos but adhere to the idea of a deified principal creator as the agent who gave shape to the current world (Constenla Umaña 1990: 67). The most important Others in these cosmologies are not theriomorph but deified ancestor-like beings. Thus, in the Isthmo-Colombian Area there tends to be different kinds of Others (deified beings, the dead, animals, spirits, etc.) and relations with them multiply into distinct positions of alterity that go beyond predative affinity. The deified principal being of the pantheon is often “not the original being but of a second generation and characterized by his kind attitude towards humanity, a humanity that arises precisely because of his activities” (Constenla Umaña 1990: 67). This deified being frequently plants and/or harvests humans conceived as seeds and plants and as his children. The relations between humans, deified beings, and the dead have a privileged status at the expense of relationships with animals. For this reason, the central cosmological logics among the Chibcha do not concern theriomorph Others and are not based on relations of (familiarizing) predation. Such a relationship is conceptualized in agricultural terms and as mutually a caring relationship between humans and deities: gods plant humans as seed and humans feed the gods. These relations with deified beings contain aspects that have been associated in Amazonian anthropology with vertical or transversal shamanism, priest-like characters, and ceremonial specialists that act “in-house,” that is, inside the temple or a cosmos that is conceived as a house created by deified original beings. Ritual skills are based on verbally transmitted knowledge; regular activities include divination and are associated with vegetable fertility (Hugh-Jones 1994). These individuals “comprise the master-chanters and ceremonial specialists, the peaceful guardians of an esoteric knowledge indispensable if reproduction and internal group relations (birth, initiation, naming, funerals, etc.) are to come off properly” (Viveiros de Castro 2014: 154). Their relations, Hugh-Jones (1994) notes, are based on lineal continuity that, in contrast to Northwestern Amazonia, is not patrilineal among Chibchan groups but, when present, is either of double descent (e.g. Kogi) or matrilineal (e.g. Bribri, Cabecares, and the Arawakan Wayuu) (Halbmayer 2020c). While the “horizontal shaman’s archetypal Other is theriomorphic, the Other of vertical shamanism tends to assume the anthropomorphic traits of the ancestor” (Viveiros de Castro 2014: 155) and is “linked to the separation of the dead and animals into two distinct positions of alterity” (2014: 156).

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In the Isthmo-Colombian Area priests are especially responsible for the hierarchical relations with ancestor-like original beings that are linked with humans through filial continuities that nevertheless connect ontologically distinct beings (such as humans and generally benevolent gods, or humans and cultivated plants). These relations “operate between terms set in a hierarchy” (Descola 2013: 321) and are therefore different from exchange, gift, and predation that operate between subjects of equal status. In the case of Chibchan groups, this hierarchical relation secures cosmological reproduction. Niño Vargas and myself have called this relationship “symbiotic hierarchy” (Halbmayer 2020b; Martínez Mauri and Halbmayer 2020; Niño Vargas 2020a) and identified a basic dominant agrarian logic, according to which humans are perceived as cultivated plants or seeds, cared for and protected by the gods (Bocota: Margery Peña 1994; Bribri: Bozzoli Vargas 1979: 167; Ette: Niño Vargas 2008: 120; Kogi: Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985; U’wa: Falchetti 2001: 115, 135, 138; Osborn 2009), much like humans cultivate, care for, and protect their plants. At the same time the planted crops/children nourish their cultivators/gods. The destiny of human collectivities is associated with that of cultivated plants (Martínez Mauri 2020a, 2020b; Niño Vargas 2020a). The deified beings’ antecedence over the humanity created by them still allows humanity to reproduce and nourish the creators through offerings. This constellation establishes a mutual dependence, as both entities provide services for each other. The services provided are not identical but contribute to an overarching logic of cosmological reproduction in which humans, and especially priests, have a central role. Versions of such a relationship—connected to agriculture as in the Isthmo-Colombian Area and among the Maya (see Christenson 2017), but also to the capture of enemies to provide nourishment for the gods as among the Aztecs—play a key role Mesoamerica (Christenson 2017; Köhler 2001; Maffie 2019) and mark a continuity between Mesoamerica and the Isthmo-Colombian Area. Maffie (2019), for example, summarizes that nourishment for the Aztecs consists of well-spoken words (what we call “prayer”), song, dance, music, ceremony, incense, foodstuffs . . . and human or animal blood. The creator beings gift life to . . . humans so that humans will cool, refresh, and rebalance them by nurturing, nourishing, and feeding them in return. (2019: 62)

This logic provided the basis for human sacrifices of warrior captives to secure the existence of the cosmos. Among contemporary Chibchan-speaking groups, by contrast, humans feed spiritual beings either with their own substances (Arenas Gómez 2020a) or with the products of their fields. As mentioned above, the mythical twins are not completely absent in the Isthmo-Colombian Area, but myths do not stress their difference and antag-

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onism, but stress principles that are associated with Isthmo-Colombian logics. The twin story is found among the Guna,4 Bribri, and Cabecares (Bonatti 1997–98: 239–40; Guevara Berger 1986: 118, 471; Jara Murillo and García Segura 2003: 220–21; Stone 1962: 55–56, 63–64, 66–67), the Buglé5 and non-Chibchan groups like the Embera (Losonczy 1986, 261–62; Muñoz 1987; Pardo 1984: 36–37), the Waunaan (Wassén 1933; 1935: 133; 1963: 70–71), the Wayuu (Wilbert and Simoneau 1986: 54–55, 146–47), and the Yukpa (Halbmayer 2017). Taking the Yukpa as a first example, we find the classical story about the twins who take revenge on the jaguars that had killed their mother and were raised by a toad mother. In terms of transformation and creation the myth explains only the origin of fire stolen from the toad’s mouth and tells of key actors that turn into the stellar constellations in the night sky. The origin and transcreation of the earth, humans, and animals as well as the origin of agriculture and maize (see Goletz, Chapter 2) are the subjects of other narratives. The twins are excellent hunters but, unlike in the Guianas, they do not transform or shift shape. Furthermore, there is no difference between the twins—they act as a pair, they do not even have individual names and are called kosa noch (“Grandmother’s two”) or Yirwatch (a term for the stars C and D of the Taurus constellation) (Halbmayer 2017). Thus, the case of the Yukpa raises doubts if twins must necessarily be differentiated. Following a detailed discussion of twin myths among the Guna, Helbig notes that the common “antagonism is . . . missing among the Cuna” (1983: 83– 84). Rather than being basically antagonistic figures, in the Isthmo-Colombian Area, twins apparently constitute pairs of similar or complementary beings that stand in opposition to ontologically different beings. Thus, alterity seems to be located in the difference toward humans like among the Bribri, where the twins have incestuous relations and turn into reproducing snakes (Guevara Berger 1986: 87, 118; Jara Murillo and García Segura 2003: 221; Stone 1962: 55–56, 65–66). Among the Buglé, the twins punish humans by letting the maize rot, causing a famine (Margery Peña 1994: 103–4), and among the Guna they mark the difference toward the surrounding animal-people. Interestingly, among the Guna and Buglé twins are moral beings, but humans do not follow their advice. Thus, rather than representing an internal antagonism that expresses a dualism in perpetual disequilibrium, twins seem to mark the ontological difference and hierarchical relation with regard to beings of another kind, like animal-people, snakes, and humans from whom the twins differ due to their specific powers. The motif of the twins is widely distributed, but there are important differences not only between the Indo-European area and the Americas but within the Americas themselves. In some cases, the twins are replaced by a deified being or several brothers as among the Guna (Kühne 1955: 72–73).

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Most importantly, rather than being antagonistic, twins form pairs that correspond to notions of completeness prevalent in the Isthmo-Colombian Area. As Niño Vargas states, four represents a “quantity in an ideal state of equilibrium by being conformed by two pairs that correspond to each other” (2009: 89) and “also denotes the idea of ‘parity,’ ‘equilibrium’ and ‘completeness’ (2009: 91). Thus, the area is characterized less by radical dualism (Viveiros de Castro 2012b) than by quadruples and their multiple.6 Thus, the twins turn into eight siblings among the Guna, and we find two generations of siblings (Chapin 1983: 70–71).7 Difference becomes meaningful in relations with others but not between the twins themselves.

Elementary Transcreations in Chibchan Mythology and Contemporary Creativity Original transcreations at the time of origin told in Chibchan mythology represent a set of basic interrelated changes that bring the current world into being.8 Rather than reflecting a perpetual disequilibrium, these changes point to a purposive movement based on a sequence of elementary transcreations. These may, however, be inversed and degenerate due to amoral behavior and the failure to meet ritual obligations. I will use the term transcreation9 for the variety of processes that are situated between a creation ex nihilo and the appropriation of pre-existing products from alterities. Transcreation thus refers to processes that are irreducible either to transformation or to a creation out of nothing. In the versions found among Chibchan-speaking groups these processes imply a creative hierarchical relation between beings of different kinds, which stand in a relationship that implies identification, for example, in terms of filiation or mimetic relationship. A first dimension of transcreation may be called materialization of thought, a second adjustment of the world, the third moves from sterility to fertility and reproduction, and the fourth from morality to amorality. These four dimensions are not necessarily equally prominent among each of the Chibchan groups. I argue that they establish a creativity-scape that is not only indicative of the time of origin but also of the enactment of contemporary forms of creativity and transcreation among Chibchan groups. In these mythical acts the gods precede humans chronologically as well as hierarchically. However, instead of turning into absent gods that, after having established the world, do not interfere with today’s life, the relationship with at least some of these original beings or their descendants must be constantly renewed and sustained. Failing to do so causes a degeneration of the world and a shift toward animality (see Niño Vargas 2020a). This establishes a specific moral obligation and responsibility

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for the constant ritual revitalization of the world. Even among groups that are characterized as “non-cultic” like the Barí (see the section below, The Adjustment of the World), the original deity provides an important role model for moral conduct. The Materialization of Thought The original materialization of thought gives shape to the world; it transposes thoughts into visible material existence. Creation by thought or spelling out and naming is a common way for original beings to bring the world or aspects of it into being. In Kogi cosmology, for instance, the original world existed only in aluna (“thought”) and the creation began with its materialization.10 Among Chibchan groups the original state tends to be associated with darkness and the underworld or water world before dawn and not with the sky and the sun as is the case among most Carib-speakers, including the Yukpa.11 Among contemporary Chibchan groups like the Ika or Kogi, the materialization of thoughts still plays a key role in the collection and offering of thoughts (Arenas Gómez 2020a, 2020b; Parra Witte 2020) and is conceptualized as vitalizing nurture of the spiritual parents and associated with specific places in the sierra. Among other groups such materialization of thought goes hand in hand with relations labeled as praying, petition, or praying with the mind (Goletz 2020b; Peña Ismare et al. 2020). It may include the reconnection with either the coexistent original time (of darkness) or its central actors and expresses the “power agency of thought” (Arenas Gómez 2020a: 186) that affects the behavior of others. It was thus the mental activity of deities, their ideation, that shaped the world, like the mental and behavioral activities of individuals, which result from the former, shape the world today. This form of creativity originally conceived something new from thought. In its contemporary usage, it focuses on creating revitalization and vitality by reestablishing and nourishing a relationship that sustains and stimulates cosmological relations and deities. It furthermore ritually absorbs, neutralizes, and integrates those influences and actions that may have a negative impact on cosmological reproduction. For example, every Ika group owns sets of items that were given to them by their ancestral parents who are “encompassed by the notion of ánugwe, the vitality that sparks the life of everything . . . [The] transmission of such a specific vitality marks the boundaries of the group and guarantees its persistence” (Arenas Gómez 2020a: 189). The only way to activate such relations is to transmit vital substances to the spiritual parents that are contained in blood (jwa), menstrual blood, and semen, but also ancestral food that establish a nourishing relation of substance/vitality with the original owners who are not affines but “assume the position of mother or father”

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(2020a: 197). It is a nourishment of a primarily spiritual kind and manifests itself in different forms: food, tobacco, coca leaves, even money, music, bodily substances, communication, or thought (Martínez Mauri and Halbmayer 2020: 28–29). Hence, it is not curative shamanic intervention and healing but preventive cognitive-physical harmonization as a form of transcreation that stands in the center of offerings, which also strive to tame potentially dangerous beings by nourishing them. At the same time there are strategies to create ontological similarity (Goletz 2020a) between ontologically different entities, a synchronization of timescapes (Halbmayer 2013, forthcoming) or a ritual co-activity (Goletz, Chapter 2; Pitrou 2016) that allows for transmission of knowledge, substances, and capacities and serves as a functional equivalent to Amazonian metamorphosis. The relationship with natural phenomena is guided among the Kogi by yuluka (“estar de acuerdo,” to agree), that is, by maintaining harmony with and becoming part of the phenomenon or one of its aspects and by assuming its characteristics. This “‘agreement’ implies the identification of the individual with the personification (of the great and omnipresent Mother, the Masters or owners, the rain, illnesses, etc.) and its simultaneous neutralization” (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985: 95). Among the Carib-speaking Yukpa, Amoricha weaves mountains, trees, and his first children, who are birds (Halbmayer 2016). He creates forms of life but not life as such. Such activities and forms of manufacturing involve the materialization of thought as an integral part, which probably becomes most obvious concerning the importance of weaving, but also the use of songs and spells. Amoricha made the earth grow, enlarged it by thinking, and brought things into existence through spells (Halbmayer 2016: 157). The Adjustment of the World While the materialization of thought brings the physical earth and the cosmos into being, the following adjustment of the world, which forms contemporary life forms and the actual conditions of the world, is one of the main tasks of the original deity. Among the Irapa Yukpa, for example, the main actor in owaya tamoriya (“the time the world was under construction”), is Amoricha. Etymologically the term Amoricha derives from the verb -amó- (“to construct or build a house—or, more basically, an enclosure”), the nominalizing possession marker -ri-, and the humanizing suffix -cha, which indicates a deceased or former person. Amoricha may thus be translated as “the deceased person who possessed [the knowledge or capacity of ] constructing or building.” He is adjusting the world by shooting at the sun, in order to raise the firmament, and by enlarging the earth.

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Among the Bribri, for example, the first known events occurred when the first four underworlds already existed and were populated by certain beings. Sibö, the first god mentioned, resided in the fourth underworld and began to travel upwards. He created new worlds with stones that he brought—translocated—from the existing ones (where there was no other material available). Among the Barí, Sabaséba came from the West and arrived in the land that was dark, without structure and order, chaotic and raw, and he gave it its present shape and order (Castillo 1989: 295). He is a teacher, a founder of culture and moral legislator, and represents the Bari ideal in terms of morality and conduct. Castillo states that the Barí have no idols, no temples, no rites, no sacrifices, no offerings and maintain a “non-cultic” relationship with Sabaséba (1989: 306). He “organized the world, and their life . . . the Bari recognizes the role and work of Sabaséba and tries to follow his example in everything he does” ( Jaramillo Gómez 1992: 284). Thus, even if there is no continuous hierarchical exchange and the deified beings have withdrawn from earth, they serve as role models that established norms and logics of sociality to be emulated and reproduced today. Generally, the formation of the cosmos in its current shape is perceived as the construction of god’s house and the outcome of a process that adjusted a pre-existing reality. Such activities formed a layered universe of mostly nine levels—four above and four below this world. Among the Ika “the image of the world . . . is that of a pyramid with a square base and composed of four floors, which also has its corresponding symmetrical counterpart downwards, which is another pyramid of four floors” (Orozco 1990: 209). The notion of such an inversed house below this world and the basic idea of a square aligned with the four cardinal directions and an axis mundi at its center that connects zenith and nadir, is shared by several Chibchan groups like the Bribri, Cabecares, Kogi, Ika, and Wiwa. In the traditional Bribri house, four peripheral pillars and a fifth in the middle were erected. The latter, which was associated with the original world tree, was removed once the house was finished.12 Among the Kogi “the Universal Mother, sole possessor of the art of spinning and weaving, took her immense spindle and stuck it vertically . . . in the center of the Sierra Nevada . . . and said, ‘This is kalvasánkua, the central pole of the world!’” (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975: 205). The original world tree (Constenla Umaña 1990: 69; Guevara Berger 1986: 85–86; Niño Vargas 2020b, 2022) was felled and brought either the sea or the cultivation of corn into existence. The house’s and the cosmos’s support beams are associated among several groups with gods or human clans created by deified beings. To support the world, among the Ika “Seránkwa placed . . . , aligned with the four cardinal directions, four men called Nansiki, who were seated facing the center and held it on their shoulders with two golden poles called yuisimana” (Orozco 1990: 204).13 “These [golden] idols, transformed into spir-

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its of great power . . . support the world . . . so that it will never ever collapse and remain for centuries and centuries” (Ortiz R. 2005: 29). Among the Kogi, each temple is a replica of Kuišbángui the thunder god’s body. The two central posts are his legs; the peripheral posts and the trellis that joins them are his ribs; the horizontal poles that join the upper ends of the wall are his hips and the thick ring of vines and sticks that surrounds the lower inner part of the roof is his waist; the roof timbers are his shoulders and his heart is above, at the top of the cone. The Kogi imagine Kuišbángui standing with his back bent, supporting on his broad shoulders the weight of the roof of his temples. (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975: 211).14

Among the Chibchan groups, fabrication as a nonsexual primordial form of reproduction in the sense of Santos-Granero (2009b) exceeds material culture and objects and encompasses first of all the adjustment of the world itself. In the Amazonian constructional logic, it is mainly artifacts and persons that are fabricated rather than the world at large and livable conditions. SantosGranero stresses the composite or even artifactual nature of constructions and argues that the capacity for transformation “derives to a large extent from the composite character of all life forms” (2009b: 22). In Chibchan and Isthmo-Colombian ontologies the constructional logic is more related to the formation and ordering of the world than to composite body-making techniques. Rather than being artificially made, composite beings/humans are, as mentioned above, usually perceived as seeds that are grown and cultivated. Even when there is an explicit maker of human beings, like Sula among the Bribri ( Jara Murillo and García Segura 2003: 197–98), this goes hand in hand with the idea of humans as seeds. Therefore, corporal fabrication tends to assume the meaning of cultivating, caring for, and nourishing the spirit/potency and the body. These interventions intend to influence, support, or, by contrast, avoid certain processes rather than being a creation of artifacts. Ordering the world includes influencing the weather and rainfall, chasing away falling stars or solar eclipses, weaving thoughts together, or nourishing other beings. From Sterility to Fertility and Reproduction The original beings tend to be solitary beings who are by no means always omniscient, but who may also fail in their attempts and learn by trial and error. A crucial shift in these transcreations moves from a state of sterility to a state of, mostly intentionally directed, fertility that occurs in cultivation, growth, and reproduction, but also in fermentation.

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In Kogi cosmogony the creation of nine layered worlds is related to the nine months of human gestation. Thus, the logic of the transcreation and cultivation of the world is intertwined with fetal development and a move from sterility to fertility. This move is also expressed in other ways: It had not yet dawned and the earth was still weak and lay under darkness but once the First Man—called Sintána—had been born, light was made and the first day of Creation dawned. Now the four Lords began to dry the earth and to push away the sea that surrounded it. This done they gathered in the temple they had made and chanted for the Mother to give them wives. The Mother had had nine daughters, each of whom represented a certain quality of soil for farming, be it sandy soil, loamy soil, or yellow soil, but now, as she successively gave these earth-daughters to the four Lords, the latter soon realized that they were sterile or, at least, did not promise to be fertile mothers to populate this world. So they asked for black earth, the black daughter of the Mother, the good earth for sowing; but the Mother refused to give it and kept it in a large dark room . . . Sintána, the first man of Creation, stood in the center of the temple and sang . . . The girl heard the song and was subjugated by the attractiveness of his voice. She got up, but did not dare to leave. Then Sintána called his companion the Wind to help him. The Wind searched in every corner until he found the girl—the black earth—and, taking her by the waist, led her to where Sintána was. This is how human life started—represented here by the first couple—in a temple the four Lords had built and from where Sintána now went out to populate the Kogi world. (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975: 204–5)

Among Chibchan groups, in the beginning the world is generally infertile and stony and the original beings are without partners. If reproduction occurs, it is—as in the case of the Great Mother—masturbative, asexual, or incestuous. The original beings search for partners for procreation. Women are often associated with earth, or different classes of earth, of which black earth is the fertile preferred partner. Among the Bribri, “the pillars that support the sky [of God’s house, E.H.] were planted on the rock on which no vegetation was yet growing because it had no soil” (Guevara Berger 2014: 73). “It was necessary either to put earth or to transform the rock into earth to make life possible” (2014: 75). Sibö looked after his tapir sister’s daughter, “with whose blood he was to create the earth” (2014: 75–76). He found the girl in a house located behind the place where the sun was born. . . . the thunder, managed to open all the stone doors and they entered. The grandmother of the child reluctantly brought her granddaughter forward and all returned to the festival which had already begun . . . . The grandmother joined the dancers, but the child she was carrying on her back fell off. The dancers threw the child to the ground, and the child’s blood spilled on the stone, turning it into earth. Thus, the earth was born and the vegetation that grows on it. (2014: 76).

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Likewise, among the Ika “the world had been left in the shape of a very large formation of pure rock . . . There were already human beings but no earth of any kind . . . Father Seránkwa the Creator returned to finish forming the world and to disperse the earth itself ” (Ortiz R. 2005: 32). He “married four wives . . . : Bunekán, or white earth; Gunekán or yellow earth; Manekán or red earth, and Seinekán or black earth, which is the fertile and productive earth” (Orozco 1990: 203). “‘Black earth’ was the chosen one, the one who would serve the whole world in all forms of production” (Ortiz R. 2005: 36). Consequently, this transcreation is not just fabrication, but the creation of conditions for reproduction and cultivation. The core of creativity is related to the process of establishing and adapting the world (building the temple) and enabling and sustaining fertility. While the myths focus on the establishment of the world and ensuing transcreations, contemporary practices center on its preservation and continued existence. The groundwork for these practices has been laid in the myths, for instance, singing to the Great Mother to receive wives, to marry in the correct way, singing, playing on flutes, and celebrating and thus also fulfilling their hierarchical obligations and nourishing the deities. These practices are complemented by the rules for preparing, planting, and harvesting a swidden field and processing the harvested fruits; and by the rituals to ensure their reproduction, for example, by petitioning rain (see Goletz, Chapter 2). In any case, it is fertility that has creative potential and must be freed, whereas sterility must be either overcome or avoided. As noted by Guevara Berger, “building a house, or a cosmos, is in itself an act of delimitation, of separation of the internal from the external, of the human space (inhabited) and the non-human space (uninhabited)” (1986: 79). The space itself inside the house and cosmos is divided into various layers of the upper- und underworld. It is with regard to these layers that forms of translocation and creativity occur that can be subsumed under the categories of appropriation and robbery. The same categories stand also in the center of Amazonian affinal creativity. Even the spiritual mother had to be tricked when she refused to give up her black-earth daughter, and travels to places behind the sun or the ninth room outside of or at the margins of God’s house were necessary because still no black earth existed inside. Myths tell, aside from the origin of earth, numerous stories of journeys to the sky world or of a living person who must travel to the land of the dead to obtain edible plants or other cultural items. These journeys are generally undertaken in secrecy and without social consent. Such stories may be found among the Guatusos, Dorasques, Guna, U’wa, Kogi, and Paya (see Constenla Umaña 1990: 69). Obviously, in this context a transfer of prototypes that already exist on other layers and belong to other beings, gains importance. In contrast to Amazonian approbative trans-

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formation, however, it does not represent the dominant logic and the transfers apparently always take place between layers of the universe. From Morality to Dehumanizing Amorality A fourth dimension of transcreation concerns a specific human moral responsibility for maintaining individual and collective harmony and the balance of larger sociocosmological relations. The failure to do so contributes to the world’s degeneration and may cause a completely undesirable dehumanizing creativity of its own. This dehumanizing creativity is dangerous and sets processes of transcreation in motion that may lead to animality (Niño Vargas 2020a) and cause cataclysms and transformations of the universe. It is therefore important to perform and assess contemporary action with regard to the action of mythical role models and to reconnect with the original beings and the time of origin through rituals in order to sustain the order of the world. Performing such rituals is the moral duty of humans, especially priests who are ritual specialists, in order to avoid the possibility of degeneration and cataclysms. The motif of cataclysm closely resembles examples from other regions. It includes the deluge or great flood, the great fire, and the long night. Another cataclysmic motif, this time related to fertility, is “the great famine.” The Guatusos (according to Constenla Umaña), Dorasques (Miranda de Cabal 1974: 36–37), and Chimilas (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1945: 10) tell about “a very long drought . . . that caused the death of a large number of people; in the case of the Guatusos it is clearly stated that it was a divine punishment” (Constenla Umaña 1990: 68; for the Yukpa see Goletz, Chapter 2). Local cosmogonies among many Chibchan groups mention earlier creations that failed due to the moral misconduct of humans and former, now subhuman, humanities that are still among the beings inhabiting the cosmos in Chibchan cosmologies. In several cases, one of the transforming tasks of the primordial beings is the elimination of pre-existing creatures in this world so that they cannot harm the new humanity to be created (Constenla Umaña 1990). Human action, thought, and sexual desire thus have the ability to influence the world either to maintain harmony and increase fertility or to work against it. Such actions may, like among the people of the Sierra Nevada, be regulated through confessions to the mamas and the advice of priests. An institutionalized form of self-control—at the levels of both the individual and the society— governs daily life and sexuality. Several groups talk about an elaborate moral assessment by spiritual beings of the deceased’s life. Among the Bribri, detailed narratives of the deceased’s life become materialized in a package that he carries with him, which is examined by the spiritual beings. The passing of such an

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examination is the precondition for the access to the land of the dead; it may entail a severe punishment of the deceased (Halbmayer, forthcoming). People’s moral responsibility as elder brothers may even extend beyond their society to the whole of mankind, as it does among the people of the Sierra Nevada. The original spiritual beings’ labor has established the final form of the universe and it is the moral obligation of humans to maintain this condition and avoid the universe’s gradual degeneration. Last but not least, this logic establishes a specific notion of time that is neither the flat Amazonian time mentioned above nor, as stated by as Niño Vargas (2020a), the great cycle of destructions and recreations of Andean and Mesoamerican cosmologies. It is a time that necessitates the following, imitating, and replicating of primordial beings’ actions as well as reconnecting with the original time of darkness and its beings in order to sustain the vitalizing cycles of hierarchical nourishment.

On the Multiplicity of Transformational, Creational, and Transcreational Processes from the Jaguar Twins to Fertilizing the Earth Starting from the myths of Carib-speaking and Chibchan groups, the multiplicity of transformational, creational, and transcreational processes in Lowland South America has become apparent, complementing and providing alternatives to unified theories of Amazonian sociality and appropriative creativity. I have set out to show that such differences exist in Amazonia itself, when notions of a creation ex nihilo or the local cosmogonies and notions of temporality beyond a flat time are taken into account. The focus on the Isthmo-Colombian region and Chibchan groups adds to this multiplicity. Cosmogony plays a central role here without its logics being submerged under overarching logics of symbolic affinity, appropriation/predation, antagonistic twins, or cannibal Gods. Alterity becomes diversified, filiation and ancestry gain in importance, and at the center of creativity are continuing relations with spiritual parent-like beings that protect, care for, and cultivate humans and are, in turn, nourished by their children. In the Isthmo-Colombian cosmogonies the materialization, adaptation, and fertilization of the world establishes an anthropocentric moral obligation in order for the world to persist. Once established through transcreational processes, which must neither be reduced to appropriative transformation nor to the fabrication of composite beings, nor to a creation ex nihilo, the core of creativity relies on the maintenance and persistent fertilization of relations between deified ancestor-like beings and today’s humanity. The relation implies mutual care and support between humans and deities, who have materialized and shaped the world through their mental activities and the re-

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lated adaptations and fertilization of the world. It is the activities of the deified original beings that provide the blueprint for creativity and have established the techniques and processes that have transcreated the world. Human creativity evolves in terms of life-sustaining and fertilizing activities as well as in its potential for destruction, and it is morally assessed in the face of the gods’ primordial transcreations and the human responsibility for the perpetuation of an ordered and livable world.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to Juan Camilo Niño Vargas and Anne Goletz for commenting on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Ernst Halbmayer is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Institute for Social Anthropology and the Study of Religions, University of Marburg, Germany. His research focuses on Carib-speaking groups, especially the Yukpa of Venezuela and Colombia and the Isthmo-Colombian Area. Among his recent books are Objetos como testigos del contacto cultural: Perspectivas interculturales de la historia y del presente de las poblaciones indígenas del Alto Río Negro (Brasil/Colombia) (coedited with Michael Kraus and Ingrid Kummels, 2018), Indigenous Modernities in South America (2018), and Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo-Colombian Area (2020). His research interests include Amerindian and Afro-Cuban sociocosmologies, environmental relations and conceptions beyond “nature,” and the anthropology of conflict.

Notes 1. The latter research was mostly undertaken in the context of project HA 5957/11 “Yukpa language and myth in context. On the location of an outsider in the Carib-language family and the northern Andean Lowlands,” funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. 2. All quotes from non-English language sources were translated by Ernst Halbmayer. 3. As Santos-Granero notes there is a similar view among the Baniwa (see Wright 1998:104). 4. The most detailed discussion of the different versions of Guna twin myths is presented by Helbig (1983: 68–84). 5. There are apparently mythical twins among the Pech that are connected to the origin of music and turn into the morning and evening star. Further information is lacking (Heliodoro and Mejía 1989: 99). 6. As mentioned for Kogi cosmogony. 7. This is also the case in the Popol Vuh (Christenson 2007).

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8. Because the Carib-speaking Yukpa are surrounded and influenced by Chibchan-speaking groups, I include references to certain aspects of their conceptions. 9. The term “transcreation” has a different meaning in translation studies, where it refers to the creative “more than translation” processes (Pedersen 2014). 10. Analogous ideas may be found among the Miraña who believe that the Creator was originally just pure, disembodied consciousness (Karadimas 2005: 259–66). 11. Yukpa mythology is ambiguous in this respect, as the first being on earth descended from the sky and is, at least among the Iroka Yukpa (Halbmayer 2016) and Sokorpa Yukpa (Goletz, pers. comm.), associated with the sun. Compared to most Carib-speaking groups, this association is quite weak and the sun is considered a dangerous and aggressive cannibal (see Halbmayer 2004; Wilbert 1974) in accordance with Chibchan cultural notions. Sun is, for example, seen as a “great drinker of human blood” (among the Cuna, or something similar to the Whites, and a devourer of people that likes to burn everything among the Kogi (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985: 29–30). Among the Bribri and Cabécares, sun must drink chocolate to be able to continue on its way (Guevara Berger 1986: 140). Humans are considered chocolate to many supernatural beings among the Bribri. Guevara Berger points to the fact that this is a reflection of Mesoamerican conceptions (1986: 140). Sun and Moon are usually siblings (Bribri, Cabécares, Moveres, Bocotaes, Ette, Kogi, Yukpa)—either brothers or male and female that commit incest (Bribri, Cabecares). In several cases there is a belief in the existence of more than one sun. To my question to the Yukpa about whether the sun is male or female, I received the response that they live in families and is not clear “which one goes to work [travels across the firmament]” on any given day. I was told that at the beginning there were two suns and it never got dark; one of them later turned into moon. The Chimilas state, “Sun and Moon are brothers. Brother Luna is much older than sister Sol, who is already the third sister and who was born a short time ago. The two Suns that there were before no longer served when they were old and died” (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1945: 5). 12. Among the Waiwai the central house post was also removed. For a discussion of this practice in the context of Carib-speaking groups, see Halbmayer (2010: 256–58). 13. Interestingly the very first proposition of a Chibcha area is when Wissler mentions “an Atlas idea of the world” (1917: 230) as one of its characteristics. 14. The temple expresses multiple symbols, representing at the same time the womb of the Universal Mother, the political structure of the Kogi, and the four hearths inside the temple of the four sons of the Great Mother (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975: 211–15).

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Hirtzel, Vincent. 2010. Le maître à deux têtes: une ethnographie du rapport à soi yuracaré (Amazonie bolivienne). Paris: École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). ———. 2012. “La historia de un mito antes de la ‘historia’: acerca de algunas versiones yuracaré y chiriguana del mito de los mellizos.” In El aliento de la memoria, ed. Francois Correa Rubio, Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, and Roberto Pineda Camacho, 89–120. Bogotá: CNRC, IFEA, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Hugh-Jones, Stephen. 1994. “Shamans, Prophets, Priests, and Pastors.” In Shamanism, History, and the State, ed. Nicholas Thomas and Caroline Humphrey, 32–75. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ———. 2009. “The Fabricated Body: Objects and Ancestors in Northwest Amazonia.” In The Occult Life of Things: Native Amazonian Theories of Materiality and Personhood, ed. Fernando Santos-Granero, 33–59. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 2013. “Bride-Service and the Absent Gift.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19 (2): 356-377. Jara Murillo, Carla Victoria, and Ali García Segura. 2003. Diccionario de mitología bribri. San José: Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica. Jaramillo Gómez, Orlando. 1992. “Los Barí.” In Geografía humana de Colombia, Nordeste indígena, ed. Instituto Colombiano de Cultura Hispánica, 237–297. Tomo II,. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura Hispánica. Karadimas, Dimitri. 2005. La raison du corps: idéologie du corps et représentations de l’environnement chez les Miraña d’Amazonie colombienne. Paris: Peeters. Koch-Grünberg, Theodor. 1916. Vom Roroima zum Orinoko. Mythen und Legenden der Taulipang und Arekuna-Indianer. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. Köhler, Ulrich. 2001. “‘Debt-payment’ to the Gods among the Aztec: The Misrendering of a Spanish Expression and Its Effects.” Estudios de cultura Náhuatl 32: 125–33. Kühne, Heinz. 1955. “Der Jaguar im Zwillingsmythus der Chiriguano und dessen Beziehung zu anderen Stämmen der Neuen Welt.” Archiv für Völkerkunde X: 16–135. Kumu, Umúsin Panlôn, and Toláman Kenhíri. 1988. “Antes el mundo no existía.” El Paseante 11: 68–82. Le Carrer, Corine. 2010. “Le mouvement du monde. Croissance, fécondité et régénération sociale chez les Ngobe de Costa Rica et de Panama.” PhD diss., École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1995. The Story of Lynx. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Losonczy, Anne-Marie. 1986. “La sagesse et le nombril. Rites de naissance et sages-femmes chez les Embera et les Afro-Colombiens du Haut-Choco (Colombie).” Civilisations 36(1/2): 259–87. Maffie, James. 2019. “The Nature of Mexica Ethics.” In Comparative Metaethics: Neglected Perspectives on the Foundations of Morality, ed. Colin Marshall, 60–80. London: Routledge. Magaña, Edmundo. 1986. Los Indios Wayana de Suriname. Amsterdam: CEDLA. Margery Peña, Enrique. 1994. Mitología de los bocotas de Chiriqui. Quito: Abya Yala. Martínez Mauri, Mònica. 2020a. “Intercambios entre humanos y árboles en el área istmocolombiana. Aportaciones etnográficas desde Gunayala (Panamá).” Tabula Rasa 36: 131–49. ——— . 2020b. “Things, Life, and Humans in Guna Yala (Panama). Talking about Molagana and Nudsugana Inside and Outside Guna society.” In Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica, ed. Ernst Halbmayer, 257–78. London: Routledge. Martínez Mauri, Mònica, and Ernst Halbmayer. 2020. “Ofrendas, intercambios y otros modos de relación en las socio-cosmologías indígenas contemporáneas del área istmo-colombiana.” Tabula Rasa 36: 19–44.

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Miranda de Cabal, Beatriz. 1974. Un pueblo visto a través de su lenguaje. Cuidad de Panamá: Impresora Panamá, S.A. Muñoz, Jairo, ed. 1987. Relatos y leyendas orales (Kamsá-Embera-Chami). Bogotá: Servicio Colombiano de Comunicación Social. Nimuendajú Unkel, Curt. 1914. “Die Sagen von der Erschaffung und Vernichtung der Welt als Grundlagen der Religion der Apapocuva-Guarani.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 46(2/3): 284–403. Niño Vargas, Juan Camilo. 2008. “Ciclos de destrucción y regeneración: experiencia histórica entre los ette del norte de Colombia.” Historia Crítica (35): 105–29. ———. 2009. “Sistema de clases y principio de paridad: observaciones lingüísticas y etnográficas sobre el sistema de numeración ette (Chimila).” Estudios de Lingüística Chibcha XXXVIII: 75–108. ———. 2020a. “An Amerindian Humanism: Order and Transformation in Chibchan Universes.” In Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica, ed. Ernst Halbmayer, 37–60. London: Routledge. ———. 2020b. “La división cósmica de las labores terrenales. Interacción entre humanos y no-humanos en los campos de cultivo ette.” Tabula Rasa 36: 45–71. ———. 2022. “El motivo del gran árbol en las tradiciones chibchas” Literatura: teoría, historia, crítica 24(2): 87–112. Orozco, Jose. 1990. Nabusïmake, tierra de arhuacos. Bogotá: Escuela Superior de Administración Pública. Ortiz R., Jesús, ed. 2005. Tratados e historias primitivas: universo arhuaco. Medellín: Ediciones Mestizas. Osborn, Ann. 2009. The Four Seasons of the U’wa. A Chibcha Ritual Ecology in the Colombian Andes. Wantage: Sean Kingston. Pardo, Mauricio, ed. 1984. Zrõarã Ne˜burã, Historia de los Antiguos. Literatura oral emberá. Bogotá: Centro Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. Parra Witte, Falk. 2020. “The Structure that Sustains Life: Nourishment and Exchange among the Kogi.” Tabula Rasa 36: 101–29. Pedersen, Daniel. 2014. “Exploring the Concept of Transcreation—Transcreation as ‘More than Translation’?” Cultus: The Journal of Intercultural Mediation and Communication 7: 50–71. Peña Ismare, Chindío, Julie Velásquez Runk, Rito Ismare Peña, and Chenier Carpio Opua. 2020. “The Wounaan haaihí jëeu nʌm Ritual with the k’ugwiu: Reinforcing Benevolence and Preventing Calamity.” In Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica, ed. Ernst Halbmayer, 234–56. London: Routledge. Pitrou, Perig. 2016. “Co-activity in Mesoamerica and in the Andes.” Journal of Anthropological Research 72(4): 465–82. Preuss, Konrad Theodor. 1921. Religion und Mythologie der Uitoto: Textaufnahmen und Beobachtungen bei einem Indianerstamm in Kolumbien Südamerika. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Rauschert, Manfred. 1967. “Materialien zur geistigen Kultur der ostkaraibischen Indianerstämme.” Anthropos 62: 165–206. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. 1945. “Mitos y cuentos de los indios chimila.” Boletín de Arqueología 1(1): 4–30. ———. 1975. “Templos kogi. Introducción al simbolismo y a la astronomía del espacio sagrado.” Revista Colombiana de Antropología 19: 199–245. ———. 1985. Los Kogi. Una tribu de la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. Nueva biblioteca colombiana de cultura 2. Bogotá: Procultura.

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———. 1987. Shamanism and Art of the Eastern Tukanoan Indians. Colombian Northwest Amazon. Iconography of Religions IX, 1. Leiden: Brill. ———. 1990. The Sacred Mountain of Colombia’s Kogi Indians. Leiden: Brill. Santos-Granero, Fernando. 2007. “Time Is Disease, Suffering, and Oblivion: Yanesha Historicity and the Struggle against Temporality.” In Time and Memory in Indigenous Amazonia: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Carlos Fausto and Michael Heckenberger, 47–73. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. ———, ed. 2009b. The Occult Life of Things: Native Amazonian Theories of Materiality and Personhood. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Schindler, Helmut. 1979. Karihona-Erzählungen aus Manacaro. Collectanea Instituti Anthropos 18. St. Augustin: Haus der Völker und Kulturen. Steinen, Karl von den. 1892. Die Bakairí-Sprache. Wörterverzeichnis, Sätze, Grammatik. Leipzig: K.F. Koehler Antiquarium. Stone, Doris. 1962. The Talamancan Tribes of Costa Rica. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol. 43, Nr. 2. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum. Sullivan, Lawrence. 1988. Icanchu’s Drum: An Orientation to Meaning in South American Religions. New York: Macmillan. Tayler, Donald. 1997. The Coming of the Sun: A Prologue to Ika Sacred Narrative. Monograph/ Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 7. Oxford: University of Oxford Press. Thomas, David John. 1982. Order Without Government: The Society of the Pemon Indians of Venezuela. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Uzendoski, Michael. 1999. “Twins and Becoming Jaguars: Verse Analysis of a Napo Quichua Myth Narrative.” Anthropological Linguistics 41(4): 431–61. ———. 2014. “Analogic Alterity: The Dialogics of Life of Amazonian Kichwa Mythology in Comparison with Tupi Guaraní (Mbyá) Creation Stories.” Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America 12(1): 28–47. Vilaça, Aparecida. 2011. “Dividuality in Amazonia: God, the Devil, and the Constitution of Personhood in Wari’ Christianity.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17(2): 243–62. Villas Bôas, Orlando, and Claudio Villas Bôas. 1993. Xingu. Quito: Abya-Yala. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo B. 2001. “GUT Feelings about Amazonia: Potential Affinity and the Construction of Sociality.” In Beyond the Visible and the Material, ed. Laura M. Rival and Neil L. Whitehead, 19–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2004. “Exchanging Perspectives: The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies.” Common Knowledge 10(3): 463–84. ———. 2012a. “Immanence and Fear: Stranger Events and Subjects in Amazonia.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2(1): 27–43. ———. 2012b. Radical Dualism: A Meta-Fantasy on the Square Root of Dual Organizations, or a Savage Homage to Lévi-Strauss. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag. ———. 2014. Cannibal Metaphysics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2016. “Along the Spider Thread: Virtuality, Actualization, and the Kinship Process in Amazonia.” In The Relative Native: Essays on Indigenous Conceptual Worlds, ed. Eduardo B. Viveiros de Castro, 97–138. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wassén, Henry. 1933. “Cuentos de los indios chocós recogidos por Erland Nordenskióld durante su expedición al Istmo de Panamá en 1927 y publicados con notas y observaciones comparativas.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 25(1): 103–37.

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———. 1935. “Notes on Southern Groups of Chocó Indians in Colombia.” Etnologiska Studier 1: 35–182. ———. 1963. “Estudios chocoes: Etnohistoria chocoana y cinco cuentos waunana apuntados en 1955.” Etnologiska Studier 26: 9–79. Wilbert, Johannes. 1974. Yupa Folktales. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Wilbert, Johannes, and Karin Simoneau, eds. 1986. Folk Literature of the Guajiro Indians, Vol.1. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center. Wissler, Clark. 1917. The American Indian: An Introduction to the Anthropology of the New World. New York: Douglas C. McMurtrie. Wright, Robin. 1998. Cosmos, Self, and History in Baniwa Religion: For Those Unborn. Austin: University of Texas Press. ———. 2013. Mysteries of the Jaguar Shamans of the Northwest Amazon. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

CHAPTER 2

The Maize Bringer’s Creative Potentials How People and Maize Coactively Ensure the Continuous Existence of Maize in the Yukpa Territory of Sokorpa, Northern Colombia ANNE GOLETZ

  

In Sokorpa, a Yukpa community in the Serranía de Perijá in Northern Colombia, storytellers narrate how Unano the maize bringer once brought maize to the Yukpa people and imparted knowledge on its cultivation, harvesting, and processing, as well as on appropriate ways of paying tribute to him. Unano, however, is important not only as part of the origin of maize and maize-related practices but also as a present-day agent whose reproductive, rewarding, and instructive potentials pervade people’s everyday lives. The activation of Unano’s creative potentials and the cooperation of people and Unano in the cultivation, harvesting, and processing procedures are essential to the persistence of maize. In this chapter, I consider the joint practices of Unano and the people in Sokorpa as constituting a creative process that ensures the continuous existence of maize. Such an understanding of the creative process is at odds with the dominant image of creativity in contemporary Western discourse (cf. Wilf 2014: 398): first, because it does not aim to create an innovative product but to recreate a vital form that already exists and requires regenerative efforts to persist; second, because it is not constituted by the mental activities of an exceptional individual but rather, by the joint activities of human and other-than-human agents. The creative process to ensure the continuous existence of maize aligns with recent anthropological understandings of creativity that eschew the polarity between continuity and innovation and, by contrast, stress human and nonhuman involvement. Such approaches build primarily on the work of Ingold and Hallam (2007) who stress the generative and relational nature of creativity. Creativity is generative since continuity in an everchanging world requires active regenerations (Ingold and Hallam 2007: 5–6; Svašek 2016: 3–6). Furthermore, creativity is relational as it does not emerge from an internal capacity of mind, but it lies in the dynamic potential of an entire field of relationships that

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may include both human and other-than-human actors (Brabec de Mori 2016: 48–50; Ingold and Hallam 2007: 7–8; Leach 2006; McLean 2009). It is this relational aspect of creativity, carried out jointly by people and by Unano, to ensure the continuous existence of maize that I focus on. To begin, I give a summarized version of a narration about the origin of maize and identify Unano’s creative potentials as introduced in the narration. Then I describe three joint activities of people and Unano, each mobilizing one of the identified creative potentials: nourishing Unano and encouraging his reproductive potential, dancing for Unano and activating his rewarding potential, and transmitting knowledge to maize specialists and thereby stimulating Unano’s and the latter’s instructive potentials. After describing each joint activity through an ethnographic vignette, I contrast it with the narration about Unano’s creative potential. The chapter thus builds on empirical material but pursues a predominantly analytical approach. Based on the analyses I will make three points: first, that the creative process to ensure the continuous existence of maize is carried out by people and the maize-producing Unano, whereas the maize’s own creative potential is just marginally involved; second, that this creative process builds on mimetic coactivity similar to what Perig Pitrou (2016) has shown for Andean and Mesoamerican agricultural and rainmaking rituals; and third, that the creative process is coordinated and synchronized not only by human ritual action but by Unano himself who plays a crucial role in generating mimetic coactivity. The chapter’s ethnographic material was collected during fieldwork in Sokorpa between 2014 and 2019. Sokorpa is one of the six Colombian Yukpa territories in the Serranía de Perijá which, including those living on the Venezuelan side, is home to approximately 17–18,000 Yukpa. The Serranía de Perijá is a northern Andean foothill in the Colombian-Venezuelan border area in the eastern part of the Isthmo-Colombian region. Today, the Yukpa are the only speakers of a Cariban language in this area. The region is dominated by Chibchan groups and contains major differences from the homeland of the Cariban-language family (Xingu River area, Guiana Shield region) and Lowland South America in general (Halbmayer 2020c; Martínez Mauri and Halbmayer 2020). The Yukpa have adopted certain characteristics of their nonCariban neighbors. Analogies with other groups in the Isthmo-Colombian region are evident in terms of the centrality of agricultural activities to ritual and shamanic practices and the tendency toward a hierarchical symbiosis between humans, deified beings, and cultivated plants, including maize (Halbmayer 2020a: 19–20; Martínez Mauri and Halbmayer 2020: 24–25).1 For the Yukpa, maize is the most valued food crop and they distinguish between their proper maize, cariaco mi(sh), and the standard maize cultivated by non-Indigenous people and also, due to the decreasing availability of maize cariaco, cultivated by

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themselves.2 The sociocultural and ritual importance concerns mainly mi(sh), introduced by Unano the maize bringer.3 The maize bringer, named Osema, Ojesma, or Mê in other Yukpa territories, has received wide attention in the ethnographic literature as culture hero (cf. Acuña Delgado 1998: 198–203; Halbmayer 1998: 247–52; Wilbert 1974: 31),4 but his role as present-day agent has so far received little consideration.5

Telling about the Origin of Maize: Unano, the Maize Bringer Storytelling is a highly creative practice, based on the individual creativity of the narrators (Münzel 1992), and the permanent adaptation of the story across place and time. In the context of this chapter, however, I focus on the story’s content rather than the (exclusively human) creativity involved in storytelling. The story is about Unano’s creative potentials, but the act of storytelling does not activate them. In Sokorpa and other Yukpa territories, storytelling is not a way of interacting with “mythical” beings, but a way of reporting on past happenings and their protagonists, such as the origin of maize and its bringer Unano (cf. Halbmayer 2016: 148–49). Nevertheless, the narrative is an important source of information as it talks about past encounters between the Yukpa and Unano, depicts Unano’s continuing creative potentials, and formulates concrete instructions on how to stimulate them. Thus, it provides a kind of manual (Lewy, Chapter 7) on how to ensure the continuous existence of maize. In the following, I present a summarized version of Enrique García Martínez’s narration from the year 2014. Unano, accompanied by the squirrel, arrived at a Yukpa community. People found him disgusting due to the corn flies in his hair and made fun of him. The next morning, maize plants had sprouted, but people found them disgusting and threw them away. Then, squash and plantain plants sprouted, but people also threw them away. Unano tried to explain to them that maize was their food, but they did not like the shoots. They treated him badly and offered him an ugly mat to sit on far away from them. Unano and the squirrel decided to leave. A man from another community recognized that Unano was their food and sent his daughter and son to meet him. Unano told them that he would leave the next day. They returned to their father who then ordered them to grab Unano and to not let him go. He himself went hunting. The man’s daughter and son explained to the other community members that Unano was their food. During the night people stayed awake in order to grab Unano when he would leave the next morning. As the people of the first community had made fun of him, Unano got ready and left, playing on his flute. The people of the second community followed him. The man’s daughter was the first to grab him.

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However, Unano did not stop and carried her and her brother with him until the squirrel convinced him to stop. Unano ordered them to throw away their gathered fruits as they gave him a headache. They went to the daughter’s community and informed the people. One person ignored Unano’s request and hid the fruits he had gathered. Here the people treated Unano well and gave him a clean mat to sit upon among them. Unano sat down and told them about his bad treatment by the other community. Since the people of the second community had grabbed him, he would stay with them. Unano got a headache and people searched for the hidden gathered fruits and threw them away. The children of the community started to cry from hunger. Unano ordered the people to bring large pots. He gave each of them three maize kernels that he plucked from his head. One person did not believe him and cooked the maize kernels in a small pot. The maize multiplied and some maize kernels fell into the hot ashes. This caused pain in Unano’s eyes. People washed the maize kernels to relieve his pain. Unano gave them the cooked maize and they liked it. The children ate a lot and at night their bellies became inflamed. Unano cured them with a calabash, and they felt better. They waited for the hunters to return and started to prepare a maize beverage. The squirrel explained how to grind and cook the maize kernels. Next morning the maize plants had sprouted. Unano told the people to dance with the maize and the squirrel gave instructions. The next day cassava, squash, and malanga plants had sprouted. The people respected the maize sprouts and did not throw them away as the first community had done. They did not make fun of Unano but grabbed and embraced him. Therefore, he explained everything to them. The man who had identified Unano returned from hunting with many peccaries. His children went to him and brought him a maize beverage. He liked it a lot. Unano wanted to eat the peccary meat raw, but people convinced him to wait until it was cooked. Unano ate broth and lots of meat, as he was addicted to meat. He taught them to eat the first crops of the harvest always with meat. Unano announced that he would leave them. They complained. Before his departure he wanted to teach them how to prepare maize beer, to make maize buns, shout and dance with the maize buns, put them in a big calabash and close it. He told them to drink in a good manner. Next morning, they opened the big calabash and served maize beer to those who had grabbed Unano. They drank almost two days until they were drunk. A man from the first community arrived and drank maize beer. Unano noticed this and the people of the second community made that man leave. After having explained everything, Unano got ready to leave. He argued that he would be a danger to the people. When he trembled, the people fell. Unano announced that if in the future they would feel him trembling, they should respect [dance with] him. People complained but he explained that since they

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had grabbed him, he would stay with them as maize. He said that they would feed on [maize], malanga, yucca, pigeon pea, and beans and told them to drink the fermented maize in a good manner. He left as he was a danger to them and would have made them sink in the ground. Unano announced that he would come to visit and if they would dance, he would leave maize kernels; if not, he would pick them up and take them away. Before leaving he asked them to dance, and they danced. Then he left and said that the squirrel would stay and always bother their crops. Unano left but is still walking far away and when he gets close, the earth trembles and people dance like he told them to do. Unano’s Creative Potentials The storyteller García Martínez introduced Unano with three creative potentials: an instructive, a reproductive, and a rewarding or punishing potential. His instructive potential is associated with the protagonist of the narration, the anthropo-maize-morphic maize bringer who was met with disgust in the first community and recognized as food only by the second community. He gave maize and instructed them how to sow, harvest, cook, eat, prepare and drink maize beverage and beer, and dance with the maize. When departing as an anthropo-maize-morphic maize bringer, he promised to stay with them as maize and visit them occasionally as earthquake. Unano’s reproductive potential is based on the equation of the maize bringer and the maize. The maize bringer’s eyes were like maize kernels and his head was like a maize cob with corn silk and corn flies flying around. When instructing the people how to handle maize, he alternatively spoke in the first and third person: for example, “If you sow me [as maize kernels] . . .”, and “Cook it [the maize cobs]!”. As the maize bringer was maize, the giving of maize represented an extraction from his body. Other versions state that he shrank by pulling out maize from his head. Likewise, the extraction of maize led to the reproduction of maize: maize kernels multiplicated when Unano ordered the people to cook them. In other versions maize plants sprouted wherever he walked, urinated, or defecated and maize beverage was discharged by his body when people bathed him. Unano’s punishing potential is associated with his manifestation as an earthquake and points to the conditional nature of the continuous existence of maize. Depending on people’s dancing and their observance of the maize bringer’s rules, Unano would leave or take away maize kernels when visiting as an earthquake: “If you turn me around [dance with me as maize], I [as earthquake] will make toh, leaving you [maize kernels] . . . If you do not turn me around, I will pick up [the maize kernels that you have sown] and I will take them away.” I now turn to three practices that are not about Unano, but they involve him as agent and mobilize his creative potentials. I show how the practice of nour-

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ishment addresses Unano’s or, by analogy, the maize’s reproductive potential, the practice of rain dancing his rewarding or punishing potential and the practice of oneiric knowledge transmission his instructive potential. These practices show that Unano’s creative potential manifests itself not only in his promised materialization as maize and earthquake but also as a much more abstract maize-reproducing, rain-making, and knowledge-transmitting Unano, who is sometimes associated with the creator god Aponto. Following each practice, I address one of my central points: first, that the creative process to ensure the continuous existence of maize is mobilized primarily by involving people and Unano, whereas the maize’s creative potential is just marginally involved; second, that the creative process of people and Unano builds on mimetic coactivity; and third, that Unano plays a proactive role in generating mimetic coactivity.

Nourishing Unano and Reinforcing His Reproductive Potential During my stay in Sokorpa, most families consumed the first crops of the season within their immediate families but stated that they formerly celebrated the occasion in a more ritualized manner that included collective dances. Today, families that still danced at or after the harvest were an exception. Apart from the dancing, however, many people followed Unano’s instructions as presented in the narration: they usually consumed the first maize crop with a piece of hunted meat, or alternatively with fish or meat purchased in the lowlands. Thereby they followed Unano’s advice, “Listen: if you sow me [as maize kernels], you always have to bite me [as maize cob, bun, beverage, or beer] first with meat so that I will always be there for you.” Furthermore, they usually offered meat to Unano since he was, as the narration tells, addicted to meat. In the following, I give an insight into the consumption of the first maize crop and the nourishing of Unano by my host family in July 2016: My host father, his son, and his brother return from the family’s maize field. They place two big bags full of maize cobs in the kitchen. A dead eared dove hunted close to the field lies on top. Shortly thereafter, the whole family gathers in the kitchen, and we start to process the freshly harvested maize in order to produce maize beverage and buns. My host mother carefully cooks the maize on the cobs. Then we remove the grains. While the male members of the family participate in removing and grinding the maize kernels, the maize buns are shaped and wrapped in maize leaves exclusively by the female members. Meanwhile my host mother serves some of the maize cobs for immediate consumption. She also gives us a small piece of cooked dove meat. A little later the maize buns are ready, and we eat them as our dinner with rice and

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another small piece of meat. The maize beverage will be ready by the next morning.

Whereas at the consumption of the first crop, my host family and I ate maize cobs and buns and drank maize beverage—always accompanied by a small piece of the cooked eared dove—my host father also nourished Unano by placing the still uncooked dove on top of the harvested maize cobs. Thus, he mobilized Unano’s or, respectively, the maize’s reproductive potential. As in the narration, in the practice of nourishing the maize is, in a way, equated with Unano. However, the focus of the practice lies on Unano mobilizing the maize’s reproductive potential and not on the maize’s inherent creative potential. In fact, my host mother respected the maize cobs as a manifestation of Unano and cooked them carefully, so that no corn cob or kernel would fall into the hot flames or ashes. She thus avoided causing pain for Unano as it was told in the narration—someone cooked the maize kernels in a small pot, they grew larger, the pot overflowed and some kernels fell into the hot ashes, which made Unano say, “They have hurt my eyes.” She would also never roast maize, because this would also harm Unano’s eyes (cf. Acuña Delgado 1998: 47) or break a corn cob in two, as this would harm the maize bringer’s body (cf. Halbmayer 1998: 223). However, although respecting the maize as a manifestation of Unano— and Unano as their food, respectively—when consuming maize, people do not ingest the maize-bringer Unano as suggested by his instructions from the narration to “bite me” or become one with him. Rather, they eat maize as food; a food that not only serves human nutrition but also plays a central role in everyday and ritual practice of commensality (cf. Lozada, Inciarte, and MaurySintjago 2011), for example in the first harvest and important life stage rituals like the children’s dance (Halbmayer 2020b). Furthermore, my host father placed the hunted eared dove on the harvested maize cobs, both on the field and back in the house, and thereby again reproduced the equation of maize and Unano (cf. Halbmayer 2016: 167; Ruddle 1974: 89). However, it becomes clear that Unano’s creative potential goes beyond his equation with maize. With his food offering, my host father did not directly address the maize’s inherent reproductive potential, which materializes through the plants’ growth and fruit-bearing, but nourished Unano, who would, as my host father explained, in turn encourage the maize to grow and bear crops in the next season. Like in the narration, Unano is involved not only as maize but also as an independent agent, who—as Unano announced in the narration—is no longer present in his anthropo-maize-morphic form, but becomes manifest in his maize-reproducing potential. The nourishing practice reproduced the equation between Unano and maize. Nevertheless, the interaction takes place mainly between the people and Unano as actors, while the reproduction of the maize is rather the objective

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of their creative process (in which the maize itself is marginally involved as an actor). Even though a clear distinction between maize and Unano does not do justice to the strong intertwining between the two, it is analytically pertinent in that it makes us aware of the greater relevance of the relationship between people and Unano compared to that between people and maize. A preference that, as I will discuss below, is possibly due to the expansion of Unano’s sphere of responsibility beyond the reproduction of maize. The Relevance of the People-Unano Relationship over the People-Maize Relationship In her article on human-maize relationships in Amazonia, Miller (2011) shows that societies that attribute a soul and personhood to maize usually engage with the maize and its reproductive potential directly, while other societies involve a third agent—a master spirit or god—in order to interact with maize. Having noted that people in Sokorpa engage with maize through a third agent, Unano, I nevertheless want to draw attention to aspects that point to a direct interaction between people and maize. They concern the influence of women’s fertility and parental care on the reproductive potential of maize, which has also been reported for the relationship between people and cultivated plants in the Amazonian region (Heckler 2004; Miller 2011; Rival 2001). In Sokorpa, however, they have receded to the background due to sociocultural changes that favor the relationship with Unano. While my host father, brother, and uncle hunted and harvested and my younger host brothers helped with grinding the maize, it was exclusively the female family members who formed and wrapped the maize buns. People told me that ideally only non-menstruating and non-pregnant women should prepare maize buns; in the case just described, however, my host sister-in-law was busy forming maize buns while advanced in her pregnancy. The rule seemed to be more important for those maize buns meant for the making of maize beer (cf. Halbmayer 2020b: 305–6; Wavrin 1953: 263). The production of maize beer involves a fermentation process that the Arawaté, a group that stands out among the Amazonian groups for its preference of maize over manioc, link to pregnancy (Viveiros de Castro 1992: 39, 129). I cannot say whether people in Sokorpa drew a similar link in the past; what is clear, however, is that the fermentation of the beer is linked to the fertility of those who made the maize buns. In case of pregnancy or menstruation the beer was said to get cold and tasteless. This rule was not strictly observed during my fieldwork and men helped out when there were not enough women. On one occasion, a schoolteacher even visited the preparation site with his entire class and prompted the students to help in the process. He thus preferred to let his students acquire

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“cultural values” through practice rather than by following the apparently outdated rules for the handling of maize. Another aspect that was stressed by various people in Sokorpa and in the scholarly literature, is that before the sowing and harvesting of maize was women’s work and associated with women’s fertility (cf. Ruddle 1974: 85). My host father explained to me that just as women give birth to children, they also give life to maize (for the Chibchan Bribrí, see Constenla Umaña 2006: 79 and Kaviany 2020: 289–90). Today, however, in most households men do the vast majority of agricultural work including the sowing and harvesting of maize as was also the case in my host family. Only a few households observe the tradition that the dibbling of maize is done by women. Another aspect, which has been eclipsed by the shift from public, ritualized harvest feasts to the consumption within the immediate family but was mentioned by several people, concerns the dancing with a large maize bun.6 My host uncle explained that in the harvest feast people fixed big maize buns with headbands on their backs and danced with them (cf. Wilbert 1960: 128) in the same way that they dance with newborn children. Halbmayer (2020b) points to the fact that the children’s bodily transformations are phrased in vegetal terms.7 Today, the direct interaction between people and maize and the influence of female fertility and parental care on the reproductive potential of maize have become of secondary importance compared to the relationship with Unano. The harvest ritual as practiced today emphasizes the nourishment of Unano who then, in turn, makes the maize reproduce and grow. Thus, the ritual invokes a hierarchical relation between the people and Unano that is characterized by mutual dependence: the people nourish Unano, Unano makes the maize plants grow that feed the people, and the people sow and harvest the maize. The people depend on Unano for the reproduction and growth of the maize, yet Unano also depends on the people to sow and harvest the maize and to nourish him. Similar hierarchical symbioses between people, divine beings, and crops are reported from other groups in the Isthmo-Colombian region (cf. Halbmayer 2020a: 19–20; Martínez Mauri and Halbmayer 2020: 24–25). The Chibchan-speaking groups of the Sierra Nevada, for example, nourish their spiritual mothers and fathers through offerings (Arenas Gómez 2020; Parra Witte 2020). Furthermore, in several groups people are descendants of food plants or are conceptualized as seeds/plants that were sown and harvested by the gods (Halbmayer 2020c: 18–19). Although among the Yukpa, people are not conceptualized as seeds or plants of the gods, they are dependent on Unano’s benevolence. Just as people sow and harvest and thus care for their crops, he cares for people’s well-being. The analogy between seed/plants and children/people, as well as between plant cultivation and human reproduction also applies to the logics of direct engagement between people and maize as reported for many Amazonian societies (Miller 2011). However, while in the

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direct human-plant interactions the focus is primarily on the growth and yield of crops, in the hierarchical human-plant-deity constellation the focus shifts to human reproduction and well-being. This emphasis is subtle in the practice of nourishment regarding the reproduction of maize. But it will become more obvious in the practice of rain dancing described below when Unano’s creative potential is no longer associated with the reproduction of maize, but with rewarding people by ensuring their nutrition and well-being.

Dancing for Unano and Activating His Rewarding Potential People in Sokorpa sow maize twice a year, between March and April and again in July and August, just at the beginning of the rainy season. The months August and September of my first field trip in 2014 were hot and alarmingly dry. People were worried about the persistent drought and therefore organized a dance, which involved about two weeks of preparing maize beer, in order to ask Unano and the god Aponto for rain. The narration about Unano mentions neither rain nor a dance for rain, nor the god Aponto. Yet it contains concrete instructions on how to prepare maize beer as Unano told the people how to prepare maize buns—“Make maize buns first!”—and how to dance with them or respectively, with him—“So do it like this, stay awake [dancing]! Turn me around!” In the rain dance I observed how people followed Unano’s instructions as told in the narration: they made maize buns, cooked them, put them into a braided basket (instead of a calabash as in the narration), and danced with them for three nights. Afterwards they hung the basket close to the cooking place in an elderly lady’s house and waited until the buns turned moldy and the next steps for the production of the beer could be taken. Before the final consumption of the maize beer, people danced again for three nights.8 The following scene is from the second of the first three nights.9 Some people carry the basket full of maize buns. They move in circles and the other ritual participants follow them. Everybody is singing: suwarhash tusi upurh wat yishipapnasi ona wat sitokatok ku yuna wat sitokatok ku yuna wat

Just as we do [dancing], we are going to eat [maize]. Ask him [Unano], ask him [for rain]!

Sometimes they rest for a while and some ritual participants raise their voices. A tall man speaks repeatedly. He speaks to Aponto and asks him to send rain. He also speaks to the ritual participants and admonishes them to observe Aponto’s words, not to steal, not to fight, and not to covet another man’s wife. He also reminds them of Unano’s teachings, the importance of

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planting maize, organizing rituals, and making maize buns and beer. As he speaks, he holds a maize cob in his hand. Then he distributes maize kernels among the ritual participants and they, in turn, distribute them among one another. Then they start to sing and dance again. yamash rhan yuna sitokak sitokatoku otak min otaku owaya shi min otak upu min ishipash ishipatpo imana sitokatoku ona wat upurh pat onarhpi onarhpish rhano nayi wat yamash rhan karharh sitokak, sitokatoku watu wat

Please ask him [Unano]. Ask him. Look how it is, Look how the weather is [dry], look how we are [without rain]. So that we have food, ask him. Look, we are in danger, we are in danger [without rain], Please better ask for it, ask for it [rain].

Suddenly it starts to rain, thunder crashes and lightning flashes. People are happy that Unano has heeded their request.

At the rain dance people prepared maize beer and sang and danced with the maize to ask Unano and Aponto for rain, thus activating their rewarding potential while avoiding their punishing potential. In the narration, Unano’s rewarding and punishing potentials are associated with his manifestation as an earthquake, in which he announced to leave them maize kernels (as reward) if they would keep dancing regularly with the maize; if they failed to do so, he would take the maize away (as punishment). Apparently, the people in Sokorpa feared that they did not dance enough. Some people told me that, when they felt Unano approaching as an earthquake, they would immediately sow some of the kernels they had saved as seeds for the next season in their courtyard or bury them in the ground inside their house, so that Unano would not pick all of them up. In the rain dance I observed, however, Unano was not involved as an earthquake who could take away maize kernels. Rather, people performed the dance proactively for Unano who if satisfied, would reward their pleading, dancing, and singing with rain—as he finally did—or if dissatisfied, would punish them with drought. Despite the range of Unano’s manifestations the conditional quality of people’s behavior regarding the activation of either his rewarding or punishing potential remained at the core of their interaction. This conditionality is emphasized in the lyrics of the song sung by the ritual participants, “Just as we do [dancing], we are going to eat [maize]” and “Please ask him [Unano] for it [rain] . . . so that we have food”—it was ultimately confirmed by the sudden rain. Asking Unano for rain by means of dancing thus produced rain, ended the dangerous drought, and watered the fields that are, in turn, the prerequisite for food production. Unlike his visit as an earthquake,

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in the rain dance his reward and punishment did not consist in the taking or leaving of maize kernels, but in the causation of either rain or drought. The rain dance reinforces the hierarchical relationship between the people and Unano that was already pointed out with regard to the practice of nourishment. This time people do not enter into a symbiotic relationship with Unano by nourishing him and being nourished by the maize plants, but by dancing with/for Unano. The rain dance is the precondition for Unano’s visit and his staying. The dependency is clearly alluded to in the narration when Unano explained that he stayed with the second community as they danced with/for him and that he would stay in the form of maize only if they would keep dancing with/for him. Just as people need Unano to send them rain to water their fields and ensure their livelihood, Unano needs the people to dance with/for him. Dancing is the prerequisite not only for Unano’s visit but also for activating his rewarding potential that materializes in rain. Unano is responsible not only for reproducing maize but also for causing either rain or drought. Unano’s responsibility for natural forces—rain, drought, earthquake, and sometimes even lightning and thunder—emphasizes his powerfulness. It shows parallels to Mesoamerican agricultural goddesses (cf. Estrado-Belli 2006) and to divine beings in the Isthmo-Colombian region that are associated with natural forces. In Wayuu cosmology, for example, the first gods are identified with natural forces (Medina Sierra 2009), Kogi rituals address the father of the wind, Mulkalda, the father of the thunder, Kuishbangui, and the father of the rain, Ñizeldaň (Parra Witte 2018: 90), and the Ette goddess Numirinta and the father Yauu are responsible for rain (Niño Vargas 2020b: 59). Rituals for causing rain, are widely described for the Andean and Mesoamerican regions (cf. Gil García 2012; Pitrou 2016; Rösing 1996), but we also find evidence for them in the Isthmo-Colombian region. The Ette, for instance, organize feasts with fermented beverage to induce the goddess Numirinta to send rain when the rainy season is overdue. In this case it is not people’s dancing that causes the rain, but the offering of maize beer. Numirinta’s subsequent drunkenness makes her dance which causes rain for the people on earth (Niño Vargas 2007: 133; 2020b: 61).10 Similarly, in Sokorpa, people associate excessive rainfall with Unano and ritual acts must be performed to appease him. The Kogi also practice singing and dancing ceremonies and make offerings in order to nourish the spiritual fathers to ensure the continuous existence of natural phenomena like rain. The failure to nourish the father of rain may cause less rainfall and also earthquakes, epidemics, and even social violence (Parra Witte 2018: 179, 184–95). Such cataclysmic threats are also present among other groups (Niño Vargas 2020a: 53; Peña Ismare et al. 2020: 250–51) as well as in Sokorpa. Some people assume that failure to honor and dance for Unano could cause either drought or excessive rainfall and flooding (for Iroka, see

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Largo Sichaca 2016: 50). Such unfavorable weather phenomena are punishments sent by Unano for the lack of respect paid to him but also, just as among the Arawak-speaking Wayuu (Paredes Castro 2008: 36–38), for improper behavior toward fellow humans. The moral connotation of rain dancing is further strengthened by people’s association, or even identification, of the maize bringer Unano and the creator god Aponto. The latter is equated to a certain degree with the biblical god as portrayed by local missionaries and other Christian agents active in the region (Goletz 2020b).11 In the rain dance I observed, a man admonished the ritual participants not only to observe Unano’s teachings with regard to maize but also to follow Aponto’s order not to steal, fight, or covet another man’s wife, which partly overlaps with the Ten Commandments of Christian doctrine. Thus, the rain dance not only addressed Unano as maize bringer, who sends either rain or drought depending on people’s behavior toward maize, but also addressed their behavior toward their fellow humans. Although the narration does not explicitly equate Unano and Aponto, there is a parallel between Aponto’s admonishments as repeated in the rain dance and Unano’s instructions in the narration that the people must eat the maize and drink the maize beer in an orderly manner without fighting. Apart from his manifestation as rain-making maize bringer, Unano is also involved in the rain dance as maize, because people reproduce in the dance, as in the nourishment practice, the equation between Unano and maize. Thus, they followed Unano’s instructions from the narration, like “turn me around [as maize buns],” referring to the dancing with maize buns—and thus, with him. People refer to the act of dancing with the maize buns/for Unano with the verb urhma, which literally translates as “to turn around.” The same verb is used to refer to the effect that Unano has on the earth in his manifestation as an earthquake—making it turn around/tremble. This analogy suggests that by turning the maize buns in the rain dance people want to induce Unano to do the same: turn the world around/make it tremble just as he announced he would when visiting as an earthquake. Yet, in the rain dance Unano did not appear as an earthquake but rather, as a rain-making Unano: the association of people’s dancing with Unano’s trembling must be expanded to an association of people’s dancing with Unano’s visit. A further parallel between the actions of the ritual participants and Unano concerns the tall man’s distribution of maize kernels among the ritual participants. This gesture is not only an imitation of Unano’s gesture of giving maize to the Yukpa people, but it is also a demonstration of the gesture that people want Unano to perform: reward their dancing by leaving maize kernels with them. Thus, the association of people’s distribution of maize kernels with Unano’s distribution of maize kernels is expanded to Unano’s distribution of rain. These gestures—the distribution of maize (by the ritual participants) or rain (by Unano)—hint at the synchronization of the

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ritual activities and the activities of Unano similar to what Pitrou (2016) calls “mimetic coactivity,” which I will apply in the following to the rain dance and the practice of nourishing. Mimetic Coactivity: Synchronizing People’s and Unano’s Activities through Ritual Practice Perig Pitrou (2016) has proposed the term coactivity for the notion that rituals imply the creation of a shared common ground in which human and otherthan-human agents participate in a shared task. In a more specific sense, he used the notion of “mimetic coactivity” to refer to ritual techniques that seek to coordinate or even synchronize the activities of the various agents with distinct modes of existence and different potentials. This coordination and synchronization may involve different levels of action that include the ritual level, the macrocosmic natural forces-related level, and sometimes the agricultural level. In Mesoamerican and Andean agricultural and rainmaking-ritual practice, Pitrou identified “miniaturization” as the predominant technique for coordinating and synchronizing activities. By using miniature objects that represent food offerings, agrarian equipment, or natural phenomena, people perform on the ritual level what they want the other-than-human beings to perform on a macrocosmic scale. In the practices of nourishing and rain dancing performed by people in Sokorpa, the use of miniature objects does not figure prominently. Instead, people utilize body gestures, maize kernels, cobs, and buns to show Unano which activities he is expected to make on the macrocosmic level. According to Pitrou (2016: 470), sacrifices like food offerings are devices for coordinating the actions and potentials of different agents. In the context of the practice of nourishing, people in Sokorpa make a food offering to or, respectively, nourish Unano because he is able to activate the reproductive potential of maize and thus ensure a bountiful harvest. However, the desired outcome of the act of nourishment is not meant to take place immediately, but at the time of the next sowing. The practice of nourishing focuses only on joint consumption or, respectively, mutual nourishing, whereas the corresponding activities—people sow maize kernels and Unano makes the maize reproduce and grow—take place at a later time. The practice of nourishing, in other words, is not about ad hoc synchronization but about long-term coordination of the substantial and coactively performed tasks within the creative process of ensuring the continuous existence of maize. The situation is different with regard to the practice of rain dancing, which, by contrast, constitutes no regular part of agricultural activities, but is performed only when drought threatens the harvest. It aims at provoking ad hoc actions by Unano and therefore uses techniques to immediately trigger Unano’s rewarding potential that materializes in

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rain. These techniques concern bodily gestures that, according to the narration, the ritual participant’s ancestors have learned from Unano himself. When performing these gestures people want Unano to mimic them on a macrocosmic level: people turn the maize around, just as they want Unano to turn around or rather—as explained above—to visit them. In the ritual described above, when first the tall man and later everyone distributed maize kernels among their fellow ritual participants, they wanted Unano to distribute maize kernels, or rather rain, upon their fields. These were two requests that Unano complied with on that occasion. The gestures used in the rain dance thus evoke the mimetic coactivity of people and Unano, which is induced only when people feel threatened by a long drought. In that case, however, it is of essential importance for ensuring the continuous existence of maize. Interestingly, in the lyrics of the song sung during the rain dance people did not address Unano but their fellow humans, especially those who still needed to be convinced of the interdependence of the dancing ritual, Unano’s reward, and rain. With the song people urged them to ask Unano for rain: “Please better ask for it, ask for it [rain] (yamash rhan karharh sitokak sitokatoku watu wat).” The urgent tone is generated not only by the explicit reference to this interdependence, but also by the use of the words yamash that may be roughly translated as “please” and kararh that may be translated as “better” in this context. Thus, the rain dancing apparently sought to coordinate not only the activities of Unano but, by means of the song lyrics, also the activities of the ritual participants, especially those who were still skeptical. The coordination of the human ritual participants by human ritual leaders has long been in the focus of ritual analysis (e.g., Basso and Senft 2010). In his coactivity approach, Pitrou has shifted the attention to the coordination of the activities of other-than-human actors. However, one aspect that remains unattended in the human ritualfocused approach to coactivity is the proactive role of other-than-human beings in generating mimetic coactivity. In Sokorpa, it is not only the people that coordinate Unano’s and their own activities through ritual practices, but there are also practices with which Unano coordinates and synchronizes people’s and his own activities. Since this aspect plays a crucial role in the creative process of ensuring the continuous existence of maize, I will address it in terms of third practice: the oneiric transmission of knowledge to a maize specialist.

Transmitting Knowledge to Maize Specialists and Activating Their Instructive Potential During my visits to Sokorpa, Unano was not only addressed in ritual practice, but he also visited a community member in his dream. The visits had started

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some years ago. Because the man paid attention to his instructions, Unano transmitted knowledge about the cultivation, harvesting, and processing of maize. The man had thus become a maize specialist.12 The narration did not mention neither the oneiric visits nor the transmission of knowledge nor a maize specialist. But there is a striking similarity between the role of the maize bringer in the narration and the maize specialist in Sokorpa today. The following account represents a summary of the first dream encounters between Unano and the maize specialist. The first time Unano visited the future maize specialist in a dream, the latter did not recognize him but saw only an abundance of manioc and maize. When he told his father, who was also a maize specialist, about this dream his father identified Unano and said, “This is Unano (mi prhak orhan wata),” referring to him with the Yukpa term Mi (“cariaco maize”). Two years later and after an illness that Unano had imposed on the future maize specialist that was cured according to his instructions, Unano started to speak to him regularly. He transmitted knowledge to the maize specialist by instructing him how to perform the necessary steps in the cultivation, harvesting, and processing of maize. Moreover, he urged him to teach his community members—“Teach your relatives,”—as he worried that they had forgotten the rules that he had taught their ancestors. He told him for example: orhan po ikarhi mi mayatpo tisikash If you sow cariaco maize, taste it first rhano with meat. Satka carnesh tka yona tamh karhuka Put meat on top, turkey on top tamh [of the maize cobs]. When people did not follow these instructions, which sometimes happened, both Unano and the maize specialist began to suffer from headaches until the culprit acknowledged his misconduct. When a drought threatened the harvest, Unano instructed the maize specialists to ask the community to dance. At first the maize specialist went before the community with great apprehension, called the members together and began to instruct them how to ask Unano for rain and to dance with the maize buns or respectively with Unano: sitokatok ya yun sitokatok ka yun surhumatotka ka [. . .]

Ask him [Unano], ask him. Turn it [maize buns]/him [Unano] around!

And as Unano had announced in his dream visit, it started to rain.

In the oneiric transmission, Unano instructed the maize specialist how to handle the maize correctly and asked him to instruct his community members in this regard. In contrast to the ritual practices described above, it was not the people that activated Unano’s reproductive potential. Rather, Unano

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himself made use of his instructive potential, instructed the maize specialist how to handle the maize correctly and simultaneously used the maize specialist to direct the instructive potential toward his fellow community members. While in the narration Unano’s instructive potential is associated with the anthropo-maize-morphic being, in this knowledge-transmission practice it is employed by knowledge-transmitting Unano and the maize specialist in the same manner. This transmission of knowledge, which I have explored in more detail elsewhere (Goletz 2020a), is the basis for turning the specialist-to-be into a full-fledged maize specialist. Unano took the lead, but the maizespecialist-to-be also had to do his part. Here I see a parallel to the role of the second community in the narration. Just as the people in the narration recognized Unano, so too the future maize specialist had to recognize Unano in his dream in order to cause him to stay. The maize specialist was lucky that his father—like the father of the siblings in the narration who recognized the anthropo-maize-morphic maize bringer as their food source—recognized the dream-image of an abundance of maize and manioc as Unano, when he shared his dream with him. Moreover, just like the people in the narration, he had to prove to Unano that he followed his instructions. In the narration, the proof consisted of throwing away the food the Yukpa people used to gather before starting to cultivate maize, namely, wild maize, wild manioc, and wild squash. In the oneiric transmission, the proof consisted of overcoming the illness that Unano had inflicted on the maize specialist without going to doctors or into the hospital in the lowlands. Both proofs required great confidence in Unano. Such trust and the compliance with Unano’s instructions is important not only in the initial encounter but also in the continuing relationship. The maize specialist, paid attention to Unano, and, despite his apprehension had faith in Unano’s instructions, went before the community, and instructed his fellows to ask for rain and to dance. From this moment on, the maize specialist assumed a different role in the community and became Unano’s mundane representative and a mediator between him and the people. Like in the aforementioned two practices, Unano is involved in the oneiric practice in his manifestation as maize (and manioc). However, as the outlined practice shows, in this manifestation he was not immediately recognizable to the future maize specialist but only to the experienced maize specialist. This detail points to the fact that the recognition of maize as manifestation of Unano requires a certain knowledge or an established relationship between Unano and the respective person. The emphasis of the oneiric practice, as mentioned above, is on the relationship between people and Unano; a relationship that is mediated by the maize specialists. The oneiric transmission thus activates a relationship between Unano and the people in which the maize specialist is Unano’s mundane representative or the maize specialist’s “ideal embodiment and implicit role model” (Halbmayer

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1998: 24, my translation). During my fieldwork I noticed many parallels between the maize specialists and Unano as described in the narration. One parallel concerns his special treatment or special hospitality. In the narration, the required special hospitality is made particularly clear by the juxtaposition of the first and second community. Unano quickly left the first community, which offered him a dirty mat and found him and his plant shoots disgusting. Only in the second community, where people grabbed him and offered a clean mat to sit on, did he stay, distribute maize kernels, and instruct the people. Similarly, people in Sokorpa strove to give special attention and provide hospitality to the maize specialist by serving him first whenever they prepared maize buns, beverage, or beer. Some people also gave him crops or laid them to his feet when he entered their house, a gesture reminiscent of the nourishing practice of Unano. Another parallel concerns the grabbing gesture. The maize specialist told me that people sometimes grabbed him, just as the siblings grabbed Unano in the narration. He said that he was surprised at first, but then became aware that it was not him the people grabbed but actually Unano. The maize specialist was thus perceived and treated by his community members as a mundane representative of Unano, a mediator between the people and Unano, and a kind of double or successor of the maize bringer recalled in the narration. Most importantly, however, the specialist’s and Unano’s activities were coordinated and synchronized through Unano’s oneiric transmission. This notion goes beyond Pitrou’s human-induced ritual-focused understanding of coactivity. Mimetic Coactivity beyond Rituals: Coordination through Unano’s Oneiric Transmissions As I have shown in my analysis, the nourishment and the rain dancing practices align with what Pitrou (2016) has called mimetic coactivity. People coordinated their activities with those of other-than-human beings through ritual practices and employed techniques to synchronize the activities taking place at different levels—ritual, macrocosm, and agriculture. In the practice of nourishing, the ritual participants synchronized Unano’s nourishment with their own commensality. The coordination of activities that this practice aims to achieve—people sow maize and Unano activates the maize’s reproductive potential—concerned the coming season and thus made an essential long-term contribution to ensuring the continuous existence of maize. In the rain dance, by contrast, the ritual participants activated Unano’s immediate rewarding potential by coordinating ad hoc activities—people dance, Unano makes rain, and people (somewhat later) sow the maize—in order to avert the acute threat of crop failure. To achieve this goal, people used bodily gestures to synchronize Unano’s and their own ritual activities, as well as their agricultural activities.

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However, the creative process of ensuring the continuous existence of maize is not only coordinated and synchronized by people’s ritual practices, but by Unano himself. Through oneiric visits and knowledge transmission, Unano instructed the maize specialist how to sow and harvest maize and to honor him and then asked the specialist to instruct his fellow humans. When people did not follow his instructions, Unano and the maize specialist both developed headaches. These headaches represent another parallel between Unano and the maize specialist. In the narration, the maize bringer developed a headache when a man did not follow his instruction to throw away the fruits he had gathered. In the oneiric transmission, Unano and the maize specialist developed headaches when people failed to comply with the instructions—for example, when they started to harvest without nourishing Unano and without serving (and also nourishing?) the maize specialist first. The headache thus represents a central technique to coordinate and synchronize the activities between the people and Unano. Just as Unano suffered from headaches, informed the maize specialists on people’s misconduct, and then instructed him what to do, the maize specialist developed a headache, informed his fellow community members about their misconduct, and instructed them what to do. In this practice it is thus not the people who mobilized Unano to engage in activities that they are not able to do themselves—reproduce maize and make rain— but Unano who mobilized the maize specialists to perform practices that he is not able to do himself—instruct the community members. In the oneiric transmission, the frame—ritual vs. dream—and the coordinators—human vs. other-than-human agent—shifts, but the logic behind the concept of mimetic coactivity—coordinating the activities of different agents to perform a common task and using techniques to synchronize activities at different levels—remain the same. For this reason, I propose to open Pitrou’s concept of mimetic coactivity to nonritualistic practices that are performed not by human but by other-than-human agents in order to encompass creative processes that are, as in Sokorpa, mediated by human and other-than-human agents alike.

Conclusion In this chapter I have examined the creative process initiated by people in Sokorpa and Unano to ensure the continuous existence of maize. I have made three points. First, the creative process to ensure the continuous existence of maize is initiated mainly by the interaction of people and Unano, who holds a reproductive, rewarding, and instructing potential, while the maize’s own creative potential is neglected. I have shown how in the narration the anthropo-maize-morphic

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maize bringer Unano is equated with maize. This equation is reproduced in all three practices analyzed above: in the practice of nourishing Unano with corn cobs on which people placed the hunted eared dove, in the practice of rain dancing when people danced with/turned around maize buns, and the practice of knowledge transmission when the maize specialist saw an abundance of maize in his dream. However, these practices also show that Unano’s creative potentials exceed his materialization as maize and his visits as an earthquake. Unano is a complex agent whose various potentials, manifestations, and responsibilities become clear only when considering both the narrative and the practices performed by him and people. Unano is maize, and thus food, he may visit as an earthquake, and he is also a rather abstract maize-reproducing, rain-making, and knowledge-transmitting agent associated with the creator god Aponto. The expansion of his responsibilities—beyond the mere reproduction of maize—has probably led to the increasing relevance of the relationship between people and Unano as compared to the one between people and maize. The relationship with Unano is characterized by a hierarchical symbiosis between people, divine beings, and cultivated plants that is common among societies in the Isthmo-Colombian region and also shows parallels to Mesoamerican and Andean logics. Second, the creative process performed by the people and Unano is built on mimetic coactivity similar to what Pitrou (2016) has shown for Andean and Mesoamerican agricultural and rain-making rituals. By analyzing the above examples, I have shown that through the practices of nourishing and raindancing, people coordinate Unano’s and their own potentials and activities. While nourishing sustains long-term coordination as it targets the next season, the rain dance aims for ad hoc coordination in terms of preventing the destruction of the current harvest by drought. People use certain techniques to synchronize Unano’s activities with their own and perform bodily gestures that Unano is meant to imitate, thus activating mimetic coactivity on the ritual, macrocosmic, and agricultural levels. Third, the creative process is not just coordinated and synchronized by human ritual action, but also by Unano himself. By oneiric knowledge transmission to a maize specialist, Unano coordinates the latter’s activities with his own. By causing the same headaches for the maize specialist that he had suffered himself, Unano synchronizes the maize specialist’s activities with his own, requesting him to instruct his fellow community members just as he instructs the maize specialist. Thus, the maize specialist acquires to a certain degree Unano’s instructive potential. However, this happens not through the temporary appropriation of Unano’s perspective and creative potentials as has been described for Amazonia in terms of “transformational creativity” (Hill, Chapter 6; cf. Halbmayer and Goletz, Conclusion), but through the oneiric knowledge

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transmission of Unano’s creative potential to a maize specialist. This oneiric knowledge transmission guarantees that the instructions how to sow, harvest, and process maize are not just part of the “manual-like” narrative, but that the instructions how to sustain the creative process that involves the people and Unano in order to ensure the continuous existence of maize are a vivid part of people’s everyday lives.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to the official representative, Esneda Saavedra Restrepo, and all inhabitants of Sokorpa for the support of my research; especially Enrique García Martínez for sharing his narration about Unano and Diomedes de Jesús Bernal Fernández, whose Yukpa-name is Tintin, for transcribing and translating it. This chapter presents partial results of the research project “Yukpa Language and Myth in Context: On the Location of an Outsider in the Carib Language Family and the Northern Andean Lowlands,” funded by the German Research Foundation (grant HA 5957/11-1). I want to thank Natalie Wahnsiedler, Michaela Meurer, Diomedes de Jesús Bernal Fernández, Ernst Halbmayer, and the participants of the PhD colloquium of Social and Cultural Anthropology in Marburg for helpful comments and suggestions. Anne Goletz is doctoral student and research associate at the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Marburg. Currently she is part of a German-Polish research project about Indigenous graphic communication systems between Mexico and the Andes, funded by the German Research Council (DFG). Her doctoral research project focuses on communication between people in the Yukpa territory of Sokorpa in the Serranía de Perijá in northern Colombia and various other-than-human communicators.

Notes 1. The (predecessors of the) Yukpa possibly adopted the cultivation of maize when they migrated into the Isthmo-Colombian region (Wilbert and Ruddle 1975: 279) where maize had (for the Bari, see Beckerman and Lizarralde 2013; for the Kogi, see Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985: 122, 244) and has (for the Bribri, see Kaviany 2020; for the Ette, see Niño Vargas 2020b) a central nutritive and ritual importance for many Indigenous groups as well as for the non-Indigenous population (Arboleda Montoya and Rincón Marulanda 2018). 2. The Yukpa term mi(sh)—in other language variants me (Irapa) or mê (Iroka)—shows no cognate forms with Cariban, Chibchan, or Arawakan languages (cf. Loukotka 1986), but is reminiscent of Proto-Chocoan *’be for “maize” (Pache, Meira, and Grinevald 2020: 76).

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6. 7.

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In addition to the rough distinction between mi(sh) and mayishash, people differentiate between different types of cariaco maize, which vary in color (cf. Ruddle 1974: 83). However, there are families that perform rituals with the standard maize as well. In Sokorpa, Unano is the most common denomination. However, some people say that Osema, used in Irapa, or Mê, used in Iroka (in Sokorpa Mi(sh)), is his original name. See Capitán and Rojas (2003: 122–31) and Castillo Caballero (2016: 454–62) for published versions of narratives about the origin of maize from Sokorpa; and see Armato (1988), Bastidas Valecillos (2013: 102–4), Castillo Caballero (2016: 419–53), Medina and Maestros de la Comunidad Yukpa de la Sierra de Perijá (2003: 55–56), Vannini and Armato (2001: 34–37) and Wilbert (1974: 127–31) for versions from other Yukpa territories with Comunidades del Pueblo Yukpa de la Serranía de Perijá (2014–2015) standing out as a bilingual, unabridged version. See Acuña Delgado (1998: 219–21), Ruddle (1974: 88–92), Lozada et al. (2011) and Wilbert (1960: 137–38) for descriptions of the harvest feast. In Irapa, the children dance is even called katcha pisoso, the “flowering of the child” (Halbmayer 2020b: 303). The analogy between maize and children is also hinted at in García Martínez’s and other Sokorpa versions, when Unano the maize bringer addresses those people who had grabbed him as father and mother. In versions from other Yukpa territories the maize bringer is introduced as a child who is adopted into the community (cf. Wilbert 1974: 127). The Iroka version introduces two personalized characters: the master of maize, meˆ ywatpu, portrayed as anthropomorphic, and his child, meˆ (maize), equated with the maize plant (Comunidades del Pueblo Yukpa de la Serranía de Perijá 2014–2015). See Halbmayer (2020b) for a detailed description of the production of maize beer. I have presented and analyzed a shorter version of this vignette in the context of my elaboration on Yukpa specialists, or “people who know a lot.” See Goletz (2020b: 205). Niño Vargas (2007: 133) draws a parallel between maize beer or other fermented beverages and rain, which can be found among the Ette and the Uwa (Osborn 1995: 118). In 1960 the Capuchin Friars established a mission in the community of Sokorpa, which was joined and later taken over by the nuns from the Catholic order Las Lauritas. The nuns are involved in school education and organize weekly services and celebrations on Christian holidays. I use the term “maize specialist” for the sake of this chapter. The knowledge regarding maize is just one—albeit the most valued—kind of knowledge that an individual can have in order to be characterized as tuwancha, “one who knows a lot/has plenty of knowledge” (Goletz 2020b).

References Acuña Delgado, Ángel. 1998. Yu´pas. En la Frontera de la Tradición y el Cambio. Quito: Abya-Yala. Arboleda Montoya, Luz M., and María E. Rincón Marulanda. 2018. “El Maíz, el Verdadero Tesoro de el Dorado.” In Algunos Componentes Generales, Particulares y Singulares del Maíz en Colombia y México, ed. Gloria M. Hoyos Gómez, 131–72. Medellín: Universidad de Antioquia. Arenas Gómez, Jose. 2020. “Vitalidades en Flujo: De Pagar, Ofrendar y Alimentar a los Seres del Origen entre la Gente I’ku.” Tabula Rasa 36: 73–99. Armato, Javier. 1988. Lo que Cuentan los Yukpa. Maracaibo: Comisión Presidencial para el Bicentenario del Natalicio del General Rafael Urdaneta.

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Basso, Ellen B., and Gunter Senft. 2010. “Introduction.” In Ritual Communication, ed. Gunter Senft and Ellen B. Basso, 1–19. Wenner-Gren International Symposium Series. Oxford: Berg. Bastidas Valecillos, Luís. 2013. “Etnohistoria y Etnogénesis del Pueblo Yukpa.” Fermentum. Revista Venezolana de Sociología y Antropología 23(66): 85–110. Beckerman, Stephen, and Roberto Lizarralde. 2013. The Ecology of the Barí: Rainforest Horticulturalists of South America. Austin: University of Texas Press. Brabec de Mori, Bernd. 2016. “What Makes Natives Unique? Overview of Knowledge Systems among the World’s Indigenous People.” Taiwan Journal of Indigenous Studies 8: 43–61. Capitán, Juan B., and Hna. O. Rojas. 2003. “Pueblo Yukpa. Resguardo de Sokorpa Cesar.” In Simbología de lo Sagrado en Pueblos Indígenas, Vol. 1, ed. Jesús A. López Flórez, 119–44. Medellín: Centro de Estudios Étnicos. Castillo Caballero, Dionisio. 2016. Mito y Sociedad en los Yukpa. Colección Puentes en Fronteras. Madrid: Capuchinos Editorial. Comunidades del Pueblo Yukpa de la Serranía de Perijá. 2014–2015. Mé Ynetachako: La Historia del Dueño del Maíz. Rio de Letras. Territorios narrados. Bogotá: Ministerio de Educación Nacional. Constenla Umaña, Adolfo. 2006. Poesía Bribri de lo Cotidiano: 37 Cantos de Afecto, Devoción, Trabajo y Entretenimiento. San José: Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica UCR. Estrado-Belli, Francisco. 2006. “Lightning Sky, Rain, and the Maize God: The Ideology of Preclassic Maya Rulers at Cival, Peten, Guatemala.” Ancient Mesoamerica 17(1): 57–78. Gil García, Francisco M. 2012. “Lloren las Ranas, Casen las Aguas, Conténganse los Vientos. Rituales para llamar la Lluvia en el Centro y Sur Andino.” Revista Española de Antropología Americana 42(1): 145–68. Goletz, Anne. 2020a. “Recibiendo el Canto del Armadillo: Transmisión Onírica de Saberes entre un Armadillo y una Mujer sabia en Sokorpa, Territorio Yukpa al Norte de Colombia.” Tabula Rasa 36: 267–92. ———. 2020b. “Tuwancha, ‘The One Who Knows’: Specialists and Specialized Knowledge in Transhuman Communication Among the Sokorpa Yukpa of the Serranía Del Perijá, Colombia.” In Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies Between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, ed. Ernst Halbmayer, 205–33. London: Routledge. Halbmayer, Ernst. 1998. Kannibalistische Sonne, Schwiegervater Mond und die Yukpa. Frankfurt am Main: Brandes & Apsel. ———. 2016. “Weaving the World and the Origins of Life as We Know It: Notions of Growth, Fabrication and Reproduction in Yukpa Origin Myths.” Revista de Antropología 59(1): 145–79. ———, ed. 2020a. Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo-Colombian Area. London: Routledge. ———. 2020b. “Bailando Recién Nacidos, Sometiendo Enemigos, Formando Guerreros: El Baile del Niño como Fuente de Fuerza, Vitalidad, Y Resistencia Entre Los Yukpa.” Tabula Rasa 36: 293–320. Heckler, Sarah. 2004. “Tedium and Creativity: The Valorization of Manioc Cultivation and Piaroa Women.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 10(2): 241–59. Ingold, Tim, and Elizabeth Hallam. 2007. “Creativity and Cultural Improvisation: An Introduction.” In Creativity and Cultural Improvisation, ed. Elizabeth Hallam and Tim Ingold, 1–24. Association of Social Anthropologists Monographs Series 44. Oxford: Berg.

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Kaviany, Schabnam. 2020. “Plant Ontologies among the Bribri of Talamanca, Costa Rica.” In Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, ed. Ernst Halbmayer, 279– 302. London: Routledge. Largo Sichaca, Wilson. 2016. “El Saber Espiritual en Sentido Étnico—Perspectiva desde el Pueblo Yukpa en Colombia.” Facultad de Educación, Universidad Santo Tomás, Bogotá. Leach, James. 2006. “Modes of Creativity.” In Transactions and Creations: Property Debates and the Stimulus of Melanesia, ed. Eric Hirsch and Marilyn Strathern, 151–75. New York: Berghahn Books. Loukotka, Cestmir. 1986. Classification of South American Indian Languages. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lozada, Laura, Francisco Inciarte, and Eduard Maury-Sintjago. 2011. “Kuje, en la Mesa con Ojesma: La Comensalidad entre los Yukpa.” Revista de Artes y Humanidades UNICA 12(3): 96–121. Martínez Mauri, Mónica, and Ernst Halbmayer. 2020. “Ofrendas, Intercambios y otros Modos de Relación en las Socio-Cosmologías Indígenas Contemporáneas del Área IstmoColombiana.” Tabula Rasa 36: 19–44. McLean, Stuart. 2009. “Stories and Cosmogonies: Imagining Creativity beyond ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture.’” Cultural Anthropology 24(2): 213–45. Medina, Raimundo, and Maestros de la Comunidad Yukpa de la Sierra de Perijá. 2003. Relatos en la Lengua Yukpa. Maracaibo: Fundación Zumaque. Medina Sierra, Abel A. 2009. Mitología Indígena de la Guajira: Tradiciones Orales. Serie Patrimonio guajiro, Patrimonio vivo. Riohacha, Colombia: Gobernación de la Guajira. Miller, Theresa. 2011. “Maize as Material Culture? Amazonian Theories of Persons and Things.” Journal of the Anthropology Society of Oxford 2(1–2): 67–89. Münzel, Mark. 1992. “Die Kreativität einer Guaraní-Mythe.” In Mythen im Kontext. Ethnologische Perspektiven, ed. Karl-Heinz Kohl, 79–105. Frankfurt am Main: Qumran im Campus Verlag. Niño Vargas, Juan C. 2007. Ooyoriyasa: Cosmología e Interpretación Onírica entre los Ette del Norte de Colombia. Colección Prometeo. Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales-CESO, Departamento de Antropología. ———. 2020a. “An Amerindian Humanism: Order and Transformation in Chibchan Universes.” In Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies Between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, ed. Ernst Halbmayer, 37–60. London: Routledge. ———. 2020b. “La División Cósmica de las Labores Terrenales. Interacción entre Humanos y No-Humanos en los Campos de Cultivo Ette.” Tabula Rasa 36: 45–71. Osborn, Ann. 1995. Las Cuatro Estaciones: Mitología y Estructura Social entre los U’wa. Colección Bibliográfica. Antropología. Santafé de Bogotá, Colombia: Banco de la República, Museo del Oro. Pache, Matthias, Sergio Meira, and Colette Grinevald. 2020. “Languages of the Isthmo– Colombian Area and Its Southeastern Borderland: Chibchan, Chocoan, Yukpa, and Wayuunaiki.” In Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies Between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, ed. Ernst Halbmayer, 61–87. London: Routledge. Paredes Castro, Julio. 2008. Mitos de Creación. Libro al Viento. Bogotá: Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá.

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Parra Witte, Falk X. 2018. “Living the Law of Origin: The Cosmological, Ontological, Epistemological, and Ecological Framework of Kogi Environmental Politics.” PhD diss., Cambridge University. ———. 2020. “La Estructura que Sostiene la Vida: Alimento e Intercambio entre los Kogi.” Tabula Rasa 36: 101–29. Peña Ismare, Chindío, Julia Velásquez Runk, Rito Ismare Pena, and Chenier Carpio Opua. 2020. “The Wounaan Haaihí Jëeu Nʌm Ritual with the K’ugwiu: Reinforcing Benevolence and Preventing Calamity.” In Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies Between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, ed. Ernst Halbmayer, 234–56. London: Routledge. Pitrou, Perig. 2016. “Co-Activity in Mesoamerica and in the Andes.” Journal of Anthropological Research 72(4): 465–82. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo, ed. 1985. Los Kogi: Una Tribu de la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia: Tomo I. 2 vols. Bogotá: Procultura. Rival, Laura. 2001. “Seed and Clone: The Symbolic and Social Significance of Bitter Manioc Cultivation.” In Beyond the Visible and the Material: The Amerindianization of Society in the Work of Peter Rivière, ed. Laura M. Rival and Neil L. Whitehead, 57–79. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rösing, Ina. 1996. Rituales para Llamar la Lluvia: Segundo Ciclo de Ankari: Ritales colectivos de la Región Kallawaya en los Andes bolivianos. Estudios callawayas 6. Cochabamba, La Paz: Ed. Los Amigos del Libro. Ruddle, Kenneth. 1974. The Yukpa Cultivation System: A Study of Shifting Cultivation in Colombia and Venezuela. Ibero-Americana 52. Berkeley: University of California Press. Svašek, Maruška. 2016. “Introduction: Creativity and Innovation in a World of Movement.” In Creativity in Transition: Politics and Aesthetics of Cultural Production Across the Globe, ed. Maruška Svašek and Birgit Meyer, 1–32. Material Mediations 6. New York: Berghahn Books. Vannini, Marisa, and Javier Armato. 2001. El Mundo Mágico de los Yukpa. Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores Latinoamericana. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1992. From the Enemy’s Point of View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wavrin, Marquis de. 1953. Chez les Indiens en Colombia. Paris: Plon. Wilbert, Johannes. 1960. “Zur Kenntnis der Parirí.” Archiv für Völkerkunde 15: 80–153. ———. 1974. Yupa Folktales. Latin American Studies 24. Los Angeles: Latin American Center, UCLA. Wilbert, Johannes, and Kenneth Ruddle. 1975. “Prehistoric Cultural Processes and Cultivation Change in a Preliterate Society.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 100 (1/2): 272–309. Wilf, Eitan. 2014. “Semiotic Dimensions of Creativity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 43: 397–412.

CHAPTER 3

What Does It Take to Be a Singer? Ritual and Creativity among the Pume People of Venezuela SILVANA SATURNO

  

This chapter focuses on the process whereby Pume men become singers in a ritual called tõhe. The tõhe ritual has been labeled a shamanic ritual but, as I attempt to show here, it is more than that. It is a ritual practice in which men, by means of creating songs, (re)create sociability. Being able to improvise songs in this ritual entails a learning process in which dreaming experiences and the experiences of being sick—as well as the experiences of singing per se—are fundamental. According to the Pume, these experiences are pivotal for attaining knowledge and developing creative power. Through ethnographic accounts, I examine what these experiences involve as well as how Pume people’s understandings of them are shaped by their notion of personhood. I depart from the assumption that creativity is intimately related to knowledge: it is a consequence of knowledge, and it engenders knowledge. However, I do not assume that there are value-free understandings of what knowledge is: people all the time and everywhere, consciously or unconsciously, hold dear or cling to some learning experiences while discarding others. For the Pume, creativity, like knowledge, must bring pleasure. They create to find and share aesthetic pleasure. It seems that the tõhe ritual has remained pretty much the same in the last century. The experiences that allow singers to develop their creative power do not seem to break off with the past but rather they seem to make sense of present circumstances in traditional terms. The diseases that singers experience are usually a consequence of dreaming of Icˆiai—one of the creator gods. The narratives of these dreams talk of the ordeals that entail encountering him while sleeping. They are invested in the mysticism that surrounds Icˆiai and yet they tell much of the relations that Pume men currently maintain with non-Indigenous people (nive) in waking life. The accounts of these dream experiences combine an old motif with the experience of present circumstances. By presenting narratives of these experiences, I agree with Ingold and Hallam (2007: 2) in that “anthropology can best contribute to debates around cre-

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ativity by challenging—rather than reproducing—the polarity between novelty and convention, or between the innovative dynamic of the present and the traditionalism of the past.” Significantly for my understanding of the process of developing creative power among tõhe singers, Ingold and Hallam (2007: 3) propose to understand creativity as improvisation rather than as innovation. Understanding creativity as improvisation means to look at the processes by which creative actions come into being. Understanding it as innovation means, on the other hand, to focus on the products rather than the processes that lead to their creation. I understand, then, creativity as improvisation. I focus on the learning process by which singers attain ritual power and the knowledge that allows them to create.

Knowledge and Creativity The association between being knowledgeable and having the ability to create is often present in native Lowland South America. Moreover, the ability to create objects deemed beautiful is often associated with knowledgeable people. Whitten and Whitten (1993: 312), for example, explain that the Canelos Quichua of the Ecuadorian Amazon use the term Yachaj awasch (“something made by the most knowledgeable one”) to describe beautiful, well-made pottery. When describing Piro designs, Gow (2001: 115) also stresses this connection between knowledge and beauty. He notes that Piro women are very critical of other women’s paintings. He writes that “each piece is minutely scrutinized for faults and irregularities, and women trace the flow of the design with their fingers . . . . The search is for beauty, and half-measures will not do.” As he explains, old Piro women are regarded as the most skilled painters because they have learned through a lifetime of practice. In a previous article devoted to Piro designs, Gow (1999) accounts for the importance of life experiences in the development of a painter. Furthermore, he points out that designs are considered beautiful because it takes a lifetime to develop the skills to make them (1999: 230). According to Gow (2001), ideation is for the Piro a crucial part of the elaboration of painted designs. The woman must have spent a considerable amount of time imagining what she wishes to paint in order for the product to be flawless. The process that goes from ideation of a new design, to imagining it materialized in an object, to its actual elaboration becomes refined with age. Gow (2001: 115) concludes, then, that for the Piro “beauty is the product of manual art, which is the product of knowledge, which is the product of thoughtfulness, which is . . . [the] definition of their humanity.” In the case of an art form like song improvisation among the Pume, good singers are also described as knowledgeable. They have acquired knowledge

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through the experiences of dreaming, being sick, and singing. The experience of singing, in particular, allows them to improvise songs that appeal to others because they are full of beautiful imagery. However, it is important to notice that knowledgeable people are not only perceived as creative, they can also be destructive, as is the case of Pume singers who practice sorcery to inflict damage upon others. In any case, the ability of the singer to create meanings that reverberate among people is acquired through a lifetime of shared experience. Dreams, narratives, and songs are all filled with metaphors that set the grounds of a shared understanding of the world (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Unlike designs among Piro women, ideation as the action of forming mental images at will, which will then be expressed in an art form is not an important part of song improvisation. Yet, ideation is a sign of being an experienced singer. Old, experienced singers are able to have clear memories of what they have seen while singing. They can engrave their rattles with images of the creator gods and spiritual beings. Usually, young singers possess rattles that have not been engraved yet.1 Exploring forms of knowing—and memory—seems to be a good way to probe what creativity means to people in different cultural contexts. In an attempt to “locate cultural creativity,” for example, Borofsky (2001: 63) proceeds from the premise that “creativity . . . is tied to knowing.” On the one hand, he refers to implicit knowledge. Creativity, for him, emerges when unexpected circumstances surround routinized, habituated activities, demanding from people to improvise in order to deal with them. Then, he says, “creativity . . . involves going beyond the habituated” (2001: 66). On the other hand, since his analysis focuses on storytelling, explicit knowledge comes into play as the teller is able to bring to words her recollection of events. But, in storytelling, as he says, “the act of telling can be as critical as the content of the told” (2001: 67, original emphasis). A storyteller’s performance is always subject to the context in which it takes place as well as to what she is able to remember at the moment. So, although storytelling serves to illustrate how knowledge becomes explicit, it also exemplifies that even if the teller knows the story by heart, it changes slightly every time it is told. Again, there is “always a move beyond the habituated, beyond the repeated” (2001: 67). Therefore, Borofsky proposes to understand storytelling—as well as any cultural performance—as “a creative act in a certain regard.” To add yet another layer to his analysis, Borofsky (2001: 68) reminds the reader that, a “move beyond the habituated” is always subject to validation. Creativity is always subject to negotiation. The “newness” of a creation—an object, a choreography, a song—is always subject to judgment. Therefore, he says, “one is practicing one’s creativity in certain habituated, routine ways—nothing too dramatic, nothing too different” (2001: 68). But, as he concludes, this understanding of creativity concedes too much to structure that is radically

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opposed to change. In order to solve this problem, he proposes to understand creativity as a process. Friedman (2001: 48) also suggests to understand creativity by looking at the processes rather than the products. In particular, he criticizes the lack of attention that is given to the sociohistorical processes that lie underneath cultural creativity (2001: 48–49). In order to tackle this problem, he proposes “a shift of focus of research from objects of culture, to the substrate which generates such objects, be they artifacts or texts” (2001: 53). “The substrate” to which he refers is social experience: unconscious, habituated, shared experience of the world (2001: 50). Shared experience of the world is what makes it possible that certain meanings—and not others—resonate with people when, for example, music is improvised or stories are told (2001: 55). Just like Borofsky, Friedman highlights the importance of the nonreflective component in storytelling—as well as in musical improvisation (2001: 59). These practices—as any other— are creative in the sense that they are not always experienced in the same way. With every repetition, unexpected situations emerge with which a person must deal. She must improvise. Both Borofsky’s (2001) and Friedman’s (2001) reflections on creativity are focused on storytelling. Unlike them, my focus is on ritual. I find the tõhe ritual especially useful for inquiring into forms of creativity among the Pume for two reasons. One of them is ethnographic and the other one is theoretical. The ethnographic reason has to do with the fact that, in spite of a seeming lack of knowledge of mythical narratives, the Pume maintain close relationships with the mythical beings, the creators (pareapahirı˜). They constantly engage with them by praying (ñõto) or by performing the tõhe.2 It is worth mentioning that one of the characteristics of the Pume people that has struck ethnographers through time is the lack of a consistent account of the mythical past (Petrullo [1939] 1969: 110; Leeds 1960: 5; Mitrani 1973: 38). Given that the Pume are an egalitarian society (Leeds 1960, 1969), this is not surprising. What has always struck me is that the relationships they maintain with mythical beings are imbued with the kind of ebullience that characterizes social relations in spite of not having a clear-cut knowledge of these beings and their whereabouts in the mythical past. In fact, even middle-aged singers acknowledge their poor knowledge of mythical narratives. Notwithstanding, their lives are intimately connected to those of supernatural beings that inhabit the mythical past. It is as if these beings were not part of a past that is static and unchangeable. These beings are very much in the present. The theoretical reason has to do with the adequacy of the analysis of ritual action to get a glimpse into the forms of creativity that people embrace. This statement comes, of course, with an assumption, namely, that ritual is deeply connected to everyday life. As the examples in this chapter show, in the case

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of the Pume people, everyday life experiences and ritual experiences imbricate to the point that it is hard to trace a solid boundary between them. Creativity in ritual contexts emerges precisely from the tension—rather than the radical opposition—between ritual actions, their meanings, and values and everyday actions, their meanings, and values (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993: xxi). In this sense, I draw on the idea that “[if ], as anthropologists claim, [ritual] is a species of activity that deploys the poetic properties of the signs to the fullest, it should also be a fecund medium for making new meanings, new ways of knowing the world and its workings” (1993: xxi). Ritual combines the type of habituated action (Connerton 1989) to which I have referred above with the dynamism of everyday life giving place to the creation of new meanings that are rooted in long-standing metaphors. This is particularly true if we bear in mind Townsley’s proposition that “[Yaminahua] shamanism cannot be defined by a clearly constituted discourse of beliefs, symbols or meanings. It is not a system of knowledge or facts known, but rather an ensemble of techniques for knowing. It is not constituted discourse but a way of constituting one” (1993: 452). This premise is especially suitable to understand the tõhe ritual. Singing in this ritual is a technique to attain shamanic knowledge. Tõhe singers are in the process of becoming shamans. That does not necessarily mean, though, that they will become shamans someday. That being the case, for the rest of this chapter I will refer to them as “singers.”

The Tõhe Ritual The tõhe is the most important ritual for the Pume people and it seems to have remained pretty much unaltered over the last century (Petrullo [1939] 1969; Leeds 1960; Mitrani 1973, 1975, [1988] 2011; Orobitg 1994, 1998, 2001).3 Nowadays, as it seems to have been in the past century, this ritual is frequently performed. In the Pume community of Boca Tronador,4 two days hardly go by without it being performed. This ritual is often intended to heal a person, however, sometimes it is performed without the explicit intention of restoring the health of someone other than the main singer. Both Leeds (1960: 7) and Orobitg (2001: 224) have pointed out that the high frequency with which this ritual is performed shows how central it is to the social life of the Pume people. Leeds (1960: 7) describes it as “the foremost way of reinforcing social relations and communal values.” And, Orobitg states that “during the tõhe not only sick people are healed but also conflicts, problems and everyday issues are solved” (2001: 224, my translation). Over the course of a night, a leading singer (tõheŋoame) improvises verses that convey the conversations he holds with spiritual beings (tio). As he sings,

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the participants—women, men, and children—sing backup, repeating what the main singer has sang. He is accompanied by other singers who, sitting to his right, alternate with him taking turns as the lead singer. By means of a communication technology consisting of a set of cords (cˆerekaı˜) that only singers can see, spiritual beings come to this realm (daecˆiri) placing themselves above the singers. The cˆerekaı˜ (cˆere- gold, money; -kaı˜, cord) connects the realm of the spiritual beings and the dead to the realm of the living. It is through this set of cords that the voices of spiritual beings are transmitted to the singer. It is connected to his mouth enabling the tio to place their own words there. It is also through it that the tio are able to drink manioc beer and smoke tobacco directly out of the mouth of the singer. It is through the cˆerekaı˜, then, that communication and commensality between human and spiritual beings is possible. As said before, the tõhe ritual is often not explicitly intended to heal a person. Sometimes, it is performed in order to reanimate a singer. When singers have not performed a tõhe for a while, they start feeling downhearted: “goederı˜kheakede”5 (“I am feeling spiritless”), they usually say. This emotional state could be better translated as “discouragement.” It is characterized by a combination of tiredness, scarce interest or motivation to work in the garden, longing for relatives that are away or have already died, and/or trouble sleeping. Icˆiai—the trickster-creator-god—is associated with these feelings of despair among singers. The relationship that exists between Icˆiai and singers is always explained in terms of debt and payment: Icˆiai punishes a singer because he has not sung in a while. Thus, the singer must sing to pay him with his song. In principle, any man could become a leading singer and, once they have reached adulthood, most men participate as singers in the tõhe. It is individual experience, however, what marks their different paths. Some men become more experienced in the art of improvising songs, so they can lead a ritual, while others remain as accompanists to the main singer throughout their lifetime. Experienced singers are recognized by people in their and other communities not only because they are good healers but also because their performances are enjoyable. There are diverse opinions of what it means to be a good singer. It is widely accepted, however, that those singers who have gone through multiple experiences of being sick, those who have dreamed a lot, and have often sung in the tõhe are the most experienced ones. They are referred to as habecˆiahudi6 (masc. sing.). The use of this term is, nevertheless, not restricted to describe singers. It is an adjective that people use to refer to those who are highly skilled in any activity: garden cultivation, bead work, weaving, and so on. When a person is described as habecˆiahudi (masc.) or habecˆiahini (fem.) it literally means that this person is characterized by being light. Figuratively, this word is used to describe a person who can perform an activity with a skill such that she

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seems to not stumble, so to speak. The creative process just flows, smoothly. As already said, this word is not only used to refer to singers whose performances show mastery but also to people whose ways of weaving or making beadwork, for example, look seamless. In these cases, not only the product seems seamless but also the creative process itself. When talking about singing, a man described as habecˆiahudi is regarded as exceptionally wise, a powerful healer, and an amusing singer. The experiences through which singers attain knowledge—dreaming, being sick, and singing—involve a temporary secession of their human condition. To fully understand this, it is necessary to grasp what it means to be a person for the Pume. I will return to this further on when I describe the experiences of dreaming and illness. But, before that, I would like to talk about Icˆiai and his relationship to singers. In order to do so, I draw on my own ethnographic material as well as previous ethnographies and the oral narratives that make up the volume Folk Literature of the Yaruro Indians edited by Johannes Wilbert and Karin Simoneau (1990).

Icˆiai—the Trickster Icˆiai is the typical trickster. A trickster is popularly known as a mythological character that plays mischievous games that end up teaching a lesson on social values. He, usually male, is “at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator . . . possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet through his actions all values come into being” (Radin 1956: xxiii). A trickster is generally perceived as a shapeless character that can disguise as any animal or anthropomorphic entity as he pleases. The Pume people say that it is Icˆiai who teaches men to sing. Just like the well-defined archetype of the trickster, he is neither good nor bad but both. He does not have a defined form and, as the Winnebago trickster described by Radin (1956: 136), he possesses a strong sexual appetite and is unable to fall in love. According to the Pume, children with any kind of physical or psychological anomaly are a product of his strong sexual drive. He incites men and women to every sort of sexual misconduct. And, yet, he punishes infidelity and promiscuity. He likes to gossip but he condemns it. However, rather than being prone to make jokes like the North American trickster, Icˆiai rejoices in punishing people. Like other South American tricksters (Basso 1987; Hill 2002), in some mythical stories, he is portrayed as having an inclination to deceive others. An example of this is the Pume’s explanation for the existence of mosquitoes. As the story goes, the capybara was entrusted with the task to take as far as possible a vessel containing all the mosquitoes there were. Icˆiai deceived him into

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open the vessel, causing not only the mosquitoes to disperse but also forcing the capybara to live in the water to avoid being bitten by the mosquitoes. Icˆiai created the world along with the other two creator gods: Kumañi and Poana. They are referred as pareapadirõ (pareapa-7 root form of the verb “to create,” -dirõ, pl. masc.). Kumañi is represented as a woman and her relationship to Icˆiai is far more clearly delineated than the one that exists between Icˆiai and Poana (“the big snake”). In the narratives edited by Wilbert and Simoneau (1990: 42–46), Kumañi and Icˆiai are sometimes depicted as brother and sister, but other times Icˆiai seems to be Kumañi’s nephew. When they created the world, Kumañi expected it to be for the enjoyment of the Pume but her intentions were always thwarted by Icˆiai. She wanted women to get pregnant in their thumbs, to have painless deliveries and their children to be able to walk right away after birth. But, Icˆiai opposed all of that so today women carry their babies in their wombs, they have to feel pain when giving birth, and children are able to start walking when are older than one year. She created the humans to be able to spin and to build houses just by looking at the materials. And, she also wanted them to obtain food and eat without going through the trouble of cultivation, hunting, or cooking: “Kumañi said: ‘People will be able to find edible things and they will be able to find and eat food right away.’ Ichaí was against this: ‘No, let them first work the soil and then they can eat what they raise.’ He challenged his aunt on every point. Otherwise we would never be hungry; just sighting a bird would make it fall to the ground, because that is what Kumañí had said. However, Ichaí did not like this. ‘If they want to eat, let men go out and hunt the whole day’” (Wilbert and Simoneau 1990: 45). Finally, she wanted them to live quietly, free of suffering and diseases and to be somehow immortal: “When she said: ‘After people die, they can come to life,’ Ichaí replied: ‘No, let them remain dead for good, rather than come back to life again’” (1990: 45). According to the Pume, Icˆiai does not have a fixed appearance. People say that he looks different every time because he can disguise himself as he wishes. In the ethnographic record most of the time he is represented as a man but in some accounts, he is depicted as a jaguar. Vicenzo Petrullo ([1939] 1969)— the first ethnographer to carry out fieldwork among the Pume—describes Icˆiai as a jaguar and insists that, unlike Kumañi, he lacks human traits (Petrullo [1939] 1969: 120). Although Icˆiai is represented as a jaguar in the mythical narratives collected by Petrullo (1939] 1969: 112–15), further on he says that Icˆiai does not possess a defined form ([1939] 1969: 136). Moreover, when he is recounting the arrival of different supernatural beings during the performance of the tõhe he describes Icˆiai as a person. He relates that the main singer portrays him as man riding “a horse, wearing shoes, hat, etc.” (Petrullo [1939] 1969: 134).

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Around twenty years later, Leeds (1960: 4) describes him as a “boy given to troublemaking” and associates the jaguar to a spiritual entity who, under the guidance of Kumañi, is responsible for healing sick people. In 1966, Father Dino J. Grossa published a short article in which he describes Icˆiai as a spiritual entity “that chases the Indians, punishes them and kills them” (1966: 73, my translation). However, he does not present any details on his appearance. In the 1970s, Mitrani notes that his interlocutors showed hesitation in talking about Icˆiai. He attributes such reluctance to “the opposite feelings that this divinity is likely to cause among the Yaruro” (Mitrani 1973: 49, my translation). He describes Icˆiai as “an ambiguous character that the Yaruro consider sometimes hostile, sometimes favorable to men” (Mitrani 1973: 49, my translation). Like Petrullo, Mitrani (1973: 40, 48) describes Icˆiai as a jaguar. According to him, people told him that he was a primordial god who created the water and who taught them how to fish and hunt. Likewise, according to him, Icˆiai is the authority to whom the spirits of nature (yarukha)—always described as harmful—obey. More recently, Orobitg (2001: 223) has pointed out that the Pume people with whom she worked, associated Icˆiai to a type of disease that involves the loss of the pumetho—spiritual body or vital essence. When the pumetho is kidnapped by Icˆiai, she indicates, it abandons the body of the person. The only way to heal a person suffering from this type of ailment is by finding a singer who is able to rescue her pumetho. She depicts Icˆiai as a supernatural being at once responsible for encouraging and punishing sexual misconduct among young men. The punishments inflicted by Icˆiai in the form of a dream/disease experience mark the coming-of-age of Pume men. Such punishments typically imply the separation of the pumetho from the ikhara (body). The only way to heal the person is by reestablishing the bond between these two parts. It is only after recovering from his first dream/disease experience, when a man is able to sing in a tõhe ritual, accompanying other singers (Orobitg 2001: 227; see also Orobitg 2016). Subsequent encounters with Icˆiai and the consequent processes of falling ill and healing improve a singer’s abilities to heal himself and to heal others. Today, people describe Icˆiai as a primordial being who was able to bring himself to life by means of his own willpower. He and Kumañi are said to have the ability to transform—to create or to destroy—bodies and matter just by looking at them. People say that they are both omniscient and have the ability to watch everything people do without being seen. In dreams, however, they become palpable, and people are able to interact with them. Icˆiai is particularly infamous for promoting unpleasant dream experiences and diseases. Dreaming of Icˆiai is very common among male adolescents and it usually is interpreted as a symptom of uncontrollable libidinal energy. Singing in the tõhe ritual for the

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first time is the only way to overcome this phase. Once young men have been initiated as tõhe singers, they are considered adult men and they should marry. Icˆiai is perceived as an ambiguous character—both physically and morally—who promotes unavoidable painful experiences that are fundamental for the development of a singer. When people are explicitly asked whether Icˆiai is bueno (“good”) or malo (“evil”), they look confused and answer “neither of them.” In Pume mae˜, they always describe him as cˆhaıˆde (“heavy”). In response to the question “does Icˆiai look like a jaguar?” people look puzzled, and they normally answer that he does not have a defined shape. However, it seems that, more often than not, he shows up in dreams looking like a nive (nonIndigenous person). The image of a jaguar is however, always engraved by experienced singers on the surface of their rattles—along with an anthropomorphic figure (Kumañi) and a big snake with feet (Poana). This jaguar is called tio pare˜me (santo tigre, “holy tiger”). He often appears in accounts of primordial times as Kumañi’s son. From these narratives, it is plausible to believe that in primordial times spirit-like humans—or human-like spirits—(tio Pume) were like jaguars with human traits and sociability. Singers often dream that they are becoming jaguars because when they sing, they become spirit-like humans. Tio and singers refer to each other by using kin terms and, more importantly, they become parts of a “community of substance” (cf. Seeger, Da Matta, and Viveiros de Castro 1979: 11). They share manioc beer, tobacco, and, as I will show later, breath and “power.” I have provided so many details on the changes Icˆiai has gone through in the ethnographic record because I think it can offer insight into how the tõhe has endured yet transformed over time. It is plausible to believe that, in the past, Icˆiai was represented as a jaguar by the Pume. Icˆiai is, after all, the quintessential singer. Like singers (and the tio), he is a jaguar and a human. He is a jaguar-like, human-like, spiritual being. In a story collected by Ted L. Gragson (Wilbert and Simoneau 1990: 23–25), Icˆiai figures as a young man who is eager to learn how to sing. When he tries, though, he sings very badly. Being rejected by people, he gives an old, wrinkled man a chance to sing, who shows him how it is done. Listening to the old man, people become enthusiastic and start dancing. As the narratives in the next section show, Icˆiai is depicted today not just as any human but as a cattle rancher, a landowner. The relationship between landowners and Pume people is ambiguous. The Pume usually talk of them in good terms. They stress the fact that they can obtain salt, processed food, and soap from them in exchange for labor. However, there is also a never told story of violence. It is an open secret that landowners have threatened or killed Pume men who have hunted cows in their lands. When I have done fieldwork among the Pume, it has always been common to hear stories of this kind while they are furtively shared.

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The Pume occasionally do hunt cows, something they have done for quite some time already. All seems to indicate that during the sixteenth century, European expeditions to the northern part of the Venezuelan Llanos were equipped with livestock to feed expedition members (Armas 1974: 34). Some of this cattle remained wandering in the Llanos. During the first explorations to the southern Llanos territory in the seventeenth century, the Spanish observed that cows had come before them. As described by Petrullo ([1939] 1969: 63), Pume territory was filled with feral livestock. He observed that the Pume people had grown accustomed to hunting cows,8 therefore, they represented a major threat to cattle rancher’s interests, whose attacks had constrained their possibilities to hunt terrestrial animals of all kinds (Petrullo [1939] 1969: 65). This situation continued throughout the twentieth century (Estrada 1966: 19). The remarks made by Petrullo in 1939 are adequate to explain Pume’s current situation in which hunting cows is sporadic but common. And, threats toward the Pume people by cattle ranchers are frequent. Ambiguity characterizes the relationship the Pume have with Icˆiai as much as it characterizes their relationship with cattle ranchers. Such ambiguity materializes in debt relations and hidden fear. Icˆiai causes suffering to men but interacting with him seems to be the only way to reproduce socially. Singers, supported by the tio heal, but he has the last word when it comes to healing. He is dreadful, he is awe-inspiring, he is something else. The next section focuses on how Pume men experience their dreams about Icˆiai. It is not the purpose of this chapter to deepen into the role of the figure of the trickster in Pume’s experience of the world. However, I would like to say that, by showing how Pume men experience their interactions with the trickster creator, I expect to add to the hypothesis that, rather than being a symbol, the trickster is “a practical activity of creating a reflexive, interpreting distancing between the acting subject and the immediate situation” (Hill 2002: 73).

Dreaming and Being Sick The Pume people identify many kinds of illnesses as well as many kinds of dreams. For the purposes of this chapter, I refer only to dreams about Icˆiai and the type of disease they entail. But first, let me have a word on what, in more general terms, experiences of being sick, dreaming, and singing imply for the Pume. It is important to say that these experiences are perceived as valuable sources of knowledge (see also Orobitg 1994, 2001, 2004: 258). And, the understanding that the Pume have of them is mediated by their definition of personhood. According to the Pume people, a person (pume) is made up of two interpenetrated parts: ikhara and pumetho. The word ikhara is formed by the noun i, that means “skin,” and the adjective khara, that means “empty.” This word literally

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refers to the external surface of the body, an envelope, a husk. Pumetho refers to the internal self, the vital force. Orobitg (2004: 253) has defined pumetho as the “spiritual body or vital essence” and the ikhara as the “physical body.” However, as she points out, the ideas that the Pume have of health and disease refer to the spiritual body as much as to the physical body (Orobitg 2004: 253). Diseases, then, are treated among the Pume as simultaneously physical and spiritual ailments. Orobitg has explained this approach to disease as intimately associated with their notion of personhood: The notion that they have of personhood does not establish a clear boundary between the physical body and the vital substance. Within the Pume context, the understanding of illness, the type of care associated to it and its healing refer both to the pumethó (“spiritual body or vital substance”) and to the pume ikhara (“physical body”), to both the eventualities of the physical and “spiritual” causes. The individual (ianambo)9 is defined as the necessary union of the pumethó and the pumé ikhara, and illness as the manifestation of a disorder at the level of both the physical body and the spiritual body. This representation of disease suggests a very “embodied” conception of the person. (Orobitg 2004: 253, my translation)

Like other Amerindian societies, the Pume people understand knowledge as a mixture of skills acquired through practice and insightful understanding of the world that is attained during dreams and altered states of consciousness (Brown 1986: 735). Dreaming and being sick—as well as the experience of singing—are for the Pume people what McCallum (1996: 359) has defined for the Cashinahua people as “epistemological states”: experiences that alter “the way a body knows.” Although for lack of better terms, pumetho can be translated as spirit and ikhara as body, as said before, among the Pume the notion of personhood does not assume a radical separation between body and spirit or body and mind. Both ikhara and pumetho refer to the body. Therefore, these experiences transform the way by which a person knows. They are liminal states in which a circumstantial dissolution of the person occurs.10 As for other Amerindian societies, for the Pume people cognition and affects are deeply rooted in the body, and sociability depends on the permanent integration between body and mind (Overing and Passes 2000: 19). Therefore, experiences in which a split between pumetho and ikhara occurs are perceived as situations where a person is not considered fully human and, consequentially, unable to maintain proper social relations with other fellow humans. But, at the same time, these experiences represent a possibility to (re)learn social values and to (re)establish proper social relations. When a person is dreaming, sick, or singing, it is said that the person is not thinking (kenãde-, kenã- to think, -de- negation particle). Kenã- is the verb root that denotes conscious thinking, intended action, and planning.11 In its

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negative form, this verb express lack of consciousness and lack of intentionality. Very often people call petara (“crazy”) those who are experiencing the type of disease that involves a disunion between ikhara and pumetho. Normally, others can tell that someone is going through this because they find attributes of animals in this person. These attributions do not have much to do with appearances. Sick people do not start looking like an animal but rather they might start behaving like an animal: eating in a certain way and certain foodstuffs, walking in a certain way, scratching their skin in a certain way, and all sorts of bodily practices that involve their withdrawal from sociability. In the particular case when people dream of Icˆiai, their pumetho remains in his hands, the subject of his desires until it is rescued by a singer. When this is the case, the person may experience permanent tiredness in waking life; abrupt loss of weight; localized pain; lack of motivation to engage in sexual intercourse or to work; emotional outbursts that disrupt harmonious social life like shouting uncontrollably or running away from home and/or troubled sleep and emotionally intense dreams. Hipólito Bello, a Pume elder, describes this experience as follows: When he [Icˆiai] takes the pumetho of the sick people, he hurts them. [There] they eat something that is no food. He makes them work. He makes them shred manioc that is, in fact, zaranda.12 He hurts people who are wrongdoing. He is cˆhaıˆde [heavy]. He has a prison . . . . The prison is narrow, you cannot move, you cannot do anything. Water comes, he makes us cry there, in dodedabu.13 Everything is blue . . . there is fire but not like the one from here, he made it himself. He is cˆhaıˆde, he is insane, he hits us. He does not like the ones who make love with other women [than their wives]. It is like that, he does not like that. He is cˆhaıˆde. He likes to get women pregnant. But, when he is singing during the tõhe, he lies and says that he does not fall in love. That is how he is, he gets women pregnant and their children are handicapped . . . . When we get sick, we cannot move. When I was sick, I would imagine I was there [in Icˆiai’s land] as if I were here [in this land]. I went crazy. That is what he makes to us. He hurts us, he is cˆhaıˆde.14

As said before, the first encounter with Icˆiai in dreams marks the passage to adulthood for men (Orobitg 2016). Once men become singers, the relationship that exists between them and Icˆiai is explained in terms of debt and payment. As mentioned, Icˆiai punishes a singer when some time has passed, and he has not sung. Icˆiai knows how to write. He is said to have a notebook where he keeps track of how many times a singer has performed the tõhe. If the singer has not sang for so long, Icˆiai would start haunting him, he would show up in his dreams. During the dry season, people normally go fishing to the streams that are far away from the community. There, they establish small settlements and stay a long time. It is very common that after a couple of weeks a man along with

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his wife and children would return to the community for a few days. This man would usually come claiming that he must perform a tõhe because he is feeling discouraged. Likewise, it seems to be common that when men go to work as wage laborers in cattle ranches or plantations, they experience the need to perform a tõhe. Dregelio Romero, a singer around forty years old, recalls that, once, after some weeks working on a cattle ranch, he started feeling weak, low-spirited. He was also experiencing pain throughout his body. He decided to go back to the community and, after singing in the tõhe a couple of times, he recovered. As he recounts: Once, I was sick, I dreamed I was working. I was sowing pasture grasses. I would ask, “Why am I here?” “So, you can learn. You still have a long way to go,” he would say to me. Back then, I used to tell my dreams to the old ones. “That one is Satan himself, that one is Icˆiai, he is punishing you, he is training you,” they would tell me. I used to dream that I was not capable, that I still had a long way to go, that . . . . How could I explain to you? I do not know how to explain. [I used to think] that I still had a long way to go, that I was not going to endure his religion because he had so much power . . . [He had] so much strength that my body was always weak15.

As Dregelio’s story shows, singers normally share their dream experiences with older singers. They also do so with relatives and other people. Sometimes, singers know immediately that they are being subject of a punishment imposed by Icˆiai. In the majority of cases, however, they do not know what is happening. As a man goes through similar experiences with time, he becomes wiser. Becoming wiser means to develop acuity for future dreaming experiences. Wise people are able to help others to understand dream experiences and to heal them. They also become better singers. In order to acquire knowledge so they become good singers, men must go through multiple experiences of dreaming/diseases. This pattern, defined by an unavoidable recurrence of dream/disease experiences as a consequence of forgetting—and therefore upsetting—Icˆiai, shares striking parallelisms with the “rituals of affliction” described by Turner (1967: 9–16). By going through these experiences, singers attain knowledge that allows them to have power over the beings who have caused them suffering in the first place, in this case, Icˆiai. Although men share narratives of these experiences with their relatives, dreaming and being sick are personal, intimate ones. Singing is the way by which men transmute the power they have attained through these experiences into the (re)creation of social bonds. As an experience, singing is also explained in terms of corporeal sensations. By singing, they are able to establish relations with benevolent spiritual beings (tio) who help them to overcome Icˆiai next time he comes along.

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Singing As said before, tõhe singers perform songs that people find pleasurable. When the tio come to this realm they are said to come making beautiful sounds that only singers can hear. Like dreaming and being sick, singing involves a separation of ikhara and pumetho. As in dreaming and illness experiences, the pumetho, detached from the ikhara, is able to carry out unintended actions. Singers claim that the words they convey, whether their own or those of the tio, are not under their control.16 Since the risk that these two parts will not be able to reunite always exists, singing is perceived as a dangerous undertaking. Men usually describe their first singing experience as a rather scary one. While singing, as it is also while dreaming or being sick, the person is not thinking (kenãde-). The pumetho of singers, however, can develop intentionality with time. Experienced—usually old—singers are able to talk to Icˆiai directly and they usually can convey the words of many spiritual beings with whom they have cultivated a relationship. But this is the case of just a few. Most men do not develop this ability. They do not become habecˆiahudi. Most of them, though, remain singers throughout their lifetime. When singers perform, it is the spiritual beings who are singing through them. Pume singers explain this phenomenon in physical terms. Just as the afflictions faced by the pumetho are experienced as physical ailments, so it is for the coming of other spiritual beings to sing through singers. When the tio come to the tõhe, they place themselves over the heads of the singers who notice their presence by trembling throughout their bodies. In some cases, such a tremor is noticeable even to other participants. Once a tio is placed over a singer’s head, the singer starts singing the words that the spiritual being places into his mouth through the cˆerekaı˜. The singer’s companion—who is usually his wife—raises her right hand in which she is holding a cigar so the tio can smoke. The tremor throughout the singer’s body is called cˆurı˜.17 It becomes more and more intense urı˜ is translated by the as the words flow from a spiritual being to his mouth. C Pume into Spanish as corriente, energía, inspiración, poder—current, energy, inspiration, power. The tio are said to be made of cˆurı˜. And, in particular, singers often describe the cˆurı˜ of Icˆiai as painful. People, in general, have cˆurı˜ and it seems that one could have strong or weak cˆurı˜, a lot or a little of cˆurı˜, pleasant or unpleasant cˆurı˜. I have to admit that it took me some effort to understand this term. In an attempt to explain to me the meaning of this term a friend of mine told me: “If I saw you working hard, I would think ‘She has a lot of cˆurı˜.’” So, cˆurı˜ is pure creative power phrased in rather bodily terms. The experience of this tremor is, again, personal. In what remains, I attempt to show how, by singing, ritual power is channeled into the creation of sociability. As said in the previous section, singers normally feel the need to sing

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when they have been far from the community. Sharing songs is a way to create and reinforce social relations. Following Hill (1994, 2013), I would say that musicalization is the process by which Pume singers create a social space and “re-humanize relations of power and exchange by moving people from passive acceptance to active resistance” (Hill 1994). As a way to create sociability, singing is very much like sharing food. Like food, songs not only nurture people but also social relations. In fact, the Pume people use the same adjective—goerı˜18— to describe a good song and a good meal. During the tõhe, not only songs are shared but also tobacco and manioc beer. Spiritual beings also partake of this commensality. The tio come to this realm not only to sing, but they come so they can drink manioc beer and smoke tobacco—and, when possible, coffee and aguardiente (booze). Icˆiai is particularly fond of these substances. When singers want to heal other people, they also have to pay Icˆiai by giving him manioc beer, tobacco, and booze when available. The relatives of the sick person normally provide the tobacco and manioc beer necessary to perform the healing. When no one is sick, singers sing not only to pay Icˆiai with their song but also to share with him their own cigars and their own manioc beer. This way of creating sociability is consistent with the hypothesis on forms of sociality developed in the ethnographic literature on Native Lowland South America. In 1977, Joana Overing Kaplan noted that ethnographers working with Amazonian peoples had given an account of forms of sociality in far more idealist terms than those used by ethnographers working in Africa or other places. She stated that “if we [Amazonists] are idealists, that is so only because the Amerindian we study are also idealists in regard to the organizations of their societies” (Kaplan 1977: 9–10, qtd. in Seeger et al. 1979: 7). As a reply to Overing’s statement Seeger et al. (1979: 7) pointed out that epistemologically radically opposed approaches, those that were framed within cultural ecology, gave an account of Amazonian social phenomena in rather materialist terms, arguing that environmental conditions had limited the possibility to develop complex social systems in the region (notable for sustaining this hypothesis were Meggers 1954 and Carneiro 1961). Seeger et al. (1979: 8) criticized these approaches for giving reductionist explanations to Amazonian forms of sociality. And, they advocated for studies on Amazonian socialities aimed at developing their own models in the region inasmuch as the ethnographic material seemed not to conform to any of the models and concepts that had been developed by anthropologists working in Africa and Melanesia at the time (Seeger et al. 1979: 8, 9). After this seminal article, much research on forms of sociality in the Amazonian basin has shown how bodies are fabricated socially and how social relations materialize into complex networks of shared substances (see, for example, Conklin and Morgan 1996; Overing and Passes 2000; Santos-Granero 2012) and gifts (Santos-Granero 2012).

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In light of the above, I would like to finish with the idea that singing not only alters singers, but songs are transformative of others as well. I think this idea aligns with understandings of breath in ritual contexts in Lowland South America where people conceive “breathing and breath as expressions of life force” (Hill and Chaumeil 2011: 19), where breath is substantiated through songs or smoke as a way to create sociability and to heal others (Hill and Chaumeil 2011; see also Rahman and Brabec de Mori 2020). Sharing breath—and sharing songs—is just another way to create a “community of substance.” Likewise, the use of breath to transform bodies is manifested during the tõhe ritual through other practices. Besides singing, singers are able to blow or suck (or inhale) pain out of people’s bodies. Pain is for the Pume a symptom of excess as consequence of the presence of an object (see also Orobitg 2004). Typically, these objects are thought to have been shot by sorcerers or evil spirits—who are commanded by Icˆiai. In the majority of cases, people associate these attacks to their stinginess or their messiness. Singers who have been trained in the arts of blowing out and sucking pain are able to transmute the pain in the object that causes it by means of their own breath. They exhale tobacco smoke over the body of the affected person so that they can immediately inhale the same smoke. When they exhale through their mouth, the object that was causing the pain—normally a piece of glass or a stingray sting—comes out liberating the person from the pain.

Conclusion As Ingold and Hallam (2007: 2–3) point out “to read creativity as innovation is, if you will, to read it backwards, in terms of its results, instead of forwards, in terms of the movements that gave rise to them.” As said at the beginning of this chapter, I follow Ingold and Hallam’s invitation to understand creativity as improvisation rather than as innovation. In order to do so, I have described the process by which Pume singers acquire the knowledge they need to be able to improvise songs during the tõhe. As Pume’s understanding of personhood implies and their expression that singers are “not thinking” attests, such knowledge is implicit, embodied, habituated. This type of knowledge is acquired through a learning process that involves undergoing all sort of tribulations orchestrated by Icˆiai, one of the creator gods, in dreams. Although the tõhe seems to have endured through time, the relationships the Pume maintain with this god, the trickster, are a reflection of current relationships Pume men have with non-Indigenous people. Dreaming of Icˆiai means a cessation of the otherwise natural union of pumetho (“vital essence”) and ikhara (“body”). Icˆiai traps and punishes the

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pumetho, causing illness in waking life. This type of illness is experienced as physical ailments, emotional turmoil, and inability to maintain proper social relations. According to Pume singers, Icˆiai dictates that they have to go through countless illness experiences in order to heal and to be able to heal others. As it is for the Yagua of the Peruvian Amazon, for the Pume both the disease and its healing are seen as related parts of the same process (Chaumeil 1983: 269). Recovery, then, is never fully attained. The disappearance of symptoms and the reintegration of the diseased person to social life are often attributed to a temporary neutralization of the problem. Within this neverending cycle of falling ill and recovery, singing is the part in which singers find relief. They sing to heal themselves, to heal others, and to create sociability. Once they have attained knowledge, singers can perform beautiful songs in such a spirited way that everyone wants to sing along and dance. In this “forward reading” of creativity among the Pume, we have nothing else to do than to imagine we are listening to Dregelio as he sings: (1) cˆhiakoeã are˜khea bedobeda, bedobe (3x) (2) görecˆiakhea ŋoabeda, hirare hudiro (3x) (3) hı˜deeuiyˆo are˜khea görebömero, bömero (3x) (4) daekheabö ŋoabeda, ŋoabeda daekheabö (3x) (5) tare˜cˆhiaenoŋoake ŋoabedare (3x) (6) koahida ŋoamea ŋoemeare (3x) (7) tio pareapame (3x) (8) hãdidare tiomaio maiokhe˜ (3x) (9) haremirekheadorio daekheahe bedobö (3x) (10) pumaia kharairo, khari yˆoayˆo (3x) (1) sounds come from far away, awakening [us] (2) they [tio] bring bustle singing, they are many (3) they go above bringing amusement (4) they are standing up, singing (5) I am sitting listening, singing (6) he takes care of me, he sings, he sang (7) the creator tio (8) that is how it is, little tio (9) keep healing without a break, standing up till dawn (10) inside our bodies, here

Acknowledgments I am heavily indebted to the Pume people of Boca Tronador for their trust and friendship. I am especially grateful to Kenny Farfán and Milián Ruiz for their

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patience in helping me to translate my recordings. I thank Anne Goletz and Ernst Halbmayer for their constructive comments. I also offer my profound thanks to Jonathan Hill and David Sutton for their constant support.

Silvana Saturno is a doctoral candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Marburg. Her dissertation focuses on how the Pume people of Venezuela remember the past.

Notes 1. Unless they are married to the daughter of a highly experienced singer in which case their fathers-in-law normally give them an engraved rattle. Ritual objects like rattles and stones are inherited through matrilineality. 2. Ñõto is a form of chanted formalized speech, the tõhe is a form of sung improvised speech. 3. In the eighteenth century (sometime after 1750) missionary priest H. Augustin Vega (in Rey Fajardo 1974: 92, 93) described the Pume—or Yaruro as they were called—as exceptionally reluctant to convert to Christianity because they relied on what he called “adivinos” (clairvoyants). According to him, the Pume of this time often consulted specialists for their opinions in matters of health and disease. These specialists would perform a ritual that the missionary called cacadi. As he describes it, he is referring to a ritual called o’ara. This ritual is performed by highly experienced singers and it occasionally takes place in the context of the tõhe ritual. 4. Boca Tronador is a Pume community located on the banks of Riecito River, state of Apure, Venezuela. I was in Pume territory for the first time in 2009 while working as part of the staff of the Venezuelan Ministry of Agriculture and Lands. Later, I conducted fieldwork in the Pume community of Boca Tronador many times between 2010 and 2014. Back then, I was interested in documenting agricultural practices (Saturno and Zent 2016). In 2019, I carried out ten months of field research in this community as part of my doctoral dissertation which focuses on dreams and historical consciousness among the Pume. 5. Goe- blood, -de- negative particle, -rı˜- adjective derivational suffix, -kheakede verb ending in the first-person singular. 6. Mitrani (1973: 43) defines the term havetcha as “the one who masters . . . the song and is able to establish every time appropriate contact with the ‘gods’” (my translation). The Pume people use another word to name singers who have attained the experience necessary to heal people (shamans). In Venezuelan Spanish these people are known as piache. In Pume mae˜ a piache is known as ˆc hiaŋoame (masc. sing.). Those men who are called habecˆiahudi (masc. sing.) have reached a level of expertise such as to be highly respected men. 7. The root verb pareapa- is always used to indicate creation in primordial times. It is only used to refer to the creative power of the creator gods. This verb is not used in reference to the creations of women and men in which case the root verb pa- “to make, to do” is used. 8. In a narrative recorded by Gragson (n.d.) Kumañi is said to have a small box full of cows where they reproduce themselves ceaselessly (Wilbert and Simoneau, 1990: 83–84). 9. Orobitg has used the word ianambo to translate as “person.” As far as I could understand, this word is used to refer to human beings that although already dead may be perceived by the living.

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10. My understanding of these states of liminality draws on Victor Turner’s insights on the liminal persona. In particular, I subscribe the idea that “[T]he symbolism attached to and surrounding the liminal persona is complex and bizarre” (Turner: 1967, 96). Likewise, I find these states of liminality as configuring “a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise” (1967: 97). 11. Mitrani ([1988] 2011: 280) translates the root verb “ke˜na” as “to believe, to have faith.” 12. Calabash, Crescentia cujete L. 13. Dodedabu: do- sun; -de- negative particle; -dabu, land. Dodedabu is where Icˆiai lives. It is located in the north. 14. Interview with Hipólito Bello, Pume elder, on April 1st 2019. 15. Interview with Dregelio Romero, Pume young man, on February 25 2019 16. As explained by De Heusch ([1971] 1981), we are not dealing here with possession since in shamanic rituals spirits normally do not go as far as to control the whole body of the shaman but rather only her mouth. 17. This word is made up of the root ˆc u- and the suffix -rı˜ (adjective derivational suffix). Cu- is also the root of the word ˆc ue (temblador, electrical eel, Electrophorus electricus). This knife fish inhabits the rivers and lakes of the Orinoco basin. It is able to produce electric discharges that it uses in order to stun potential preys. 18. Goe- “blood, sweet,” -rı˜, adjective derivational suffix.

References Armas, José Antonio de. 1974. La Ganadería en Venezuela. Ensayo Histórico. Caracas: Imprenta del Congreso de la República. Basso, Ellen. 1987. In Favor of Deceit: A Study of Tricksters in an Amazonian Society. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Borofsky, Robert. 2001. “Wondering about Wutu.” In Locating Cultural Creativity, ed. John Liep, 62–70. London: Pluto Press. Brown, Michael. 1986. Tsewa’s Gift: Magic and Meaning in an Amazonian Society. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Carneiro, Robert L. 1961. “Slash-And-Burn Cultivation among the Kuikuru and Its Implications for Cultural Development in the Amazon Basin.” In The Evolution of Horticultural Systems in Native South America: Causes and Consequences, ed. Johannes Wilbert, 47–68. Caracas: Sociedad de Ciencias Naturales La Salle. Chaumeil, Jean-Pierre. 1983. Voir, Savoir, Pouvoir: Le Chamanisme chez les Yagua du Nord-Est Peruvien. Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff. 1993. “Introduction.” In Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa, ed. John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, xi–xxxvii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Conklin, Beth A., and Lynn M. Morgan. 1996. “Babies, Bodies, and the Production of Personhood in North America and a Native Amazonian Society.” Ethos 24(4): 657–94. Estrada, Hugo. 1966. La Ganadería en el Estado Apure. Sus Problemas y Perspectivas. Caracas: Oficina de Estudios y Proyectos Especiales and Consejo de Bienestar Rural. Friedman, Jonathan. 2001. “The Iron Cage of Creativity: An Exploration.” In Locating Cultural Creativity, ed. John Liep, 46–61. London: Pluto Press. Gow, Peter. 1999. “Piro Designs: Painting as Meaningful Action in an Amazonian Lived World.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5(2): 229–46.

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———. 2001. An Amazonian Myth and Its History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grossa, Dino J. 1966. “Una Visita a los Indios Yaruros de Riecito.” Boletín Indigenista Venezolano X(1–4): 67–82. Heusch, Luc de. (1971) 1981. Why Marry Her? Society and Symbolic Structures. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hill, Jonathan D. 1994. “‘Musicalizing’ the Other: Shamanistic Approaches to Ethnic-Class Competition along the Upper Rio Negro.” In Religiosidad y Resistencia Indígenas Hacia el Fin del Milenio, ed. Alicia Barabas, 105–28. Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala. ———. 2002. “‘Made from Bone’: Trickster Myths, Musicality, and Social Constructions of History in the Venezuelan Amazon.” In Myth: A New Symposium, ed. Gregory Schrempp and William Hansen, 72–88. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2013. “Instruments of Power: Musicalising the Other in Lowland South America.” Ethnomusicology Forum 22(3): 323–42. Hill, Jonathan, and Jean-Pierre Chaumeil. 2011. “Overture.” In Burst of Breath: Indigenous Ritual Wind Instruments in Lowland South America, ed. Jonathan Hill and Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, 1–46. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Ingold, Tim, and Elizabeth Hallam. 2007. “Creativity and Cultural Improvisation: An Introduction.” In Creativity and Cultural Improvisation, ed. Elizabeth Hallam and Tim Ingold, 1–24. ASA Monograph 43. Oxford: Berg Publishers. Kaplan, Joanna. 1977. “Orientation for Paper Topics.” in Social Time and Social Space in Lowland South American Societies, ed. Joanna Kaplan, 9–10. Actes du XLII Congrès International des Américanistes, vol. 2, Paris: Société des Américanistes Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leeds, Anthony. 1960. “The Ideology of Yaruro Indians in Relation to Socio-economic Organization.” Antropológica 9: 1–10. ———. 1969. “Ecological Determinants of Chieftainship among the Yaruro Indians of Venezuela.” In Environment and Cultural Behavior: Ecological Studies in Cultural Anthropology, ed. Andrew Vayda, 377–94. Garden City: Natural History Press. McCallum, Cecilia. 1996. “The Body that Knows: From Cashinahua Epistemology to a Medical Anthropology of Lowland South America.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 10(3): 347–72. Meggers, Betty J. 1954. “Environmental Limitation on the Development of Culture.” American Anthropologist 56: 801–24. Mitrani, Philippe. 1973. “Contribution a l’Éude des Formes Religieuses et Culturelles chez les Yaruro de l’Apure.” Antropológica 35: 25–67. ———. 1975. “Remarques sur l’Organisation Sociale, la Parente et l’Alliance des Yaruro de l’Apure.” Antropológica 40: 3–24. ———. (1988) 2011. “Los Pumé (Yaruro).” In Los Aborígenes de Venezuela: Etnología Contemporánea II, ed. Miguel Perera, 209–97. Edición actualizada. Caracas: Fundación La Salle. Orobitg, Gemma. 1994. “El canto que cura.” Arinsana X(15): 27–38. ———. 1998. Les Pumé et leurs Rêves. Étude d´un Groupe Indien des Plaines du Venezuela. Amsterdam: Éditions des archives contemporaines. ———. 2001. “Repensar las Nociones de Cuerpo y Persona: ¿Por qué para los Indígenas Pumé para Vivir se Debe Morir por un Rato?” Etnográfica V(2): 219–40. ———. 2004. “Cuando el ‘Cuerpo’ está Lejos. Enfermedad, Persona y Categorías de la Alteridad entre los Indígenas Pumé de Venezuela.” In Salud e Interculturalidad en América Latina.

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Perspectivas Antropológicas, ed. Gerardo Fernandez Juarez, 251–61. Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala ———. 2016. “La vie des maracas: Réflexions autour d’un Instrument Rituel chez les Indiens Pumé du Venezuela.” Revista de Antropologia 59(1): 180–201. Overing, Joanna, and Alan Passes, eds. 2000. The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native Amazonia. London: Routledge. Petrullo, Vicenzo. (1939) 1969. Los Yaruros del Rio Capanaparo-Venezuela. Caracas: Instituto de Antropología e Historia. Facultad de Humanidades. Universidad Central de Venezuela. Radin, Paul. 1956. The Trickster. New York: Schoken Books. Rahman, Elizabeth, and Bernd Brabec de Mori. 2020. “Breathing Song and Smoke: Ritual Intentionality and the Sustenance of an Interaffective Realm.” Body and Society 26(2): 130–57. Rey Fajardo, José del, ed. 1974. Documentos Jesuíticos relativos a la Historia de la Compañía de Jesus en Venezuela (II). Biblioteca de la Academia Nacional de la Historia 118. Caracas: Academia Nacional de la Historia. Santos-Granero, Fernando. 2012. “Beinghood and People-Making in Native Amazonia.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2(1): 181–211. Saturno, Silvana, and Stanford Zent. 2016. “Aspectos Etnoecológicos de la Agricultura entre los Pumé.” Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas 11(3): 653–67. Seeger, Anthony, Roberto Da Matta, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. 1979. “A Construção da Pessoa nas Sociedades Indígenas Brasileiras.” Boletim do Museu Nacional 32: 2–19. Townsley, Graham. 1993. “Song Paths: The Ways and Means of Yaminahua Shamanic Knowledge.” L’Homme 33(126–128): 449–68. Turner, Victor. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Whitten, Dorothea S., and Norman E. Whitten. 1993. “Creativity and Continuity: Communication and Clay.” In Imagery and Creativity: Ethnoaesthetics and Art World in the Americas, ed. Dorothea S. Whitten and Norman E. Whitten, 309–56. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Wilbert, Johannes, and Karin Simoneau. 1990. Folk Literature of the Yaruro Indians. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications. University of California.

Part II   

Creating and the Genres of Transmutation

CHAPTER 4

How to Charge a Voice with Power? Transmuting Nonhuman Creativity into Vocal Creations in the Western Amazon BERND BRABEC

  

Introduction Vocal creation, in the sense of a manifestation of innovation and creativity, is regarded central in many traditional and Indigenous communities. For the South American Lowlands, many academic publications have been dealing with myth-telling, poetry, song, chant, or ritual speech among a variety of Indigenous groups (see, among many others, Basso 1985; Brabec de Mori 2009, 2012, 2019; Brabec de Mori and Seeger 2013; Cesarino 2008; Hill 1992; Illius 1999; Lewy 2012; Olsen 1996; Seeger [1987] 2004; Senft and Basso 2009; Werlang 2001). Much of this work, including some of my own, is devoted to meaning, structure, and function of such utterances, as well as change occurring in times of contact, modernization, marginalization, or folklorization. In this chapter, I will almost entirely skip these aspects, because I will focus on the main technique used by the Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous people to access an essential pool of creation: the beings and places that emerge from mythological and ritual space-time. As I argued elsewhere (Brabec de Mori 2016, 2019), the traditional forms and functions of utterances can be understood as the results of creative processes, which can only be grasped by means of a set of abstract tools very different to those devoted to understanding non-Indigenous, “Western,” creative processes in art or literature. A “traditional” non-Indigenous, or naturalistic view on creativity places this process within an author’s psyche, whereas inspiration denotes outside influences on the same psyche. Creativity, as such, is then conceptualized as somebody’s ability to transform or combine inspiration into an artful output. This admittedly superficial summary of the vast literature1 on creativity and inspiration in the context of (Western) art should serve here exclusively for the purpose to very generally contrast this raw outline with what I would call an Indigenous way of innovation: to co-create vocal utterance together with nonhuman entities.

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Such entities do not “inspire the author,” instead they are actively consulted and acknowledged for being the main creators, while the human speaker or singer co-produces, reproduces, or transmits this creation to her human audience. The resulting performance, by its own right, shapes the reality of those present—the one who utters, the listeners, onlookers, or ritual participants, and the nonhuman beings involved. This shaping of realities involves the notion of control—human life would be subjected to the capriciousness of any forces present in the rainforest and riverine surroundings if not for those creative methods and techniques that reinforce and affirm humanity and human ways of life within a largely hostile environment that poses a constant threat to human form. Uncontrolled transformation of the human into the chaotic reminds of dissociation, of psychosis and death, while on the other hand, controlled transformation from chaos to order under the auspices of human form effects well-being, beauty, and health.2 The example case I am going to treat in this chapter provides an example of how episodes that may be reminiscent of psychosis are performed in a way suggesting that despite some similarities in phenomena, the professional evocation of altered states is not bound to psychotic vulnerability: the professional techniques I am going to elude can be learned by anyone who endures the training, and a certain approximation to altered states can also be achieved by nonprofessional lay people. The Indigenous concept of transformation, however, maintains that uncontrolled, accidental, or induced (by witchcraft) transformation results in dire problems, and that controlled transformation is understood as the prototypical means for healing and other forms of purposeful manipulations, like for hunting preparations, weather summons, warfare, or sorcery. Creativity, in these contexts, has to be understood as double-layered: while the vocal techniques I will describe reveal creativity by themselves, the main creative act is achieved by those nonhuman beings whose “art” is transmitted to humanity by the human ritual specialist, or even by a lay singer. In order to understand how this second-layer creativity may unfold, I understand first-layer creativity (speaking, singing, performing) as a Deleuzian abstract machine, difficult to grasp, which allows for the mobilization of another creativity— second-layer creativity localized in mythical space-time—that is thought to originate beyond the human. The whole of vocal utterances creates an entity I call an abstract machine, in the sense like a working assemblage of organs creates a body. This “body” composed of utterances engenders a becomingactive of nonhuman agencies, which in turn, instruct the human what to utter. This abstract machine can be circumscribed by the techniques developed by the Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous people to charge their voices with power.

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What Voices Are In Amazonian Indigenous thought, an essential “reality,” in the sense of a nature independent from any perception, is not assumed to exist. If any definite “reality” is conceptualized, it is conceived as a highly flexibly structured and contingent “Real World” that hides behind the appearance of things, a world beyond sensual perception. The world as sensually perceived is understood as being but the “tunic of things” (Santos-Granero 2003). In order to talk about any South American Indigenous “reality”—as conceived by Indigenous people themselves—the one who talks has to find ways how to transmit knowledge and creative faculties from a “Real World” that is located beyond sensual perception into sensually perceivable items in the “human” world. These items most often show sonic, narrated, or musical characteristics, and interspecies communication—between humans, animals, and spirits—seems largely to depend on sonic techniques, especially when the active crossing of boundaries is involved. In a previous paper, Anthony Seeger and myself suggested that the auditory domain, by its implicit properties, provides facilities for making apparent invisible beings (Brabec de Mori and Seeger 2013). Indigenous groups in the South American Lowlands use techniques we would call “musical” in a European context, for example changes of pitch register, timbre, or variation of motifs during performance, in order to let the spirits speak: what is often called music, among these groups is rather considered “the spirits’ voices” (Illius 1997: 216). Therefore, such “musical” utterances are a delicate issue and have to be performed with care. Within this music, the spirits may manifest, and so does their agency: “Although in general it is rather assumed that the bobinsana [plant]-person or the kawoká-spirit do not exist in a literal, ‘physical’ sense, they are evident as musical motifs or music-inspiring agents. They manifest themselves in sound transmission and execute agency via music performance” (Brabec de Mori and Seeger 2013: 282). Based on the same idea, Carlo Severi (2014) attempts an anthropology of thought, thereby concentrating on semiotic processes of translation and transmutation. Following the work of Jakobson (1959), the processes of transmutation Severi analyses comprise visual and sonic creations of the South American Lowland Indigenous groups Yekwana (specifically their weavings), Wayana (their painted and likewise woven iconographies), and Wayampi (their music). He explains that in the Wayampi “anaconda suite” (taken from Beaudet 1997), a sequence of instrumental flute pieces he studied: such an exceptional being as the spirit of the anaconda is described not by its acoustic appearance, but by a series of acoustic signals related to the different beings that indirectly designate its invisible presence. In both visual and

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acoustic images, the passage from verbal to iconic signs (or from one nonverbal code to another) mobilized by transmutation . . . of words in images (be they visual or acoustic) makes the presence of supernatural beings indirectly perceivable through the appearances of other beings. (Severi 2014: 59, italics in original)

Thus, a musical sequence provides the means for deploying a chain of indexes or other signs (which can be iconic, or symbolic) pointing to a series of beings related to these indexes within local auditory knowledge. All these persons, spirits, or gods execute important agency on humans and the human world, from a realm of powerful beings, the “Real World” beyond ordinary human perception, inaccessible for lay people. The transmutation Severi refers to is the “translation” of the names and roles of these beings as defined in narratives (myths) into nonverbal signs like visual art or music. These nonverbal signs provide certainty—as conceived by the people—of both the mythical beings’ existence as well as their agency of transmitting creativity. When transmutated into the visual domain, these beings become temporarily stable but still intangible. When transmutated to the sonic domain, on the other hand, they become immanently present and tangible, albeit for a limited time, by being performed.3 The vision- and tactus-centered dualism of physicality (“body,” clothes, habitus) and interiority (“soul,” mind, culture) as distinguishing features of human ontologies as proposed by Philippe Descola (2005) does not provide a defined space for sounds. Specifically sounds uttered by the voice: Do they pertain to physicality, as they are quite “exterior”? Or are they part of interiority, so closely related to thoughts, which are definitely interior? Lewy (2015, 2018), while analyzing sound utterance and knowledge transfer among the Venezuelan Pemón, suggests creating a “third space” for the auditory domain, a third entity beyond physicality and interiority. This helps to explain why the auditory domain and especially the voice is so often used for intercultural but likewise interspecies communication, and in addition, why sonic techniques including the voice escape Descola’s ontological categories (animism, naturalism, totemism, analogism): these categories are built upon the dichotomy of physicality and interiority. The voice can, consequently, be used for contact-making, alterity-creating, and creation-transmitting among, or across, these different ontologies. The way the voice is used in, for example, an animic ontology does not necessarily differ from how it is applied to work within an analogic, or even a naturalistic collective. This is why Lewy proposes an ontological approach to sonic phenomena that goes beyond and at the same time complements animism and perspectivism (Viveiros de Castro 1996), an “Indigenous sonorism” (Lewy 2017) that concentrates on the use of sonic techniques in order to communicate with, or transform into, nonhuman beings (see also Brabec de Mori 2012).

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Within the sonic domain, however, things are not uniform either. The ways of listening we can apply may be called indexical, structural, and enchanted (see Stoichiţă and Brabec de Mori 2017). Commonly, though by no means exclusively, indexical listening is employed when listening to the environment without detecting lexical or musical meaning. We tend to infer existence of an object or being from such a perception: you hear barking, for example, and infer that there is a dog around; we also tend to infer inner states of objects or beings in this way, as if by the sound of the barking we may distinguish whether the dog is happy or feels threatened. The inference of a happy dog (both its existence and its condition) from a certain sound of barking works similarly across Descola’s ontologies. Structural listening focuses on a structure beyond mere sound, and it is most often used when listening to a language one understands. One hears meaning, apparently stripped of sonic characteristics: we do not hear sounding phonemes, but pronounced morphemes and consequently, meaningful sentences. Contrarily, enchanted listening adds properties that are not present in the acoustic appearance, for example emotional or relational properties (a sad melody, two voices going in counterpoint, we hear groupings of rhythmical patterns, and so on). Therefore “enchanting” extends the sonic object within a space that is different from the space construed upon other modalities: the space where a motif “goes upwards” or a melody “runs,” or even “touches you” is a peculiar auditory space. While structural listening is definitely confined to certain codes like language4 and therefore limited to intracultural consensual understanding, indexical and enchanted listening may transcend boundaries commonly understood as “cultural” and likewise “ontological,” even boundaries between species. Although the three alternatives denote certain postures of listening, sound production and utterances can be modelled in a way that suggests to a listener to obtain one of these alternative postures. Commonly, an utterance includes the speaker’s expectation of how it will be heard by potential listeners; potential listeners include present humans, animals, microphones, and any other being thought to possibly receive the message. This results in a preference for sounds, sonic events, and utterances as modes for establishing, negotiating, and crossing interspecies boundaries, in particular by employing ways of uttering that expect enchanted listening. Voices, in an Amazonian environment not limited to humans, are therefore the perfect media for interacting across Descola’s animic, or Viveiros de Castro’s perspectivistic categories. As noted by Lewy (2012), seeing may lead to the perception of difference while hearing brings to the fore possible similarities. Not only humans have voices: so does the wind, so does the tree, the jaguar, the spirit of the dead. All of them utter and expect to be understood. Voices are the basis for creating sonic environments perceptible to a multitude of beings.

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The sonic environment is shared not only by humans but likewise by nonhumans (see also Brabec de Mori 2012; Brabec de Mori and Seeger 2013). Most nonhumans are conceived of as persons and therefore as being able to hear in a way similar to how human persons hear. Hearing is not confined by perspective. Sonic environments allow for the world to be understood as a polyphonic succession of sonic events, creating a sounding world beyond the visual boundaries erected by perspectivism and interiority/physicality-based ontologies.

What Voices Do Our built-in sonic emitter device—the voice—enables us to do things that are not restricted by an ontological conception (e.g., an animic cosmos) but that enable us to shape the sonic environment in a rather unique manner as compared to e.g., visual or olfactory “things we can do.” This doing environment enables the emitter to create and manipulate entities contained in, or attributed to, the auditory space. Auditory space sometimes overlaps with the space constructed by other sensual-cognitive means (e.g., you hear barking from your left, from behind your neighbor’s house). In other cases, these spaces may partially overlap, for example in dance, when people move their bodies “following lines” that are drawn in auditory space. The spaces may also exist independently: imagine a ritual specialist singing while sitting, scarcely moving, while his melodies you are listening to move up and down, come close, or even touch you. Voices communicate. This is a rather commonplace affirmation of a complex phenomenon. People can talk to each other in thousands of different languages and therefore understand each other or not, dependent on the mutual intelligibility of the language(s) used. Understanding, however, also depends on social intelligibility. Many academic papers, though written in English, can hardly be understood by average English speakers. Understanding likewise depends on emotional consensus, consider for example, irony, a method to make one understand things nobody said. But understanding is a prerequisite for communication. The example of irony illustrates that structural listening is often insufficient for understanding. Structural listening extracts morphological and consequently syntactic and semantic information from the sonic event. This information equals written language in many ways: “I am sure you understand perfectly” is a sentence that in its structural form is precise and conveys a quite definite content. However, it can be uttered in a way that communicates the opposite meaning to those who understand the code used in prosody (and often also in nonlinguistic signs like a gaze, for example, or certain facial or gesticulated expressions; see Gibbs and Colston 2007). In our model of listening

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modes (Stoichiţă and Brabec de Mori 2017), indexical listening does not only provide for inferring the existence of something from a hearing experience but also the inference of a state of being, including inner (emotional or other) states of persons. Semantic content structurally extracted from an utterance can communicate, but also a sonic quality like the grain of voice or prosodic elements allow for an index, a causal link to be constructed upon hearing, between this sonic quality and the (presumed) inner state of the speaking person. This is why we often have the impression that we can infer the emotional state of a talking person although she may use a language unknown to us. Some studies in cognitive sciences indicate that certain qualities of utterance in connection to emotional states are probably interpreted similarly among many, if not all, human collectives (tempo, pitch, timbre, and prosodic ambitus, see for example Balkwill and Thompson 1999; Gobl and Ní Chasaide 2003; Patel et al. 2011). Likewise, it seems that such qualities of utterance are not too different between collectives that adhere to an animic, totemic, analogic, or naturalistic ontology. Consequently, such qualities of utterance may likewise transcend the boundaries between “Real People” (in the following case the Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous people) and other “people” (like neighboring collectives, animals, certain plants, spirits, ancestors, and so on). The following case study highlights the use of certain sonic and other-than-sonic techniques and shows how a human voice can be equipped for such interspecific interaction, which in turn is required to mobilize creativity beyond the human. Most of this is nonsemantic or even nonlinguistic, as will be demonstrated. Therefore, utterances that urge for listening structurally (mostly “normal use” of language) are scarce, while utterances that suggest to be heard indexically or enchantedly abound.

Shipibo-Konibo Techniques for Charging Voices Level I: A. Speak! “To speak”: In the Shipibo-Konibo language this is glossed yoiti. The ShipiboKonibo (in the following called Shipibo) are an Indigenous people living mainly on the shores of the Ucayali River in the Peruvian lowland rainforest. They comprise an estimated 50,000 individuals, many of them dwelling in medium-size settlements (between 200 and 1,500 inhabitants) organized in a more or less traditional village community structure around a matrilocal core family; along with many families who had moved to the regional capital city Pucallpa or to the national capital Lima and adopted an urban lifestyle. They speak a language of the Pano family with some slight regional differences between the upriver people (rebokia jonibo) and those from downriver (chiponkia jonibo).5

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The term yoiti (to speak) is composed from the stem iti which means “to be, to exist” or “to do (for intransitive processes),” and the prefix yo-. Following Illius (1999: 41–42), this prefix stands for something “charged with power [energiegeladen]”: this author provides a list of words prefixed with yo-, for example yo-ina, “wild animal” (as opposed to iná, “domesticated animal”); yoshin, “demon, spirit” (from shin, “in darkness” or shin(-an) “thought, feeling”); or yo-bé (a dart magician or “shaman,” probably from bero, “eye”). Therefore, “to speak,” yo-iti can be translated literally as “a mode of being charged with power.” Illius comments on the verbs yoiti (to speak), yocati (to ask), and yonoti (to order), that “any form of verbal communication is considered a ‘socially relevant’ application of psychic energy” (1999: 42, my translation). One who speaks, heightens one’s condition of merely existing to an existence as a Real Person (jonikon), as being part of the community of those who speak the Real Language (janakon). This applies, from the Shipibo perspective, mainly to those who speak the Shipibo language. However, also non-Shipibo beings can talk, and this talk is likewise considered as yoiti, “to speak,” or yoyo iti, “to talk.”6 Speaking therefore serves as a distinction of two modes of existence: the nonpowerful living in the sense of mere existence while using one’s voice for indexical directions or communication of inner states (what many beings do), as opposed to the power-charged mode of existence when speaking. The ability to speak is attributed of course to the Shipibo people (in case they are not “demons’ children,” yoshin bake, meaning that they are born unable to speak properly or suffer any other form of severe innate disability), but also to those other people who are considered homo sapiens by naturalistic sciences. Further on, Shipibo people attribute the ability to speak to certain animals: most naturally, to parrots, but also to animals like jaguars, peccaries, tapirs, and in general to most mammals and birds, and to many spirits and other beings of the surroundings. All these, including foreign humans, are able to speak in their own language which is commonly unintelligible for Shipibo lay people.7 Therefore, speaking is the first level of charging one’s voice with power: from a mode of mere “existence,” the act of using one’s voice for speaking transports the speaker into a mode of being “charged with power.” This power is indexed by the use of the prefix yo-. In the literature, this power is often termed “shamanic power.” I refrain from using the term “shaman” in all its forms and deductions, because of its blurry associations with exoticist imaginations influenced by popular literature (see Martínez Gonzáles 2009). Here, it becomes obvious that it does not make much sense to introduce something “shamanic,” because any person is able to speak and therefore wields this power of self-enhancing one’s own mode of existence.

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Level I: B. Get drunk! Another way, seemingly based on a very different view on the human, to enhance one’s mode of existence is to get drunk. Various ethnographies from the South American Lowlands indicate that the condition of heightened conviviality during collective festivities defines a mode of being understood as ideally suited for Real Humans among Indigenous people (see e.g., Gow 2001 for the Peruvian Yine; Illius 1999 for the Shipibo-Konibo; Sarmiento Barletti 2011 for the Asháninka; or various contributions in Overing and Passes 2000). Although alcohol, in particular manioc beer or maize beer, is also considered dangerous (all aforementioned sources also tell of the dangers of emotional outbursts and sometimes bloody fights regularly occurring during festivities), it likewise fosters sociability and represents the ideal of being together among the extended family and invited people. When drunk,8 people also share food, tell jokes and are funny, sing and play, flirt and initiate relationships, thus resembling the very foundation of humanity, because relationships engender being, and talking to each other puts everybody into a “mode of existence charged with power.” The conviviality experienced during festivities is generally idealized (Overing and Passes 2000; Brabec de Mori 2015a: 159 passim), as for example also observed by Weiss for the Asháninka (“Campa”): [I]t is the intense albeit transitory institution of the masato [manioc beer] festival that we find the reigning diversion of the recreational organization. The women devote much time to the preparation of masato for these festivals, neighboring communities taking turns as host. The ideal psychic state of the River Campas is one of inebriation, and it is at such festivals that convocations of Campas achieve this ideal. (Weiss 1975: 243)

Further on, many Indigenous people hold the opinion that one cannot sing when sober. Illius writes about singers in a Shipibo community who, while rehearsing for a contest, “worried most about the possibility that at the contest in Masisea it could eventually be forbidden to drink alcohol, because all the singers are convinced that one cannot sing when sober” (Illius 1999: 233, my translation). This opinion is also valid for many practitioners of magical singing who do rituals for healing or sorcery. My research associate Armando Sánchez once told me that I could only record his curing songs during a session involving the ingestion of the hallucinogenic drink ayawaska, because he could only sing when “drunk.” Please note here, that he used the same term for being drunk from alcohol and suffering the effect of the hallucinogenic ayawaska; in Shipibo language, both conditions are called paena, “drunk,” from pae, designating fermentation. This synonym is further illustrated by Armando’s response to my question if he would then be unable to heal people when there was no ayawaska available: he said that “when there is no ayawaska, you drink tobacco

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juice, or you can also drink Agua Florida.9 If you don’t have Agua Florida either, aguardiente [distilled sugar cane liquor] is also good. If there is no aguardiente, you can still drink some gasolina [petrol]” (pers. comm. 2001, my translation). It seems fairly radical to actually drink petrol in order to get drunk (and I never witnessed that), but it highlights the importance of altering one’s condition, one’s mode of being in order to be able to sing properly. Thus, alcohol as consumed collectively at festivities or in the solitude of a curing ritual and the hallucinogenic ayawaska and other psychoactives provide the means to also heighten one’s mode of being, and therefore enable one’s voice to make more powerful utterances. The danger at festivities consists of the heightened power of insults and provocations, the procreative potential of the same events depends on the more powerful flirting and teasing among potential partners, enabled by voices of at least moderately drunk people. The curing power of the singing healer’s voice likewise seems to depend on the drunken state of the singer. Level I: C. Diet! While speaking is almost always available to those who can speak, alcohol is confined to certain events, as are ayawaska, tobacco, and other psychoactive substances, which are traditionally consumed only by healers or sorcerers during ritual. That is, the heightening of the power of the voice is temporary and passes away as the inebriated person returns to her normal, everyday state. However, there is also an (almost) permanent way to charge one’s voice—and other aspects of the human being—with power; this is called samati in Shipibo, dietar in regional Spanish, that is “to diet.” “Dieting” in this sense is applied mainly to change a condition understood as bad or inappropriate into a condition regarded good and proper: for example, an ill person may “diet” in order to be healed, a toddler should “diet” so he or she may grow well and become a proper Real Person, a hunter often “diets” in purpose of enhancing his skill, a woman lacking inspiration can “diet” in order to become creative in artwork. That said, anybody who wishes to learn and acquire knowledge and abilities “diets.” Especially for harnessing the magical arts of healing and sorcery, one has to “diet” for extensive spans of time to be successful.10 “To diet” in this context is transitive, one has to “diet something.” That is, for example, to “diet” the plant preparation iwi waste,11 means that a pregnant woman would ingest the prepared liquid a few times, usually once a day, while refraining from eating improper food, having sex, and drinking alcohol for about two weeks. The strictness of the taboos and the time required vary greatly, but the overall idea is always the same. With this procedure, a certain quality contained in (or attributed to) the applied substance is thus incorpo-

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rated by ingestion and fortified within the body by the lengthy diet: here, the quality of the ray fish—who can “give birth” to hundreds of tiny rays without any obvious suffering—is inscribed into the pregnant woman’s body. Any “diet” is actually considered a general strengthening of the “dieter’s” personal power shinan (cf. Illius 1987; LeClerc 2003). As any person in the Western Amazon probably has “dieted” at least a bit at some time, everyone possesses more or less “diet” power (samá). Commonly, healers and sorcerers have most of it, as acquiring the necessary abilities is said to be especially lengthy, difficult, and strict. But others like hunters, artists, whoever has “dieted” for quite some time, also “has some.” A general outcome of any “diet” is an enhanced power of one’s voice. Let me illustrate this with an anecdote: on a very rainy day in 2001 I travelled on a small riverboat together with a Shipibo research associate and a dozen other passengers. At this time, the regional marine forces were trying to enforce something from the government—the details escape my memory—and were therefore harassing (“controlling”), stealing from (“confiscating suspicious goods”), and even kidnapping (“protecting”) innocent people on the river. When bad luck occurred and our boat was captured and towed to a marine speedboat, my research associate started to talk to the captain (a huge, not-so-friendly looking man) in a way one would instruct a child, mixed with some troubled mother’s lamenting. She talked for a few minutes, with the captain surprisingly listening to her sermon, and then, as she instructed him to do so, he ordered his men to unfasten the boat and wished us a good journey. It was hilarious, I was staggered. Other Shipibo travelers were less surprised: “of course, she is boman koshi,” she owns the boman power (see also Brabec de Mori 2009: 132). As a renowned artist and herbalist, she had done quite a few “diets” in her lifetime and thus her voice has become so powerful to be highly manipulative and irresistible, boman. There are certain plants that boost the boman power. It is said that mainly sorcerers “diet” these “demon trees,” yoshin jiwi, because the boman skill is said to be especially important for sorcery. Anyway, any “diet” strengthens the general human mental power shinan and the voice’s power boman. Consequently, there is a continuum ranging from people who do not have boman because they did not “diet” enough, to those who wield an immense manipulative potential, mostly renowned healers and feared sorcerers (who can, by the way, be one and the same person). Level II: Sing! We should, however, not take too literally what was exposed by Armando and others: that one has to get drunk in order to sing. Singers can sing sober, both

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magical or secular songs, although they seem to generally prefer not to do so. During my own field research, many people produced songs in intimate settings when only the (most often sober) singer, my research assistant, my recording device, and myself were present, and these songs actually constitute the main body of my recorded corpus. So maybe it is more the “singing in public” which is confined to being drunk. Anyway, singing by itself means doing something with the voice that is “more” than talking. It is not entirely clear where the boundary between speech and song can be located, or whether a clear boundary can even be found or not. Anthony Seeger treated this topic in the chapter “From Speech to Song” in Why Suyá Sing ([1987] 2004: 25–51), describing a gamut of Suyá vocal genres, forms of communication showing differing grades of formalization, ranging from “normal” speech to “musical” song: “speech (kapérni), instruction (sarén), song (ngére) and invocation (sangére)” ([1987] 2004: 25). Seeger found that in ngére (song), there is a “priority of melody over text; time, text and melody [are] fixed by [a] nonhuman source” ([1987] 2004: 51, Figure 1). Notably, nonhuman entities intervene here but not in other genres. When the Suyá talk, recite, tell, or invoke, they do this among themselves, among Real People, while song extends the scope of action to nonhumans. This coincides well with what was said before: Shipibo people consider many “species” of beings capable of speaking, but this is always confined to the boundaries of intelligibility. These respective collectives understand what is said in “their language” but not what is said in a foreign tongue. However, when speech is makea, “made to sound melodically” (approximate translation, see Brabec de Mori 2015a: 432), the picture changes, and meaning becomes interspecifically intelligible, at least for specialists. Shipibo specialists do not explicitly state in public what exactly a nonhuman or spirit understands when some meaning is sung as opposed to spoken. But what can be observed is that Shipibo people usually refrain from singing in the woods, at the river shore or in a canoe because any song could attract the “owners” (ibo) of plants, animals, or rivers as well as any spirit who is near; in general, Shipibo people are reluctant to sing outside of the secure framework of festivities.12 This means that the enhancement of a spoken message with formalized prosody, rhythmicity, or a certain degree of melodization results in the possibility that the message could attract the attention of nonhuman beings, in a way spoken language does not. Therefore, these items of enhancement seem to carry an interspecifically intelligible quality, but it remains unclear how this intelligibility is created. Reversing the point of view—reversion being a popular process in ontological Indigenous studies like in perspectivism—does not explain much more either: certain animals, specifically birds are prone to sing in a way that can also confer messages to listening Shipibo. Birds of omen do this,

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but notably, rather by simple “calls” (keotai) that warn, for example, of snakebite or other looming dangers, than by complex birdsong, which also can be heard regularly, especially after rainfall. Further on, Shipibo people can hear, for example, the groaning of jaguars, the hissing of anacondas, the grunting of peccary, all of them animals that—following Shipibo concepts—possess the faculty of speech, and consequently, song. But what does an anaconda’s song sound like? Would Shipibo people be able to understand the song of an anaconda? If you pose these questions to a Shipibo person, she will most probably answer something like “I do not know, you must ask a médico,” referring to a specialist for magic and dealings with nonhumans. Therefore, the only people that perceive (and then, yes, do understand) anacondas’ or other nonhumans’ songs are magical specialists in the state of transformation. These are also apt to translate nonhuman songs into Shipibo songs (Brabec de Mori 2013; see also Gow 2001 and Seeger [1987] 2004 for other collectives). This will be the topic of the next section but let us still conclude here that the transition to formalized speech that a Westerner would understand as “music” carries the potential of extending the sphere of potential listeners to the nonhuman realms. As a

Figure 4.1. Three levels of charging one’s voice with power.

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way of charging one’s voice with power, singing (Level II) can be combined with all the aforementioned techniques (Level I): speaking (this would mean here to sing in human, that is Shipibo, language), being drunk, and finally disposing of “dietary” power. With that we can understand how singing can provide even more power to the voice of somebody who has had many years of acquiring knowledge and is currently under the influence of alcohol, tobacco juice, or ayawaska (or petrol, if you really want). Level III: Transform! The idea of transformation is paramount in Amerindian ontologies and much has been written about it. The paradigmatic reversion in perspectivism, however challenged by many scholars, explains how in a multicultural society— that is, in naturalistic ontology—people are thought to possibly transform their interiorities (as often reflected in political discourse about immigration affairs), while in an animist, multinaturalistic society people are supposed to be able to change their physicalities, which means their bodily forms. However, outside mythological narratives, dreams, and drug-induced altered perception, “evidence” of actual bodily transformations is rare, if not absent. One hundred years ago, Theodor Koch-Grünberg stated that “when the magic doctors [Zauberärzte] are drunk, they transform into jaguars without themselves taking notice. — Akū´li recounted how, during a big dancing festivity at the Roraima, he transformed into a jaguar in the dancing house, before the eyes of all people present, who fled the scene and barred up the house” (1923: 201, my translation, italics in original). He also cites another observation from Dobritzhoffer: “they [the village’s population] instantly moan, being besides themselves from fright: look! how he already gets tiger’s spots, how claws already grow out [of his body]. . . . Their fright alone makes them see things that occur nowhere” (cited in Koch-Grünberg 1923: 201, footnote, my translation). Reading these and many later accounts, one notices that most authors doubt the face-value of such transformations and conclude that they occur in the people’s imagination only. As one would expect, there are no photographic or filmed images available that would document such processes. This means, in order not to accuse our research associates of lying or of being incredibly naïve, we have to reframe the question, and shift our attention from the physical to the auditory. For example, Shipibo master healer Pascual Mahua told me that he could transform into a jaguar, insisting “nekebi!”, that is “here, in this world!” in a literal sense. His account shows surprisingly similar tropes with Koch-Grünberg’s quote: he said that one night he got up and left the house, strolling, and returning in the morning. His wife was scared and reluctantly told him that she saw how a tigre (term locally employed for the jaguar, panthera onca) left the bed and went out

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of the house. That is, like Akū´li, Pascual was unaware of his transformation. This confirms Viveiros de Castro’s perspectivism, because the jaguar persons perceived themselves as “Real People”: when Pascual was in jaguar state, he still thought he was human. But he also was scared: in case this accidental transformation occurred again, he feared that the villagers would shoot him, feeling themselves threatened by the feline. During ritual, on the other hand, specialists like Pascual train the ability to transform intentionally. Healing (and sorcery) rituals usually take place during nighttime, when darkness inhibits visual identification of the specialist’s physical shape. The healers sing, most often starting with songs in “their” voice, similar to their speaking voice, calling for the power to come, summoning spirits or other beings. When ritual transformation occurs, the voice changes, very often into a high-pitched falsetto, but also into other voice masks, for example into a low-pitched staccato phrasing performed with high diaphragmatic pressure. In any case, the transformation takes place in the sonic domain, and people (patients, kin people, visitors) who are present register the voice change and correlate it with a physical transformation of the singing specialist. They “observe” the spirits or other nonhuman beings manifesting “within,” or rather “as” the singer’s voice. By being present as voices, these beings become tangible.13 Only people with high samá (diet) power are able to achieve this. Pascual, for example, explained that virtuoso high-pitched singing (in the way he performed his magical songs) would be acquired by continuous “dieting.” Trained singers may be able to produce such virtuoso singing also when sober, but all Shipibo singers prefer to do this in an inebriate state; in cases of magically efficient singing when intoxicated by tobacco, or in most cases, ayawaska. One of the main features of powerful magical singing for healing or sorcery is translation: if the transformed healer perceives himself as a jaguar, for example, he is supposed to sing “normally” in the jaguar people’s language. However, as a ritual specialist, he manages to sing along with nonhuman beings, listening to them from within the nonhumans’ realm, but to pronounce the lyrics in human “Real Language” (janakon). This translation may also be omitted (cf. Brabec de Mori and Seeger 2013). Among the Shipibo, this omission may occur in two possible situations: first, the specialist may go “too far,” temporarily lose the connection with the human world, and therefore sing in unknown spirits’ tongues. This can be evaluated positively, when the singer is so powerful to be able to “entirely travel” to the spirits’ realm, in order to effectuate his dealings (e.g., for healing purposes) there; it can also be considered negatively, assuming that an unexperienced singer loses control of the situation, “forgetting” to translate. Second, singing in unknown tongues is often related to sorcery, because it suggests that the singer intends to obscure the meaning of his song, in order to achieve something that he wants to pass unnoticed by listeners.

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Therefore, the ideal song for magical manipulation, especially healing, is sung by a specialist who pronounces lyrics in “Real Language” (Level I, A), who is in a state of inebriation ideally with ayawaska (Level I, B), and who owns a maximum of “dietary” power, that is the boman voice (Level I, C). He performs the song in a correct way of building melodic and rhythmic patterns logically connected to skillfully designed lyrics, that is, in an intraculturally positively valued virtuoso singing style (Level II). By the virtue of his “diet” power (ani shinan, see Illius 1987), his knowledge of the “correct” songs learned from the nonhumans, and his mastering of the inebriate state, he transforms into a nonhuman being, manifest in voice masking (Level III). With that, a high-impact magical song is being performed.

Conclusion: Powerful Voices and Nonhuman Creativity There are mainly two things that shall be achieved when uttering some meaning using a voice charged with power: one is directed towards the singer and passes through himself into the subjectively perceived realm of nonhumans; the other is directed toward the world of humans (where human listeners are located), likewise trespassing this world’s boundaries and resounding in the “Real World” beyond the world known by humans. The address is in both cases not a human audience but the spirits, plant- or animal-owners, demons, or other beings situated beyond everyday experience. The singer uses song (and only “correct” singing, which requires long training and many “diets”) in order to achieve controlled transformation. Here, in a certain sense, the power of the voice is redirected towards the singer himself, recursively strengthening his multiple positionality in the shifting worlds as he transforms. The song appears to him as kano, as a path, framework, or even landscape perceived multimodally by the singer himself (considerably helped by the hallucinatory properties of the ayawaska brew, see also Brabec de Mori 2012, 2013). By changing the voice’s quality, the perceived environment changes, and thus the place where the singer is positioned changes, too. By singing in high-pitched and clean falsetto, he may find himself positioned within the realm of benevolent entities, like for example the legendary “Inka” people who own high-tech healing facilities like x-ray or blood-cleaning machines (Illius 1987, 1999; Brabec de Mori 2019) that may be put at his disposal for healing purposes. By employing a shrill and highly nasal falsetto, he may perceive himself located within a river among the spirits of the water, sirens, dolphin-people, and other nonhumans that often show qualities of sickness and madness—qualities he may also use for sorcery. He will sing for summoning and binding these entities and sending them back to where they belong in

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case the patient suffered from a related illness.14 The voice’s quality “materializes” in the perception of the singer, providing not only different environments but likewise different abilities of the singer’s respective “body”: if he sings “as an Inka,” his possibilities of manipulating his personal environment are different from these obtained when singing “as a siren.” The second reason for sounding a power-charged voice is aimed at the singer’s listeners: as indicated above, listeners—given they share the knowledge culture of traditional Shipibo—perceive the singer as yoshina, “transformed into a spirit.” Here, the employment of voice masking indicates the presence of nonhuman entities to the knowledgeable public. The changing qualities of the voice can be heard “objectively” (that is, they can easily be recorded, and comments by research associates on such recordings can be collected). They can be heard despite the invisibility of the singer in dark night, and despite the nonphysicality of the entities associated with the voice and the lyrics, and they can be heard by all people present (who can initiate discussions about these qualities). The “reality” of “physical” transformation of Indigenous specialists should be rethought against this backdrop. The singing suggests listeners to hear it in an “enchanted” way (as exposed above and in Stoichiţă and Brabec de Mori 2017). That is, the perceived sonic events are enhanced with an agency of their own and located in a space that does not, or only partially, overlap with the space the singer and listeners are situated in as perceived by other sensual modalities like vision, albeit much hindered by darkness, but also tactile and equilibrium-related sensations. Listeners can imagine by enchantedly listening to the power charged song, how an environment unfolds in auditory space with “musical” agents playing together or against each other. Thus, listeners can follow the singer’s magical actions (most perfectly if the singer does not omit translation of the text he performs, so listeners can understand the lyrics) set into motion by the song, by the resounding voice. They are aware of the criteria of power-charging and judge the effectiveness of the singing by these criteria. From what I exposed in the section on charging the voice, it seems possible to identify the entity the singer is embodying (or rather, ensounding) by listening and applying a catalogic knowledge of entities and “their” voices. However, this is usually neither possible nor pursued by listeners or singers. The voice at least identifies categories of beings. For example, I correlated two voice masks with the Inkas and water spirits, respectively. This is about the maximum of accuracy possible. It does not indicate whether a siren or a dolphin spirit is singing, and “Inka” is quite general here for “good, powerful helping spirit.” The lyrics provide additional information, and sometimes the entities in question are mentioned, named, or hinted at through metaphor and complicated codes (see Tournon 1991; Townsley 1993; Illius 1997, 1999). Commonly, however, the entities are not named in order not to blow the disguise or disclose the

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singer’s current identity. Much of healing is achieved by trickery and battles with spirits or sorcerers. This is where Severi’s transmutation comes in: hints in the lyrics as well as the sequence of voice changes and melodic sequences deploy a series of indexes that can be understood by knowledgeable persons (usually only well-trained specialists). The indexes point to places (e.g., the underwater world), sets of entities (like water spirits), interactions (attraction, seduction, battle, betrayal), and effects (healing, dispatching, cleaning, and so on). Therefore, what I called first-level creativity, the poetic mastery of language and virtuosity in “correct” singing styles is employed by the singer in order to set in motion the creativity of the entities in the nonhuman realms, the spirits, Inka, or sirens the performer “sings along with.” The series of songs performed during a ritual with changing qualities of melody, pitch, and timbre lay out a pattern, like a procession of nonhuman beings that finally allow well-trained listeners to trace—e.g., in case of a curing session—the original cause of the illness, the way the patient was affected by it, the entities summoned by the sorcerer as helpers, entities embodied by the healer in order to trick and overthrow them, and entities ordered to protect the patient or to pursue the receding original causer of the problem. The songs thus display a panopticon of nonhumans and their interactions with “Real People” as well as among themselves. This “procession” perceived through correct singing (firstlayer creativity) is the “Real” power behind the result (the complete sequence of songs performed throughout the ritual). The entities whose agency lies beyond the human can be perceived, initiated, and transmitted by the knowledgeable singer, are those who finally create (second-layer creativity) what is considered impressive, powerful, and in many senses, innovative, by Indigenous listeners. This is achieved through indirect perception: while people hear and listen, the mentioned processes enable perceptions and create certainties about creative events occurring in the “Real World” which is usually removed from sensory experience. By transmutating these events into sonic occurrences, the singer makes them hearable, perceivable, and consequently real. This is applicable to magical, high-level charged songs of magical specialists but also to apparently nonmagical songs performed with low-level voices. For example, a song performed at a drinking festivity for courting a partner is usually performed in human language (Level I, A), being drunk (Level I, B), and being well sung (Level II, see the “laypeople branch” in Figure 4.1). Therefore, it is thought to be effective when it is not “just said,” but it is uttered in the spirits’ language, and it thereby extends its agency beyond the human, thus acquiring an air of inevitability. The entities named and summoned in a common festive love song may be certain birds that indicate certain behavior by the addressed people (see also Brabec de Mori 2011: 172 and 2015a: 670 passim). If such a song at a party is performed by somebody who has some “diet power” and a

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slightly boman voice, and the singer succeeds in conquering the beloved, it is said that this is due to the more powerful voice. If a renowned médico, a magical specialist, performs the same love song at a party, people already “know” that he will take the girl home—of course, as his voice is irresistibly powerful. In this last example, again an implicit assumption is made: the nonhuman persons, in that case certain “love-bird-persons” are set in motion by the trained singer, and these bird-persons are the agents that are finally responsible for initiating relationships among humans (see also Piedade 2013 for a similar influence from kawoka-spirits on human behavior). Consequently, human life, including such initiation of relationships, for example, is thought to be effectively subjected to the creative energies of powerful beings of myth; energies that incidentally may manifest in a constructive sense for humans, but are usually feared for their devastating chaotic qualities. This is why we need the abstract machine: speaking, invoking (bomán), singing, and transforming—first-layer creativity—mobilizes the second-layer that originates from nonhuman beings to become manifest, to guide and conduct the singing and ritual doings, in a controlled and orderly fashion, so that the powerful beings of myth, like the Inka, sirens, dolphins, anacondas, or spirits, deploy their creative acts in a philanthropic manner: by creating humans that are able to create song, artwork, and knowledge.15 It is, however, still unclear why nonhumans are mainly said to react to singing, or more generally, to power-charged voices. Following the basic assumption of animism, that nonhumans like animals, plants, and spirits perceive themselves as humans (in a human or humanoid shape), they own the same capacities of interiority, that is the same, or similar faculty of hearing and understanding. As humans (within their realm of human existence), they are able to follow sonic indexes and therefore infer inner states of human (or nonhuman, from their perspective) beings through qualities of human voices, in the way “we” infer from the sound of barking if the dog is happy or frightened. While speaking human voices sound to them just like a sequence of nonlexical utterances, singing human voices provide additional chains of indexes (melodies, timbres, pitches, and so on) to infer not only inner states but also sequences of beings and interactions. By listening in an enchanted way, the nonhumans are likewise able to follow forms, shapes, and interactions in sonic space, movements that can be correlated with beings and actions. These beings—from the listening nonhumans’ perspective—are different from themselves, maybe known through myths or other narratives or other modes of knowledge (see Kohn 2013 for a differently designed but similarly interspecies take on semiotics beyond the human). Thus, compared to a speaker, the singing human provides more to be understood by nonhuman agents as these are conceived in the Indigenous ontology.

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It is still speculative to assume what is heard and understood by nonhuman agents in Indigenous, animic, or analogic ontologies (but see Menezes Bastos 2013; Piedade 2013; Lewy 2012, 2015; and Brabec de Mori 2015b for ethnographic examples and discussions). Shipibo conceptions of the human voice, however, open a field of inquiry of how nonhumans are addressed, summoned, and therefore consequently conceived to understand in order to react upon and in turn creatively conduct human “musical” interventions. While the branch of charging a voice with power from nonlexical utterance to speaking, to getting drunk, and to singing is open (and, considering the possible involvement of nonhumans, also risky) for almost any human being, the higher-level branch involving samá and boman powers and the art of transformation is reserved for trained people. A voice such charged is probably perceived by nonhumans as likewise charged and maybe easier to understand, at least for nonhuman magical specialist persons (e.g., jaguar, anaconda, or river dolphin people). Following the doubled (or multiple) positionality of performing specialists in ritual setting, it is likewise possible to assume that their power-charged singing is even lexically understandable for nonhumans. My research associate Roberto Mori, for example, explained that in ritual he was singing along with e.g., the Inka people, who would sing in their own language, including him in their chorus, although the song sounded like Shipibo language in the translated sonic occurrence emerging from him as being heard by listeners and recorded by technical devices. Similar to Akū´li in Koch-Grünberg’s account and Pascual Mahua as he told me, both unaware of their double positionality as jaguar and human person, Roberto was unaware of singing his songs in two languages simultaneously.

Bernd Brabec received his PhD in Musicology from the University of Vienna. He specialized in Indigenous music from the Ucayali valley of Eastern Peru, where he spent five years among the Shipibo-Konibo. Since 2006, he has worked at the Phonogrammarchiv, Vienna, as a research and teaching assistant at the Centre for Systematic Musicology and the Institute of Ethnomusicology, University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz, and as Research Associate at the University of Applied Sciences-Music Lucerne. He currently holds a tenure-track position at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He has published the book Die Lieder der Richtigen Menschen (Songs of the Real People, 2015), and edited several volumes, for example, Auditive Wissenskulturen (Auditory Knowledge Cultures, 2018, with Martin Winter). His research interests focus on Western Amazonian Indigenous music, arts, and history, as well as the complex of music, ritual, mind, and body.

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Notes 1. I refer here to concepts of creativity and inspiration in the arts (see e.g., Deliège and Harvey 2006), which emphasize much more complex and personal processes than, for example, the treatment of creativity in industrial design (e.g., Han et al. 2017), or in experimental psychology and neuroscience, whose methods rely on controlled and repeatable executive tasks (e.g., Fink and Benedek 2019). I exclude aspects of creativity that relate to motivational terms (one draws artfully because one enjoys drawing) and social recognition (one cooks well because one desires a favorable social position). 2. In naturalistic-scientific creativity research, it is under debate if there is a relationship between psychosis and creativity. In Western environments, positive symptoms of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, as well as to some extent autism, are under investigation for their possible contribution to innovation; see, for example, the interdisciplinary treatment of these questions by Kaufman (2014). Likewise, the altered states of ritual specialists in traditional and Indigenous societies, in Amerindia and elsewhere, are still compared to psychotic episodes. During the 1980s, psychologist Richard Noll published various papers (see the discussion in Current Anthropology, Noll 1985; see e.g., Cardeña and Schaffler 2018 for more recent inquiries especially regarding spirit possession and posttraumatic disorders). Noll suggests that “shamanic” altered states are paradigmatic examples for the cultural control of otherwise possibly schizophrenia-like behavior. Some evolution theorists suggest that “shamanism” and even “religion” result from creative control of psychotic episodes (e.g., McClenon 2012, but see Martínez González 2009, arguing otherwise). 3. Gell (1998: 122–30) explains that although a “god” may “possess” a visual or physical object, the “worshippers” are still perfectly aware of the difference of the god and the statue; the statue is not a representation of the god but rather a route to the god. In the sonic domain, on the other hand, the functional similarity of heard sound and animate being (Stoichiţă and Brabec de Mori 2017) enable a tangible manifestation in auditory space. For Amazonian conceptions of the materiality, substance, or tangibility of sound and sonic utterance see Brabec de Mori (2015c), and Menezes Bastos (2013). 4. Other such codes may apply, for example, when hearing a bird singing in a way as endowed with specific meanings (omen), but also when hearing major-minor chord progressions in a piece of music. All this cannot be done if one is not aware of the structure which is not contained in the sonic event but coded in a specific sequence of occurrences within a given social environment. 5. Much has been written about the Shipibo-Konibo people, among the most noteworthy works are those by Tessmann (1928), Bergman ([1980] 1990), Illius (1987, 1999), Tournon (2002), Brabec de Mori (2015a). 6. All linguistic (grammatical, lexical, etymological) considerations offered here are mainly based on the work of Faust ([1973] 1990); Loriot, Lauriault, and Day (1993); Illius (1999); and Valenzuela (2003). In the following, reference indications are given only in specific or questionable circumstances. Please note that some of the ideas proposed here were formulated under a different focus in Brabec de Mori (2012, 2013, and 2015a). 7. However, these languages can be translated by specialists, see Brabec de Mori (2013) for animal languages, and Piedade (2013) for spirits’ languages. 8. During the last few decades, many Indigenous people moved to towns and cities and some facets of urban lifestyle were also introduced to villages, including drinking alcohol alone or in small groups. Traditionally, in the Western Amazon, alcohol (fermented manioc beer, as

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opposed to fresh, nonfermented manioc beer that can “always” be drunk, also by children) was only ingested during collective festivities in a ritualized setting. Agua [de] Florida is an industrially produced perfume of alcoholic basis that can be bought for a very cheap price literally everywhere in Peru and many other Latin American and Caribbean countries. It is often considered magically powerful. The complex around the “diet” has been described to some extent in almost every publication about western Amazonian people, for instance see Illius (1987), Tournon (2002), LeClerc (2003), and Brabec de Mori (2009, 2012) on the Shipibo-Konibo, or Frank (1994) on the Kakataibo, among many others. Although with different peoples, groups, families, and persons, many particularities can be observed, the fact of appliance, the durations, the overall modalities as well as expected results are fairly constant in the Peruvian lowlands. Iwi waste, literally “ray [fish] waste,” Cyperus sp., is a sort of grass whose root is used as a remedy for pregnant women to ease birth. Festivities like the so-called ani xeati are protected from unwanted listeners by sonic means: the noise of dry seeds and nutshells attached to women’s skirts is so loud that nonhuman potential listeners cannot understand the songs uttered “inside” the noise barrier (see Schoer, Brabec de Mori, and Lewy 2014; Brabec de Mori 2015b). I treated the topic of transformation more profoundly in prior publications (Brabec de Mori, 2012, 2015a: 572 passim, and 2015b; see also Halbmayer 2012, 2013). The topic of voice masking was first raised and exemplified by Olsen (1996). For curing by trickery see for example Illius (1992) or Brabec de Mori (2012). This has vast political implications: “preservation” of Indigenous traditions, folklorization and traditionalism usually do not address the “preservation,” or future activation of this abstract machine of Indigenous and nonhuman co-creativity (see Brabec de Mori 2016 for further detail).

References Balkwill, Laura, and William F. Thompson. 1999. “A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Perception of Emotion in Music: Psychophysical and Cultural Cues.” Music Perception 17(1): 43–64. Basso, Ellen. 1985. A Musical View of the Universe: Kalapalo Myth and Ritual Performances. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Beaudet, Jean-Michel. 1997. Souffles d’Amazonie: Les orchestres tule des Wayãpi, Vol. 3. Nanterre: Société d’Ethnologie. Bergman, Roland. (1980) 1990. Economía Amazonica. Estrategias de Subsistencia en las Riberas del Ucayali en el Perú. Lima: CAAAP. Brabec de Mori, Bernd. 2009. “Words Can Doom, Songs May Heal: Ethnomusicological and Indigenous Explanations of Song-Induced Transformative Processes in Western Amazonia.” Curare, Journal for Medical Anthropology 32(1+2): 123–44. ———. 2011. “The Magic of Song, the Invention of Tradition and the Structuring of Time among the Shipibo (Peruvian Amazon).” Jahrbuch des Phonogrammarchivs der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 2: 169–92. ———. 2012. “About Magical Singing, Sonic Perspectives, Ambient Multinatures, and the Conscious Experience.” Indiana 29: 73–101. ———. 2013. “Shipibo Laughing Songs and the Transformative Faculty: Performing or Becoming the Other.” Ethnomusicology Forum 22(3): 343–61.

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———. 2015a. Die Lieder der Richtigen Menschen. Musikalische Kulturanthropologie der indigenen Bevölkerung im Ucayali-Tal, Westamazonien. Innsbruck: Helbling. ———. 2015b. “El Oído no-Humano: los Agentes en las Canciones Indígenas, ¿un ‘Eslabón Perdido’ Ontológico?” In Mundos audibles de América. Cosmologías y prácticas sonoras de los pueblos indígenas, ed. Bernd Brabec de Mori, Matthias Lewy, and Miguel García, 99–118. Berlin: IAI and Gebr. Mann. ———. 2015c. “Sonic Substance and Silent Sounds: An Auditory Anthropology of Ritual Songs.” Tipití, Journal of the Society of the Anthropology of Lowland South America 13(2): 25–43. ———. 2016. “What Makes Natives Unique? Overview of Knowledge Systems among the World’s Indigenous Peoples.” Taiwan Journal of Indigenous Studies 8: 43–61. ———. 2019. “‘The Inka’s Song Emanates from My Tongue’: Learning and Performing Shipibo Curing Songs.” In La Música y los Pueblos Indígenas, ed. Coriun Aharonián, 73–107. Montevideo: Centro de Documentación Musical. Brabec de Mori, Bernd, and Anthony Seeger. 2013. “Introduction: Considering Music, Humans, and Nonhumans.” Ethnomusicology Forum 22(3): 269–86. Cardeña, Etzel, and Yvonne Schaffler. 2018. “‘He Who Has the Spirits Must Work a Lot’: A Psycho-Anthropological Account of Spirit Possession in the Dominican Republic.” Ethos 46(4): 457–76. Cesarino, Pedro Niemeyer. 2008. “Oniska: Poética do Xamanismo na Amazônia.” PhD diss., Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Deliège, Irène, and Jonathan Harvey. 2006. “How Can We Understand Creativity in a Composer’s Work? A Conversation between Irene Deliege and Jonathan Harvey.” In Musical Creativity: Multidisciplinary Research in Theory and Practice, ed. Irène Deliège and Gregor Wiggins, 397–404. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Descola, Philippe. 2005. Par-delà Nature et Culture. Paris: Editions Gallimard. Faust, Norma. (1973) 1990. Lecciones para el Aprendizaje del Idioma Shipibo-Conibo. Yarinacocha: Ministerio de Educación and ILV. Fink, Andreas, and Matthias Benedek. 2019. “The Neuroscience of Creativity.” Neuroforum 25(4): 231–40. Frank, Erwin. 1994. “Los Uni.” In Guia Etnográfica de la Alta Amazonía, Vol. II, ed. Fernando Santos-Granero and Federica Barclay, 129–238. Quito: FLACSO. Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Gibbs, Raymond W., and Herbert L. Colston, eds. 2007. Irony in Language and Thought: A Cognitive Science Reader. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Gobl, Christer, and Ailbhe Ní Chasaide. 2003. “The Role of Voice Quality in Communicating Emotion, Mood and Attitude.” Speech Communication 40: 189–212. Gow, Peter. 2001. An Amazonian Myth and Its History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Halbmayer, Ernst, ed. 2012. Debating Animism: Perspectivism and the Construction of Ontologies. Dossier in Indiana 29: 8–169. Berlin: IAI and Gebr. Mann. ———. 2013. “Securing a Life for the Dead among the Yukpa: The Exhumation Ritual as a Temporary Synchronisation of Worlds.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 99(1): 105–40. Han, Ji, Dongmyung Park, Feng Shi, Liuqung Chen, Min Hua, and Peter R. N. Childs. 2017. “Three Driven Approaches to Combinational Creativity: Problem-, Similarity- and Inspiration-driven.” Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science 233(2): 373–84. Hill, Jonathan D. 1992. Keepers of the Sacred Chants: The Poetics of Ritual Power in an Amazonian Society. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

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Illius, Bruno. 1987. Ani Shinan. Schamanismus bei den Shipibo-Conibo (Ost-Peru). Tübingen: Verlag S&F. ———. 1992. “The Concept of Nihue among the Shipibo-Conibo of Eastern Peru.” In Portals of Power: Shamanism in South America, ed. Esther J. Langdon and Gerhard Baer, 63–78. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ———. 1997. “Ein Lied zur Haarschneidezeremonie der Shipibo-Conibo.” In Religionsethnologische Beiträge zur Amerikanistik, ed. Eveline Dürr and Stefan Seitz, 211–31. Münster: LIT. ———. 1999. Das Shipibo. Texte, Kontexte, Kommentare. Ein Beitrag zur diskursorientierten Untersuchung einer Montaña-Kultur. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. Jakobson, Roman. 1959. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” On Translation 3: 232–39. Kaufman, James C., ed. 2014. Creativity and Mental Illness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koch-Grünberg, Theodor. 1923. Vom Roroima zum Orinoco. Ethnographie 3. Stuttgart: Verlag Strecker und Schröder. Kohn, Eduardo. 2013. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human. Berkeley: University of California Press. LeClerc, Frederique. 2003. “Des Modes de Socialisation par les Plantes chez les Shipibo-Conibo d’Amazonie Peruvienne. Une Étude des Relations entre Humains et non-Humains dans la Construction Sociale.” PhD diss., Université Paris X, Nanterre. Lewy, Matthias. 2012. “Different ‘Seeing’—Similar ‘Hearing’: Ritual and Sound among the Pemón (Gran Sabana/Venezuela).” Indiana 29: 53–72. ———. 2015. “Más allá del ‘punto de vista’: sonorismo amerindio y entidades de sonido antropomorfas y no-antropomorfas.” In Mundos audibles de América. Cosmologías y prácticas sonoras de los pueblos indígenas, ed. Bernd Brabec de Mori, Matthias Lewy, and Miguel García, 83–98. Berlin: IAI and Gebr. Mann. ———. 2017. “About Indigenous Perspectivism, Indigenous Sonorism and the Audible Stance: An Approach to a Symmetrical Auditory Anthropology.” El oído pensante 5(2): 35–56. Retrieved 2 March 2021 from http://revistascientificas.filo.uba.ar/index.php/oidopensante/ article/view/7491. ———. 2018. “Wie wir denken, was Indigene wie wissen. Auditive Formen des Wissenstransfers in den Guyanas.” In Auditive Wissenskulturen—das Wissen klanglicher Praxis, ed. Bernd Brabec de Mori and Martin Winter, 71–92. Wiesbaden: Springer SV. Loriot, James, Erwin Lauriault, and Dwight Day. 1993. Diccionario Shipibo—Castellano. Yarinacocha: ILV. Martínez González, Roberto. 2009. “El chamanismo y la corporalización del chamán: argumentos para la deconstrucción de una falsa categoría antropológica.” Cuicuilco 16(46): 197–220. McClenon, James. 2012. “A Community Survey of Psychological Symptoms: Evaluating Evolutionary Theories Regarding Shamanism and Schizophrenia.” Mental Health, Religion & Culture 15(8): 799–816. Menezes Bastos, Rafael. 2013. “Apùap World Hearing Revisited: Talking with ‘Animals,’ ‘Spirits,’ and other Beings, and Listening to the Apparently Inaudible.” Ethnomusicology Forum 22(3): 287–305. Noll, Richard. 1985. “Mental Imagery Cultivation as a Cultural Phenomenon: The Role of Visions in Shamanism.” Current Anthropology 26(4): 443–61. Olsen, Dale. 1996. Music of the Warao of Venezuela: Song People of the Rain Forest. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Overing, Joana, and Alan Passes, eds. 2000. The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native Amazonia. London: Routledge.

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Patel, Sona, Klaus R. Scherer, Eva Björkner, and Johan Sundberg. 2011. “Mapping Emotions into Acoustic Space: The Role of Voice Production.” Biological Psychology 87: 93–98. Piedade, Acacio. 2013. “Flutes, Songs and Dreams: Cycles of Creation and Musical Performance among the Wauja of the upper Xingu (Brazil).” Ethnomusicology Forum 22(3): 306–22. Santos-Granero, Fernando. 2003. “Pedro Casanto’s Nightmares: Lucid Dreaming in Amazonia and the New Age Movement.” Tipití, Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America 1(2): 179–210. Sarmiento Barletti, Juan Pablo. 2011. Kametsa Asaiki: The Pursuit of the ‘Good Life’ in an Ashaninka Village (Peruvian Amazon). PhD Thesis, University of St. Andrews. Schoer, Hein, Bernd Brabec de Mori, and Matthias Lewy. 2014. “The Sounding Museum: Towards an Auditory Anthropology.” Soundscape, The Journal of Acoustic Ecology 13: 15–21. Seeger, Anthony. 2004. Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People, 2nd ed., Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Senft, Gunther, and Ellen Basso, eds. 2009. Ritual Communication. Oxford: Berg Publishers. Severi, Carlo. 2014. “Transmutating Beings: A Proposal for an Anthropology of Thought.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(2): 41–71. Stoichiţă, Victor A., and Bernd Brabec de Mori, with comments by Elizabeth Tolbert, Robert Hatten, Tim Ingold, and Jerome Dokić. 2017. “Postures of Listening—An Ontology of Sonic Percepts from an Anthropological Perspective.” Terrain, Anthropologie & sciences humaines. Retrieved 2 March 2021 from http://terrain.revues.org/16418. Tessmann, Günter. 1928. Menschen ohne Gott. Ein Besuch bei den Indianern des Ucayali. Stuttgart: Strecker und Schröder. Tournon, Jacques. 1991. “Medicina y visiones: canto de un curandero Shipibo-Conibo, texto y contexto.” Amerindia, Revue d’ethnolinguistique amerindienne 16: 179–209. ———. 2002. La merma mágica. Vida e historia de los Shipibo-Conibo del Ucayali. Lima: CAAAP. Townsley, Graham. 1993. “Song Paths: The Ways and Means of Yaminahua Shamanic Knowledge.” L’Homme 33(2–4): 449–68. Valenzuela, Pilar. 2003. “Evidentiality in Shipibo-Konibo, with a Comparative Overview of the Category in Panoan.” In Studies in Evidentiality, ed. Aleksandra Aikhenvald and Robert Dixon, 33–61. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1996. “Os Pronomes Cosmológicos e o Perspectivismo Ameríndio.” Mana—Estudos de Antropologia Social 2(2): 115–44. Weiss, Gerald. 1975. Campa Cosmology: The World of a Forest Tribe in South America. New York: American Museum of Natural History. Werlang, Guilherme. 2001. “Emerging Peoples. Marubo Myth-Chants.” PhD diss., University of Saint Andrews.

CHAPTER 5

From the Songs without Names to the Stories inside a Name On the Poetic Creation of Normativity among the Ayoreo from the Northern Paraguayan Chaco ALFONSO OTAEGUI

  

Introduction This collection invites us to reflect upon creative processes involving myth in Indigenous Lowland South America, and the many ways in which those processes may play a role in the reproduction and reconfiguration of life, the world, and the living. When we think about myth and “creative processes,” we may picture storytelling performances, in which an author produces a piece, and uses the feedback of the audience to modify the story.1 We have then a well-defined setting for the creative process: a creator, a creation, and a recipient (the audience). My fieldwork in Paraguay has led me, however, to also consider other nonstraightforward ways in which creative processes come to light, in the dullness of everyday life. I will look for creative processes dispersed in ordinary domestic interactions—such as casual conversations while listening to the radio, jokes, and gossips—which end up producing patterned results. I will address this subject through the study of the Ayoreo from the little community of Jesudi, in the northern Paraguayan Chaco. We will see that, in some cases, these creative processes consist of capturing an event in a tale. In other cases, however, creative processes do not imply producing a new story, but attributing dangerous effects to an old one. I will start by describing everyday life in Jesudi to offer a picture of the communicative contexts in which I observed creative processes. A glimpse at the history of Ayoreo Christianization will provide the clue to understanding the diversity of temporalities appearing in Ayoreo’s verbal art repertory, consisting mostly of songs. Some songs tell the story of current events, while some others are echoes of bygone times. I will first study ritual wailing, the most structured verbal art genre among the Ayoreo. We will find a very consistent creative pro-

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cess, with repeating tropes and images. I propose that these creative processes contribute to the establishment of a specific normativity: an Ayoreo ethics of conviviality, in the sense of Overing and Passes (2000). In order to balance this explanation, I will study war songs, few of which have been produced in the last decades. War songs—mostly composed by the elders from previous generations—display instead an ethics of predation.2 Second, I will explore everyday casual conversations in search of creative processes. These conversations, full of jokes, gossips, and shared tereré3 infusion, will lead us to the study of Ayoreo myth. These stories of the past affect the present, full of Mennonites, Christian Gods, miracles, and AM radio shows. I will present the case of one myth narrated on an AM radio show, and the consequences the Ayoreo attributed to its broadcast. This example showcases a creative process of second degree: interpreting myths as a way of explaining everyday events. Here, Ayoreo are not seeking to answer transcendental questions, such as how the world came to its actual state. Instead, they are attempting to explain more ordinary matters, such as infidelity, the sickness of a relative, or the result of a soccer match. Third, I will study how Ayoreo pick interactions to create stories. I will focus on the most synthetic example of this creative process, the “name-stories.” I will analyze the way some stories go through different linguistic registers in successive intralingual translations ( Jakobson [1959] 1971; Hanks 2014). I will finally propose the main contribution of this communication: there is a recursive relation between verbal art and social relations displayed in domestic life, enacted through these creative processes.

The Everyday Life in an Ayoreo Community The Ayoreo are former hunter-gatherers who mostly work as farmhand in ranches surrounding their communities. Their population is around five thousand people, half of them living in Bolivia and half of them in Paraguay. The Ayoreo territory is located in the northern and dry part of the Gran Chaco. The Gran Chaco is a plain situated in the center of South America, and it extends over the territories of Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina. The northern Chaco Forest is not a “forest” in the sense evoked by the image of the Amazonian rainforest. It is a monte, a Spanish term that designates an area of xerophile forest and impenetrable bush.4 I did my fieldwork between 2008 and 2011 in the community of Jesudi, seventy-five kilometers north of the Mennonite colony of Filadelfia (Paraguay). Jesudi, situated on the dirt road dividing the departments of Boquerón and Alto Paraguay, is made up of about eighty people. However, this number varies

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Figure 5.1. Three Ayoreo women carrying caraguatá plants, 2009. Photo by Alfonso Otaegui.

depending on the seasonal work on farms. Jesudi is composed of seven households. Most of the households are made of one brick house with no internal divisions and no chimney, with one door and one window, which stands next to a wooden house with a similar layout. A football field, a volleyball court, a brick school, and a little wooden church complete the map of the community. Now and then, while I was living in Jesudi, a pick-up truck from a Mennonite boss would arrive. “¡Trabajo!” (“work” in Spanish), the children would shout, as they usually announced in this way the entrance of any visitor. In a matter of minutes, the worker would prepare his stuff and jump onto the back of the truck with his wife and some of their children. A nuclear family would be absent from the community for a couple of weeks, even months. In this small community, almost every act happens in plain sight. If someone arrives at Jesudi, everybody will know. In the same way, if someone leaves, that will be noticed by all. Everyone will know and have a say about it. People of Jesudi frequently travel to other communities to visit relatives or to work. Besides, mobility is a way of dealing with social tensions, whether between individuals or between households.5 Everyday life takes place outside the houses, which remain empty almost all day long. Women make their crafts, mostly caraguatá6 fiber bags; children play; and men sit—while not working—in front of the house or around the fire. They stay there, drink the tereré infusion, talk, and sing. News—about work, health, and gossips—circulates within and be-

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tween households. Besides, visitors bring news from other communities. Visits are frequent between neighboring communities,7 due to the relatively good state of the dirt road and the availability of motorbikes or free rides in the back of trucks. When some guest from another community arrives, it is normal that people from many households gather around them to listen to the news. Information also circulates between distant communities through UHF radio, tape-recorded messages—at the beginning of fieldwork in 2008—and, more recently, through the use of cell phones and smartphones. People in the Chaco area frequently use AM radio to communicate between distant rural locations (Estival 2006b). Ayoreo usually call the radio station to ask for songs or to go live and send messages and greetings to their relatives and friends living in other communities and farms. Everyday life among the Ayoreo in Jesudi was quite monotonous, and it did not seem different from the life of Paraguayan countrymen, at least for me, as a beginner ethnographer who did not speak the language. Monotony settled throughout the first weeks of fieldwork: the Ayoreo worked with a bulldozer, they listened to AM radio, spoke about money—at least with me in Spanish— played soccer and bet on those soccer matches. I devoted myself then to learning the language, answering their questions on the price of everything, playing soccer, and placing bets. This monotonous life became more and more interesting as I learned the language and was able to follow the flow of social life. Despite their intense contact with white people, they still speak their language, Ayoreode uruode (Zamuco linguistic family).8 I wrote down every new word or phrase they would teach me, and on every occasion in which they would correct me. They would insist that I should write down everything they told me. I worked in the Ayoreo language, as most people were not fluent in Spanish. The Ayoreo would gradually make me part of their conversations—jokes and gossips included— and I was progressively able to identify and participate in different communicative contexts. They would not insist much on correcting my grammar—for example, the word order in the phrase. Instead, they would continuously point out which was the right context in which a particular utterance would fit. I was able to observe creative processes while immersed in this everyday life made up of casual conversations around the fire, songs, theatrical representations of hunting, AM radio shows, jokes, and disputes in plain sight. A Brief History of the Ayoreo: The Missions, the Retired Shamans, and the Songs from Then and Now We need to take a glimpse at the history of the Ayoreo to understand the diverse temporalities found in the Jesudi’s verbal art repertory. The Ayoreo had

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permanent contact with white people since the 1950s. Several factors, such as oil prospecting, the settlement of Mennonite colonies in the South, and rising hostility between Ayoreo bands, pushed some small groups of Ayoreo to leave the forest and contact the outside world (Bremen 2008).9 The Ayoreo started to live in newly founded missions controlled by the Catholics (Salesian brothers) or by the New Tribes Missions. Having now been living in the missions for years, the Ayoreo have become progressively sedentary.10 The majority of them lived in the María Auxiliadora Mission in the 1970s. At the beginning of the 1980s, they moved out of the mission due to the flooding of the Paraguay River. For some time, they worked on farms near Loma Plata, until they founded Jesudi in 1989.11 The birthplaces of each generation of the people of Jesudi tell us the story of their movements. The first generation was born in the forest before contacting white people. The second generation was born in María Auxiliadora and near Loma Plata. The third and fourth generations (grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the first generation) were born in Jesudi. Missionaries—Catholic and New Tribes Mission—were determined to eradicate certain Ayoreo practices, in particular those related to war and shamanism.12 I could say, based on my fieldwork in 2008–11, that Ayoreo shamans are retired. There were still a few older men who had been shamans decades ago. I visited two of them, who were living in other communities. The first one spoke about his profession as something that irrevocably belonged to the past. The second one used to send the words of God in tape-recorded messages to other Ayoreo. People of Jesudi pictured shamans as being far away, either in time— they belonged to the past—or in space—allegedly, most of them lived in Bolivia. Ayoreo verbal art seems to have survived this Christian censorship, or at least not have been the object of it at all, despite the not-so-Christian stories found in the songs’ lyrics. Singing is a fundamental part of social life in Jesudi. Inspired by actual events and emotions, men and women compose a considerable variety of songs. They classify the songs into at least seven genres, according to the theme and the alleged internal state of the speaker. Any remarkable social fact in Ayoreo life can make its way into a song, from a declaration of the courage of a victorious warrior to an overt expression of sadness of an abandoned wife. They usually sing for hours at night around the fire, or just before dawn. Any Ayoreo can perform any composition he or she has heard and liked, contributing in this way to the diffusion of the story narrated in the song. These songs circulate through households and communities and from one generation to the next. Ayoreo send these compositions as gifts in cassettes and perform them during occasional visits to other communities. A desire of transcendence transpires in the usual introduction in tape-recorded messages: “Listen carefully and repeat my songs.” We will see that this intended circulation will be

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central for the creative processes to influence the reproduction and reconfiguration of life.

Wailing Songs: The Most Structured Creativity I will start by studying ritual wailing songs, the most structured creations I have found in Jesudi. In this first case, we do not have dispersed creative processes. We have a clear and defined setting instead: an author, a piece, and the audience. Ayoreo tend to use the same tropes to compose these songs, which gives all of them an air of familiarity. This air of familiarity ends up generating expectations about the lyrics of new compositions. We will show that this air of familiarity also generates expectations about the stories narrated in the ritual wailing songs. In short, as they all tell the same story, the same story is expected to be told. I will argue that these poetic regularities relate to certain values associated with conviviality. As I have said before, Ayoreo liked to sing at night or just before dawn. Whenever I asked the Ayoreo why someone was singing, they would always answer “terachu, yasique gu” (“he/she sings, he/she is happy, that is why”). This was true despite the song’s theme, which could go from a husband missing his wife to a warrior promising to kill again. It was also true for wailing songs, which express the grief of someone who lost a loved one. Although the lyrics conveyed sadness, the Ayoreo still claimed that the one singing was happy, which left me perplexed. Actually, the Ayoreo were not creating the wailing songs during these night singing sessions, they just were performing (“chirate,” “imitating,” “repeating”) the old ones they liked the most, for the sake of singing. After quite some time doing fieldwork, I had the opportunity of witnessing wailing songs right at the moment of composition, which takes place in its very first performance, when a loved one has passed away, or when they fear their possible death. Let us see one example of performance/composition in detail. A couple of Ayoreo and I were visiting the neighboring community of “15 de septiembre” one afternoon. I had gone there with Jnumi,13 a forty-something woman, widow of the former chief of Jesudi, and some of her grandchildren. One of Jnumi’s children had become the new chief of Jesudi, while another one was the chief of the then recently founded “15 de septiembre.” The government of Boquerón had built for them a little structure to gather rainwater, a tin roof which also provided some shade in the little community that had no more than two wooden houses. Jnumi, some of the grandchildren she raised, and I were sitting on the sandy soil under that roof. The locals were sharing the tereré infusion with us: a son of Jnumi, his wife, and his wife’s parents—an old couple called Sidi and Poro.

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Sidi was then a bit over sixty or seventy years old. He had been born in the monte before contact, towards the end of the 1940s. Sidi still used to go hunting in the forest for whole days and used to sing at night. His wife, Poro, used to go with him on hunting trips, and she also liked to sing. The mood was different from the habitual distended ambiance of afternoon talks. Tension could be felt in the air, as they passed the tereré cup from hand to hand. Sidi had a serious look on his face. Poro barely talked. At a given moment, Sidi started to sing—to combine weeping and shouting, rather—with long phrases to the point of running out of breath. He continued, while he turned his face slightly down and covered his forehead and eyes with one hand. One could feel the effort of his lungs. Even though we were sitting just a few meters from him, I was sure that his lament could be heard from far away. Poro, Jnumi, and their adult children were silent participants of the performance, sitting there, solemn, their gazes into nowhere. This melodic weeping was an uñacai lament, and it was not the first time I had witnessed such an instance of performance/composition. Somehow, before Sidi even started, something told me that he would cry-sing (I guess the others knew that as well). A couple of minutes later—three or four, I neither timed it nor recorded it—Sidi ended as abruptly as he had started. He asked for water to refresh his sore throat, and his wife promptly gave it to him. The weeping and the shouts had been very loud. Except for the formulaic lines, I could not understand the lyrics of the lament, due to its falsettos and other phonetic particularities. Jnumi and Poro explained to me that Sidi was worried about a friend living in a remote community. News about that man suffering from hunger had arrived in “15 de septiembre,” and Sidi feared for the health of his friend. I witnessed ten of these creative, first performances of uñacai throughout my whole fieldwork. Even though these are ritual wailing songs, none of those ten performances were dedicated to someone who had died.14 The singers feared the death of someone, caused by disease or, as in this case, starvation. Besides, I recorded another seventeen songlike repetitions of uñacai; ten of these related to actual deaths, while the rest were concerned with the possibility of death, due to a severe disease. The uñacai can be composed in performance at any time of the day. Men and women sing in the same way, with the same combination of shouting, crying, and rhythmic phrasing. Before starting, the singer does not cry at all. The mourner begins suddenly, and after a couple of minutes, ends in the same way. Right after the weeping and singing, the individual dries their eyes, clears their nose, and usually asks for water to refresh their throat, just as Sidi did. These marked limits identify it as a unit. These are not just phrases intertwined within weeping. Quite the contrary, this is a real technique of singing, crying, and composing, which presents regularities in its performance and its lyrics.15

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I will focus now on its lyrics for two reasons. First, lyrics are the only component of the first performance that makes it into the repetitions performed during the night singing sessions. None of the icons of crying—cry break, voiced inhalation, creaky voice, and falsetto vowels (Urban 1988: 389)—nor the breathing or intonation present in the first performance are re-enacted in the songlike version. Just the lyrics remain and get repeated in performance after performance (on these everyday occasions, the performer is actually happy). Second, the Ayoreo like to comment on the lyrics of uñacai songs—in repetition performances—highlighting the passages they find the most beautiful. I will address the aesthetics of ritual wailing songs later. Let us study the lyrics of one lament I recorded in its songlike version on another occasion. This is an uñacai Jnumi performed, when an older lady very close to her had passed away in Jesudi. Uñacai for Cajoidate Chiquejñoro by Jnumi Posijñoro 1. Oyopepaque gajine ga ñunguamu 1. Be silent, as I cry for the beautiful ga inguiane pejnungongue tuaqué herb, the Ayoreo sister ayoré nequeó 2. Amate ayore duasede cojnaite 2. She was beautiful, the Ayoreo pitoningaique chijnime yedocatique woman, she passed away and I cry for duasede pamuaña uñangue omeñu her, and I do not forget her gajine 3. oguiyabape yu ome uñaque yujoraque cheque isatique pigaidode gajine

3. I cry for that woman who is looking for caraguatá plants now

4. ca chi uñaque di dasatique cuchapigaite ga uñaque nae gajine

4. and perhaps she is looking for things in the forest

5. ga “Jnumi aja beite ga agu yiquibosode udo to gajine”

5. and [she said] “Jnumi, take that and eat my food now,”

6. oguiyiabape inguiane pejnungongue tuaqué ñeó duasede gajine ga je uré pise gajine uñaque ejnarataque datei chequesa uñaque duasede pitoningai enoñangue ujnienepise

6. I cry for the beautiful herb, that one, my sister, some time ago, and I do not know if it is true that a big disease took her a while ago.

7. uñaque cutema tuaqué inguiane pejnongongué ca chi chise yoquidaiode

7. and the ugly death [has taken] the very beautiful woman, that one, the beautiful herb, she arrived at our communities.

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8. ga uñeque nae duasede naome aquesutia tiachutic disidacap doi dapaganejnai gajine ‘angome Jnumi ajai ti ga ajose papaigatojna ome mamá.’”

8. and she said with beautiful words to her grandson the beautiful rainbow: “say to Jnumi: ‘go and fill the pumpkin with honey, for mom and for dad.’”

9. uñaque chosite duasede ga 9. This is how she did, a while ago. I oguiyabape pujnusietigai uroso ca cry and sorrow hurts, that one said chi uñaque doi dapagadode daruode beautiful words, now ome ñu gajine. 10. Oguiyabape yu ome cheque ueca 10. I cry among the living women gajine 11. ca chi yajíe yiquenique un ñimo uñangue gajine ga pijode chónaque gajine

11. and I look in front of me and I see her now and the sorrow stops now

12. oguiyabape ñu ome inguiane pejongongue tuaqué.

12. I cry for the beautiful herb, that one.

Jnumi composed this lament in its first performance. Its lyrics display regularities that also appear in other laments. First, it presents an opposition between two images, one of a happier past, and one of the sad time the author is currently going through (lines 5, 8, and 9). Second, the mourned one is the protagonist—in that happier past—of a story in which she gives a gift to the mourner—honey16—(lines 5 and 8). Third, the mourner points out that the one who passed away used beautiful words towards her (lines 8 and 9), highlighting the privileged place Ayoreo give to speech and verbal art. Finally, neither the mourned one nor their relatives are mentioned by name in an uñacai. Instead of saying “Cajoidate,” Jnumi says “the beautiful herb” (lines 1, 6, 7, and 12) and, instead of naming Cajoidate’s grandson, Jnumi says “the beautiful rainbow” (line 8). These substitutions are items belonging to the clan of the unnamed people.17 This last rhetorical regularity defines the genre. Cajoidate had taught Jnumi how to sing uñacai many years before. The wise older lady had explained to Jnumi the specific substitutions needed to avoid naming people in an uñacai. We will not address this last trait, which has been the subject of another contribution.18 Let us analyze the two qualities attributed to the mourned one: that he or she was generous, and that he or she used beautiful words. These qualities define for the Ayoreo an individual who is “parai”: “nice,” “gentle.” The New Tribes Missions’ missionaries highlight its moral aspect in their dictionary: “parai: adj. m. righteous; morally good; gentle; kind; humble” (Higham, Morarie, and Greta 2000: 661). Remarks about the generosity of a parai individual appear

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in almost all uñacai songs. Generosity is fundamental within the household, as this social unit lays its foundation upon the commitments of cohabitation and commensality (Otaegui 2019: 236). Besides, Ayoreo also highlight the peacefulness a parai individual would display. This peacefulness appears as “using beautiful words” as in the case studied above or, more commonly, as “not using mean words against us.” This second quality of “parai” opposes it to “sijnai” (evil, aggressive). We will come back to this notion in the next section. To grasp the importance of peacefulness, let us remember that Ayoreo tend to solve inner tensions with migration. “Parai,” then, is not just a gentle person, it is the ideal Ayoreo, who embodies their values of social conviviality: generosity—tightly related to commensality and reciprocity—and peacefulness—opposed to aggressivity and the internal generation of conflicts. Aesthetics plays a part in the circulation of songs in general and laments in particular. During the night singing sessions, the Ayoreo ask the performer for specific compositions they like, which they end up remembering the most.19 Having done fieldwork between 2008 and 2011, and also having made short visits in 2013, 2015, and 2018, I always struggled to understand their selective oral memory. People in Jesudi would not remember songs recorded the previous year, while they would recall some other ones composed at least ten years before. Despite the vast repertory in Jesudi, the audience would usually ask the performers for the same ten or twenty songs. In the case of uñacai, the Ayoreo of Jesudi always pointed out that certain lines were the most beautiful. Those lines were also the saddest ones, for example: “If I had been mad at that one and I remembered his mean words [which he never said], [then] I would be less sad for having stayed here [among the living ones]” (uñacai by Fibaide for his brother Docaide, performed by Sidi). In this old uñacai, Fibaide is so sad that he even regrets that his brother was so parai. If Docaide had been mean (“sijnai”), Fibaide’s sorrow would not be so profound. The sadder the lines, the more beautiful the resulting uñacai would be. A thread goes from the aesthetics of a song to the ethics of conviviality. All Ayoreo are depicted in uñacai lyrics as generous and peaceful people, embodying an exemplary behavior that fits with an Ayoreo ethics of conviviality. Beyond all particularities, defects, and virtues an individual may have displayed throughout their entire life, this person will be depicted in an uñacai as fitting the norm. Among all life experiences, one moment will be selected for the uñacai: the one in which the mourned one gave something to the mourner. I have found the same tropes in all the uñacai I have analyzed, and I believe they constitute a poetic habitus,20 which produces a controlled and standardized result. These regularities—previously heard in other laments—might then become compositional guidelines for the performer, which make the composition process more doable in such an intense moment of sorrow. According to the

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Ayoreo, no one would cry-sing for someone who was sijnai (evil, aggressive). The more parai the mourned one, the sadder the uñacai. The sadder the uñacai, the more beautiful it will be. The more beautiful the uñacai, the more frequently performed its songlike version will be. In this way, Ayoreo reinforce their ethics of conviviality, through the exemplary stories of parai relatives and friends. Songs of Doves and Songs of Hawks It would be biased, however, to limit our understanding of Ayoreo ethics to what is found in ritual wailing songs. A more complex and balanced picture appears when we take into consideration songs about events that happened long ago. Ayoreo verbal art covers many aspects of Ayoreo life, past and present. During my fieldwork, between 2008 and 2011, I witnessed performances of war songs, shamans’ dream songs, love songs, and laments, amongst other genres.21 The love songs and laments, mostly composed in the last years, told the stories of the people of Jesudi. The war songs and shamans’ dream songs, however, came from another, more distant time. Older men liked to perform war songs and shaman songs they had heard from their elders when they were young. According to Argentinian anthropologist Bartolomé (2000), who did fieldwork in the María Auxiliadora mission in the 1960s, the Ayoreo continued to make war to enemy bands while adapting to the sedentary life in the missions.22 Ayoreo would gradually abandon those practices. Several of the older men from Jesudi had taken part in raids or had witnessed Ayoreo enemies killing their families. The repertory of war songs was quite limited in Jesudi, given the fact that Ayoreo did not compose them anymore, and they limited themselves to repeating old ones. There were two song genres within this limited repertory, plus a genre of dramatic representation. First, there were the pinangoningai23 songs, performed before going to a battle. In the lyrics, the protagonist remembered another occasion in which he had killed someone and promised to kill again. Second, there were the chingojnangai24 songs, in which the protagonist declares his joy and pride when returning from a successful raid. Third, some older men liked to perform a dramatic representation of violent encounters. Some nights around the fire, when the mood was cheerful, they would present a one-man show to the audience, telling the story of an attack, or of the hunting of a jaguar. The older actor would display an elaborate and codified body language in these theatrical representations, as he would impersonate the different characters of the story.25 I have found rhetoric regularities in war songs, albeit pointing towards opposite values to those found in ritual wailing songs. Ritual wailing songs high-

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light the good Ayoreo, generous and peaceful (“parai”). The Ayoreo perform laments to honor a relative or a friend—someone from their family or community. War songs, on the contrary, deploy the counterparts of these elements. The performer addresses outsiders—enemies—while highlighting his own aggressivity and courage, as shown by lines such as “I am furious as the wild boar,” “I will take my bludgeon and hit them tomorrow,” or “birds sing [presaging the arrival of enemies] but I am brave in front of you.”26 In this case, sijnai—aggressive, mean, the opposite of parai—is a positive attribute of the performer, as he is directing his anger towards enemies. I have collected very few examples of war songs, so I cannot say if there was a process of normalization as in the ritual wailing songs. I can however state that war songs present opposing elements to those of uñacai. These two sides of Ayoreo match two antithetic ways of addressing sociality within the anthropology of Lowland South America, named by Viveiros de Castro (1996: 190) to be “the symbolic economy of alterity,” and “the moral economy of intimacy”; and later by Santos- Granero (2000: 268–69) to be “the hawks” approach and “the doves” approach, respectively. The Ayoreo “hawks” side—interlocal level and ontological predation—is directed outwards, towards their enemies. At the same time, the Ayoreo “doves” side—local level, domestic domain, highlighting consanguinity and solidarity induced by moral sentiments—is the one directed inward, towards the members of the same group. Nowadays, the Ayoreo no longer practice war, but the war songs that remain account for that side. Ayoreo perform all songs for the pleasure of the performance. Different temporalities coexist in Ayoreo verbal art. Some songs—love songs and laments—evoke events closer to their experience. Other songs, however—war songs of warriors they did not meet, dreams of shamans who are long gone—refer to experiences of their elders. Table 5.1. Comparison between laments and war songs. Uñacai

Pinangoningai

Song genre

Lament

War song

Characters

Mourner and mourned one

Warrior and enemy

Speaker

Mourner (sad, lonely, hungry)

Warrior (anger before war)

Highlights

Generosity, peacefulness

Aggressivity

Relation between characters

Kin; co-residential, same community

Enemy, another local group

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Figure 5.2. Ayoreo man sitting in front of his house, 2010. Photo by Alfonso Otaegui.

A Myth on AM Radio We will explore in this section casual conversations among the Ayoreo. In Jesudi, subjects of conversation come and go in the frequent meetings around the fire. On some occasions, some subjects stuck, and people keep discussing them for a longer time—days, even weeks. A trending topic would usually start as a little spark in a conversation. A young man might tell of a weird dream he experienced, which puzzles other people. A woman might comment about some couple’s relationship problems she had overheard, which arouses the curiosity of her interlocutors. Then the subject slowly spreads like fire in the bush, being further discussed by other people in other households, even in other communities, through visitors and cell phone calls. The case studied here followed this sketchy pattern, and it involved a myth, an AM radio show, and several cases of infidelity. We will see that the Ayoreo display creativity not only in creating a story but also in attributing consequences to a story. As I have said, the Ayoreo have become Christian, and their shamans have retired. The Ayoreo of Jesudi do speak more often about Dupade uruode (“the words of God”) than about the old stories. This observation does not imply, however, that Ayoreo no longer believe in the stories of the past. During my fieldwork, some stories of the past—myths—affected the present. Something remarkable happened in Jesudi, with a myth at its core. The story told in the

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myth, however, was not the center of their discussions. What mattered was beyond the tale: it was in the harmful consequences produced by the act of narrating the myth. The story receiving these negative comments was the fox story, erapujnangue adode.27 An Ayoreo, who usually works for NGOs, played a recording of the fox story on a weekly radio show at Radio Pa’i Puku, the most popular station in the Chaco area (Estival 2006b: 109). The fox story is long and has many subplots—sometimes narrated as independent stories. According to the Ayoreo, the mere narration of this myth produces several negative consequences, a situation that made it difficult for us to register a version. No one wanted to utter the dangerous words. I know the story through bibliographical sources (Amarilla-Stanley 2001: 10–14; Bernand-Muñoz 1977: myths 35 to 38; Fischermann 1988: myth 16 and 17),28 but I was not able to register it in Jesudi. I did, however, witness the consequences the Ayoreo attributed to its broadcast on AM radio.29 According to the Ayoreo, couples in Jesudi started to argue and then to split up after the broadcast. Either a woman left her husband to live with another man, or the husband would commit infidelity. Perhaps the most commented infidelities were the ones committed by the son of the chief, Tamocoi. This thirty-one-year-old man had been married to Lucia for a long time. They had four children. During 2009, they had arguments all year long, mostly due to his infidelity. At first, he would sleep with women outside Jesudi, but then he would also have affairs inside. The tension within this couple would reverberate throughout their households, and even the entire community. Quite frequently, they would have public verbal disputes, Lucia may threaten to leave the community with her daughters, or Tamocoi’s mother, Jnumi, might intervene to calm them down. This couple’s problems—and their cause—would be a trending topic in household conversations. One day, when their fights were a subject that everybody discussed, I was sitting with other Ayoreo in front of Tamocoi’s house. He was reflecting on the matter. He insisted calmly, holding a cup of tereré in his hand, that before that broadcast, he had never cheated on his wife nor had any marital problems at all. The case of the fox story allows us to learn a few key points about myth and its consequences. First, we learn that for the Ayoreo of Jesudi, the act of narrating a myth can produce effects independently of the setting of the performance. In this case, it was an AM radio show broadcast. Second, we find that myth not only explains the transformation of previous conditions of existence of the world and the living, or replies to transcendental questions, such as why people do not resurrect as the moon, or why peccaries know how to escape Ayoreo hunters.30 We find that myth can also help to understand more concrete and down-to-earth events that matter to the Ayoreo, such as a series of infidelities.

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Third, and the most important for this contribution, we can find here a creative exercise involving myth. Creativity is not involved in producing a myth, but in attributing consequences to its narration. In order to understand this creative process, we need some background on the agency of the word among the Ayoreo. This subject has been discussed extensively in the literature on the Ayoreo (Sebag 1965; Bórmida and Califano 1978; Mashnshnek 1991; Bessire 2011; Otaegui 2011, 2014, among others). For the sake of simplicity and space, I will focus only on two speech categories: the spells and the myths. The spells sarode are phrases left by a First Man or a First Woman just before transforming for good—at least in body shape—into a nonhuman.31 Before transforming, the First Man utters the spell and gives the Ayoreo the instructions to use it. These spells are in the first person and in the present tense. If pronounced on the right occasion, the spell will produce the desired effects (for example, healing a snakebite). If not uttered on the right occasion, it will provoke the opposite effects (someone will be attacked by a snake).32 The relation between the spell and its effects is quite straightforward. Sarode  usually contains explicit references to its effect—for example, “heal any disease” (Mashnshnek 1991: 27). For the Ayoreo, uttering sarode amounts to doing things with words, in the sense of Austin (1962). Ayoreo myths—adode—differ from spells in many ways. These stories about First Men and First Women typically start with the adverb nanique—“a long time ago” 33—and are in the third person. Furthermore, the particle chi34—“it is said that”-indicating reported speech appears throughout the story. In the act of narrating a myth then, the storyteller is more distant from the story: it happened long ago—nanique—to other characters—third person—not observed directly—use of particle chi. Myths also produce effects on everyday life. The relationship between uttering the story and its effects, however, is more indefinite than in the case of the healing spells. For example gajño adode—“story of the ant”—induces someone who had lost their appetite to want to eat again, while narrating guebasui adode—“story of rain-child”—brings stormy clouds and produces rain. In the long fox story, the fox has at a certain moment sexual intercourse with many characters; the consequences of its narration are extramarital sexual relations. The Ayoreo never explained the specific way in which the fox story produced the effects. However, we can notice a relation of allusion between the content of the story and the consequences of its narration. I think there is a creative process here which consists of linking current—and usually, worrying—events to some stories of the past, or some unnoticed omens. For some older Ayoreo, there seem to be omens all around, from the flight of birds, or the shapes of clouds.35 The stories of First Men (myths), the hidden omens (only noticed by the trained eye or ear), and their Christian faith (Ayoreo speak of divine pun-

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ishment) are all sources of possible signs. The creative exercise presented in this case consists of stating an indexical relation (Peirce 1955) between a worrying matter and any of those signs. It is a post-facto attribution of causality.36 I presented this case in the precise way the Ayoreo told me things happened: the fox story was broadcast, and then couples split. According to my field notes, however, during that year there were already several couple relationship problems taking place before the broadcast. It was by the end of that year that Tamocoi told me that the story on the radio was to blame. That was the first time I heard about the broadcast. At that conversation, his mother Jnumi recalled that Pojnangue—Jnumi’s daughter—was also having problems with her husband and starting an affair with another married Ayoreo. Tamocoi, his mother Jnumi, and his sister Pojnangue highlighted the strong relationship between the narration of the fox story and the marital disputes and infidelities that followed. This topic—attributing marital disputes to the fox story—became a trending topic in other households as well, spreading just like fire in the bush. The Ayoreo in Jesudi never doubted the efficacy of these stories, which was evident in the massive degree of responsibility they attributed to that Ayoreo from another community who had played the recording. Every time that news about a separation arrived at Jesudi, the mandatory expression was “erapujnague adode!” (“It is [due to the narration of ] the story of the fox!”).

Name-Calling: The Names Full of Stories The last study case of creative processes among the Ayoreo also comes from casual domestic conversations. We will focus on one creative way Ayoreo reprimand each other jokingly. This teasing reprimand will show the constant attention Ayoreo pay to everyday interactions and their disposition to capture anything out of the ordinary into some form of patterned speech. As usual in fieldwork, I had a little notebook with me all the time for taking quick notes. These notes were usually new words Ayoreo taught me or phrases I was supposed to say in specific contexts. Ayoreo would mostly correct phrases that, although grammatical, were not acceptable.37 After every single mistake, they would order me “aúsa!” (“write down!”) and would highlight that there were many, many words in Ayoreo, and that I still had many words left to learn. To explain the meaning of a word, for example, they would simply illustrate the context in which this word would make sense. For example, if I inquired the meaning of the word “caniepe,” which I had just heard, they would reply “Tu chisiome pamai omua, ga caniepe” (“Tu—name of a little girl—gave you/shared with you some bread; therefore, she is generous [caniepe]”).

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These linguistic notes taken every day helped me gather a quite heterogeneous vocabulary. After many months of fieldwork, I realized, to my surprise, that many of the words were actually first names. Let us see one example. We were, on one occasion, preparing our stuff to go visiting another Ayoreo community. When I asked them to hurry up—something they did not like—the Ayoreo, visibly annoyed, replied that I was “acarani.” As usual, I took my little notebook out of my pocket and wrote down “acarani = apurado” [Spanish for “in a hurry,” or “impatient”]. The meaning, however, was not that straightforward. They explained to me, that that word was actually the name of an older man, Acarani, who lived in another community, around thirty-five kilometers away from Jesudi. According to the Ayoreo from Jesudi, this older man had arranged with another family to get married to a very young girl. The girl’s family told Acarani that she would go to live with him the following month. The beginning of the cohabitation would indicate the beginning of the marriage, since the Ayoreo have no ceremony for it. Acarani rejected this proposal and insisted that his future wife should go live with him as soon as possible. Since then, they call “acarani” to admonish those who hurry other people, or who are in a hurry or impatient. I had then to revise all my notes and to try using the words which could carry a story, as it was the case with “acarani.” I had indeed gathered, totally unaware, several entries that contained stories within. “Toto”—name of an older man— for example, means “someone who interrupts you while you are talking to him.” It can also mean “someone who gives the tereré cup grabbing it in its entirety— which makes that the hands of giver and receiver touch each other—instead of holding it by the base so that the recipient can take it by the upper part.” “Poi”—name of a young woman—indicates that someone has rests of food or rice around the lips. In these two cases, they were people from Jesudi, which means that these references could be understood by someone from this community, as it is necessary to be well acquainted with the specific story to understand the meaning. The former case of Acarani, however, shows us that these stories contained inside words that can also travel beyond their place of origin. I participated, unintentionally, in the creation of one of these name-stories. At the beginning of my fieldwork, I had stayed in another Ayoreo community for one month, before returning to Jesudi for good. Beruide, an Ayoreo living in that community, had excellent Spanish. He was fully bilingual. I used to address him in my beginner’s Ayoreo, but he would always reply to me in Spanish. I told this story back in Jesudi to Jnumi and other people at the household of the Dosapei family, where I usually stayed. They turned this story into a name-story. From then on, if I replied in Spanish to a question in Ayoreo, the Ayoreo would reprimand me saying out loud, “Beruide ua!” (“You are [being] Beruide!”). They also used it to refer to any Ayoreo who replied in Spanish to

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my questions in Ayoreo. On another occasion, some Ayoreo women from the community “10 de febrero,” located ten kilometers north from Jesudi, came to Jesudi for a short visit. As local people shouted “beruide” to reprimand someone, Jnumi explained to these women the meaning of this word and its origin story. The diffusion of the name-story “acarani” might have happened in the same way, during occasional visits. The Ayoreo use name-stories to highlight behavior seen as out of the ordinary, even bizarre. Besides, on the first occasions they used a name-story— when the reference to the original anecdote is still explicit—humor was essential: they would laugh a lot.38 I think that, with the passing of time, these name-stories came to be used as a word in itself rather than as amusing way of calling someone out. It isn’t very easy to say which behaviors they criticized in this manner. I have heard Ayoreo use name-stories for self-criticism, to admonish themselves: “acarani uyu!” (“I was [too] impatient”). I have observed this phenomenon repeatedly inside Jesudi, but I ignore how widespread it is beyond the community, besides the example of “acarani.” Despite this caveat, I can say that name-stories are the smallest example of the practice of transposing events into verbal art—inherent to most Ayoreo genres. The most illustrative case of this practice is the composition of love songs,  irade.  Irade  are by far the most frequently composed songs in Jesudi, as they usually tell the love stories of the people of Jesudi. The composition method, which I have analyzed elsewhere (Otaegui 2015), is quite straightforward. First, someone overhears, for example, two spouses fighting, or someone expressing out loud how much they miss their partner. Then this overhearer judges these utterances as worthy of becoming a song and uses them to make an irade. The lyrics of an irade consist of the repetition of these utterances—a dialogue or a monologue—with no other contextual information. We can find several similarities between the name-stories and the irade songs, which reveal a similar underlying creative process. First, both cases relate to salience: something retains someone’s attention, whether a slightly curious behavior or utterances intensely charged with sentiments, which will be the subject of the name-story or the song, respectively. Second, both cases display some form of judgment, either moral or aesthetic. Ayoreo use name-stories to mock someone whose actions are judged as bizarre or funny.39 On some occasions, women composed an irade about spouses fighting, with the explicit purpose of embarrassing them. On other occasions, however, the alleged reason to compose the irade was the beauty of the overheard phrases, uttered by someone wholeheartedly missing their partner. Third, both are examples of incomplete renditions of the original event. The name or the utterances are not enough to get to know the whole story. It is as if these songs and name-stories were intended as memory triggers.

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This creative process helps to transpose an event into a verbal art unit. The three shared similarities between name-stories and irade described above are also logically ordered. First, someone observes a remarkable event. Then, he or she selects an aspect of that event—the name of the protagonist, or the uttered phrases—which will stand for the whole event. Finally, the composer creates a verbal art unit with that aspect. A proper name becomes a common noun. A quarrel between spouses becomes a song. These verbal units, with their implicit moral judgment, start to circulate in conversations and singing sessions. Through the test of time, they may stick and end up joining the everchanging repertory of Ayoreo oral memory.

Creation as Repetition with Variations I have presented, throughout this account, three creative processes I have found in everyday interactions in Jesudi. First, we can see a normalization process in the wailing songs uñacai. The performances are quite similar, as they conform to certain expectations: there is the right time and the right way to perform an uñacai. Besides, we can find regularities in their lyrics: the same tropes and images keep appearing throughout the repertory. We can see then, already in this first case that creativity does not equate with originality. Quite to the contrary, this composition process is all about meeting expectations regarding performance and lyrics. This poetic habitus is further reinforced by the repetition of the lament in a songlike version. Second, I presented a creative process involving myths in casual conversations. We can notice a certain creativity in the way Ayoreo attribute consequences to the narration of a myth, as it was the case with the fox tale broadcast on AM radio, and the infidelity cases that followed. In this second case, the interpretation—containing the alleged cause and the known-by-all consequence—circulates from conversation to conversation throughout individuals and residential units and, in this way, it becomes more plausible. In this case, there is also repetition with variations in each rendering of the interpretation. Third, we can find a creative process consisting of registering salient utterances or behaviors to produce songs or name-stories. The clearest examples are the love songs  irade, whose lyrics consist of the phrases uttered by the protagonists of the story. We can see a similar process in the creation of the name-stories: a first name (“Toto”) develops into a common name (“the one who interrupts people when someone talks to him”). Again, in this last case, creativity does not involve the invention of a story, but rather a repetition, a rendering of the event on another register.

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The original story—whether it is the whole life of someone (uñacai), an episode of infidelity (radio AM case), an unusual behavior (name-story), or a dispute between two spouses (irade)—happened in everyday life, in this everyday life that is on perpetual display for everyone in the community. There seems to be a common thread underneath all of these examples of verbal art, and it points to a constant pursuit of transforming the events of everyday life into pieces of songs or stories. Let us reflect upon the way and the possible reason this happens. Let us start by the least structured genre, which is embedded in casual conversations, such as the ones about infidelities and other gossips. As I explained, topics of interest start in casual conversations and move from one residential unit to another, even from one community to another. I have identified, within these casual conversations, the category “oijnane.” As stated earlier, whenever someone reaches the community, people gather around the newly arrived to listen to the news. Upon arrival, the usual question is “ijnoque oijnane?” (“Don”t you have [any] news [to tell]?”). According to the New Tribes Missions dictionary, ojnañ40 means “story; tale; telling of an event/experience; speech; related, what is” (Higham et al. 2000: 629). The Ayoreo from Jesudi keep up to date about their friends and relatives through frequent visits, messages on AM radio shows, and through cellphone calls.41 “Oijnane” is quite loose as a speech genre, as it does not seem to have a structure in the same way that songs, myths, laments, or name-stories do. It conveys, nonetheless, a sense of unity: it is the telling of an event—presumably unknown by the addressee—with a beginning and an end. The stories about infidelities were in principle just oijnane: news that were shared and commented upon through diverse media and in diverse communicative contexts. With due time, some of these oijnane might be turned into a more structured speech genre, such as a song, or a name-story. Out of the infidelities attributed to the fox story, at least two were later turned into irade songs.42 We can see in the cases studied, that we are not dealing with creation as much as we are dealing with repetitions and variations. Conversations may turn into “news” and these ones into songs, a simple anecdote might be transformed into a name-story. As these repetitions with variations go through different linguistic registers, they put us in the domain of translation. Translation has always played a role in anthropology, from the most technical aspect (glossing from one language into another) to the most conceptual one (anthropological explanation as translation, cf. Viveiros de Castro 2002). Hanks and Severi’s thought-provoking special issue on translation (2014) is useful to understand the dynamics of Ayoreo creativity and verbal art. These authors have proposed to address translation as a field for ethnographical enquiry, while highlighting that translation as a conceptual process is endogenous of social life (2014: 2).

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In the same issue on cultural translation, linguistic anthropologist William Hanks focuses on “intralingual translation,” a process defined by Russian linguist Roman Jakobson as “an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language” ([1959] 1971: 261).43 Hanks uncovers then the fact that this process is actually taking place all the time in everyday life: “any time a speaker reports the speech of another, paraphrases, glosses, overtly imitates, or renders in ‘prose’ register a text in poetic register (verse or vice versa), translation is in play. Once we introduce the sociolinguistic truism that all languages have multiple registers, it becomes clear that intralingual translation is not only a fact of social life, but is, in effect, a design feature of language” (2014: 21). We can say that this is certainly the case among the Ayoreo, taking into account the registers I have described—casual conversations, news, love songs, laments, songlike versions of laments, etc.—and the passage with variations from one to the other. Hanks observes that Jakobson defines all types of translation as a generation of interpretants (in the sense of Peirce 1955). An interpretant is a sign that is created by another sign—the representamen—which stands for an object.44 Intralingual translation, or simply put, understanding, implies generating equivalent signs—interpretants. Hanks objects, however, that the generation of interpretants is too general to be considered equivalent to translation: some signs, although interpretants of other signs, are not translations of them (2014: 22). Hanks then proposes two constraints—following Goodman (1978)—to qualify interpretants as translations: the reference constraint and the paraphrase constraint. “The reference constraint captures the fact that the translation stands for the source . . . The paraphrase constraint captures the fact that there must be some relation of similarity, analogy, or partial equivalence between source and target” (Hanks 2014: 23). In the Ayoreo cases we have studied, we can say, respecting these constraints, that intralingual translation is taking place. The name-stories, for example, stand for the story (paraphrase constraint). Besides, they contain one element of the original event: the name of the “perpetrator” of the bizarre anecdote (partial equivalence constraint). The same goes for love songs, as the irade consists specifically of the words uttered by the protagonists of the story, for which the composition stands. It is also the case for the loosest genres, from casual conversations, in which an interesting topic might become oijnane (news). As we have pointed out earlier, the chain of intralingual translations does not end there, as “news” can be transformed into songs. Translation, in Hanks and Severi’s view, whether intralingual or interlingual, implies understanding the source first, to be able to reformulate it by means of other signs, either of the same or different language, respectively. Translation is, therefore, “itself the basis for understanding” (Hanks and Severi 2014: 3).

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The verbal art genres allow the Ayoreo to play with interpretants while maintaining equivalence between source and target. This perspective allows us to see that throughout the successive stages of intralingual translation, the Ayoreo are constantly redefining the meaning of the original stories.

Conclusion In other words, their “emotion talk” is also “social talk” in that they consider the management of their affective life vis-à-vis other people to be constitutive of moral thought and practical reason. It is a language that speaks axiologically of the social benefits of the practice of the everyday virtues of love, care, compassion, generosity and the spirit of sharing . . . It dwells equal upon the antisocial inclinations of anger, hate, greed and jealousy that are disruptive to the human social state. (Overing and Passes (2000: 3)

No matter how diverse these creative processes and intralingual translations might be, they all point to everyday domestic life making its way into verbal art. Among the Ayoreo, there is a recursive relation between verbal art and social relations displayed in domestic life. Verbal art and social life shape each other, though a recursive creation of poetic normativity. Perhaps the clearest example is the uñacai, in which the described normalization process strengthens social reproduction, through the reinforcement of certain sociality values—generosity and peacefulness—and of the prescribed economy of emotions (i.e., displaying the right feelings at the right time, for the Ayoreo who deserved such homage). Name-stories and love songs, irade, are also public commentaries on the protagonists’ behaviors. The examination of the repertory of irade reveal some patterns about the ideal husband or wife for the Ayoreo, and the privileged place given to specific affective states, such as feeling the absence of a loved one who is far away. When certain values inside Jesudi are not respected, it is the first step to internal conflicts, and the subsequent migration of people or even residential units, which end up founding new communities (the war songs show us the other side of coin: aggressivity directed outwards). This constant pursuit of social stability is not exclusive to the Ayoreo, as several works in Lowland South American anthropology have shown, above all those of Joanna Overing (2003; Overing and Passes 2000). Overing—one exponent of the “doves” approach mentioned earlier—seeks to understand the social life of Amazonian groups, which would not fit in an idea of “society” as a group organized by a set of explicit rules. Amazonian groups—says Overing—focus on emotional comfort in the everyday and aim at achieving a certain degree of conviviality in communal life. Overing and Passes highlight the importance Amerindians attribute to emotions in their conversations and propose that In-

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digenous discourse is the entrance to their society as a whole: “emotion talk is social talk” (2000: 3). These authors show us that affectivity and its verbal expression are then a matter of moral thought and practical reason. While I agree with the idea that everyday speech about affectivity contributes to the reinforcement of a certain social ethics, I believe that such formulation is limited. It is necessary for the behavior to be typified in examples, and these examples should be repeated and highlighted. I think that the different verbal art genres help to organize the stories about the events. Everyday regular discourse would not be enough to organize the experience (oijnane are a first step, but not structured enough). Categories are necessary to address different events and abstract common traits from them. Verbal art is like an affective lens through which everyday life is apprehended and then displayed for everyone to watch. Verbal art is as much about reproduction, as about reconfiguration of life, as these creative processes are transformed to deal with the contemporary world. In many uñacai, the “happier past” image is set at a time when the mourned one worked for a well-paying Mennonite boss and gave money to the mourner. Missed cellphones calls and rides on trucks also appear in lyrics of love songs. Christianity permeates Ayoreo life and their verbal art. Besides the mentioned “divine punishment” as possible explanation of tragic events, I have also registered a new song genre, “verse of the Bible,” which is halfway between regular songs and healing spells—without the spells’ dangerous effects. The structured creativity of laments, the loose creativity of linking current events to myths, and the casual creativity displayed in name-stories are interwoven in everyday life, which takes place in plain sight and within earshot in this small community of the Northern Paraguayan Chaco. The study of verbal art in conjunction with an ethnography of domestic interactions can provide a clue to understanding the place of patterned speech and its creative processes in the reinforcement of sociality and the shaping of everyday life in Lowland South America. In the end, verbal art genres also fulfill a certain desire of transcendence, given that compositions last, they survive people. As Toto Etacori, one of the late-night and early-sunrise singers, used to say: “ayoreode ore toi, mu iradedie que toi” (“The Ayoreo die, but the songs don’t die”).

Alfonso Otaegui conducted fieldwork among the Ayoreo (Zamuco linguistic family) in Paraguay (2008–11). He completed his PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), with a dissertation on Ayoreo verbal art. He spent a year as a postdoc (Fyssen Foundation fellowship) at the University of California, Berkeley, and two years at the Institute für Vergleichende Kulturforschung, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellowship). Since 2018

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he has been a member of the global comparative project the Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing (ASSA). Coordinated at University College London, ASSA employs eleven researchers doing simultaneous fieldwork in ten field sites worldwide. In 2018–19 Alfonso conducted a sixteen-month ethnography among Peruvian migrants, focusing on communicative practices related to aging and healthcare in new digital environments. He also carried out fieldwork among older adults adopting new technologies and is currently developing digital alphabetization initiatives and further applied anthropology projects. He is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

Notes 1. Throughout this contribution, I use the term “performance” in the sense of Bauman (1975: 290). 2. I use the term “predation” in the sense of Descola (2005: 544) to denote a destructive relation with the other, with the ultimate goal of self-reproduction through the incorporation of this other’s vital elements. According to Fischermann (1988: 108) the Ayoreo performed a ritual when coming from war, in which they would drink honey, which represented the blood of their enemies. 3. Tereré is an infusion made of yerba mate, Ilex paraguariensis. The yerba is put in a wooden or cattle horn cup, and a metal straw with a sieve on its top—bombilla—is inserted. Cold water is poured into the cup, and drunk through the straw. The cup and the straw are shared among the people sitting and drinking together. 4. For more detailed description of the flora and fauna of the Chaco, see Morello, Rodríguez, and Silva (2009). 5. Social and political tensions frequently arise inside the community concerning the administration of resources, such as working for the Mennonites, selling timber and crafts, and “hunting” NGO projects (Bremen 1994). The Ayoreo, as with many other groups from Lowland South America, have a tendency to use fission and migration as their main strategies to deal with internal social tension (Alexiades 2013). Jesudi, for example, was established in 1989. Eventually, due to successive internal fissions and new settlements, three new communities were formed out of it: Ogasui (1992), “2 de enero” (2009), and “15 de septiembre” (2010). 6. Bromelia hyeronimi. 7. Most frequent visits take place between the people of Jesudi and “15 de septiembre,” Ogasui, “2 de enero,” and “10 de febrero,” communities not further than ten kilometers. The Ayoreo from Jesudi also visit other more distant communities, such as Campo Loro or Ebetogué—thirty-five kilometers away—albeit less frequently. 8. Despite over sixty years of contact, the Ayoreo are fluent speakers of their language (Zamuco language family). Although young adults understand the words related to traditional culture less and less (Bertinetto 2009), the prognosis for the survival of the Ayoreo language is good. 9. A couple of families still live in the forest without contact with white people, even if these families’ territory is getting smaller due to the establishment of farms by Mennonite and

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Brazilian landowners. Several NGOs are fighting for the autonomy of these groups and the restitution of their lands: Survival International, Iniciativa Amocotodie, UNAP (Unión Nativos Ayoreo del Paraguay), GAT (Gente Ambiente Territorio), OPIT (Organización Payipie Ichadie Totobiegosode), and APCOB (Apoyo para Campesino-Indígena del Oriente Boliviano). The Ayoreo hunt very little in Jesudi, as their monte has run out of many resources. Their diet consists mostly of rice and noodles they buy, combined with some pumpkin they plant in their gardens. The Ayoreo of Jesudi are the legal owners of the 5,000 hectares of the community. According to Fischermann (1988: 108), the missionaries of María Auxiliadora ate a nightjar to prove the Ayoreo that the Christian god was more powerful. The nightjar is a very powerful female shaman in Ayoreo myths. She is the most powerful and feared being, to the point that even meeting her—the nightjar—in the monte during the dry season could mean death for the unlucky Ayoreo. The missionaries, however, made the mistake of attempting to eat the nightjar at the time of the year in which it was not considered dangerous at all. This failed demonstration of bravery only provoked laughs among the Ayoreo. All Ayoreo names in this contribution are pseudonyms. All of these were individual performances. In other groups ritual wailing involves collective singing: see, for example, the Warao from Venezuela (Briggs 1992, 2008) or the Kaluli from New Guinea (Feld 1990). Urban (1988) finds regularities in the ritual wailing songs of three groups in Amerindian Brazil (in musical line, line length, intonation contour and voice), showing an intracultural standardization as well as an intercultural diversity. Urban explains that wailing serves two communicative ends: sharing sadness and feelings of loss, and indicating a desire for sociability. The wailer, by using socially proper ways of crying in the appropriate context—after the death of a loved one—displays social correctness (1988: 393). In other uñacai the gift is food, caraguata fiber, or even money. Among the Ayoreo, every plant, animal, and manufactured object belongs to one of seven cucherane, or “clans.” Every Ayoreo belongs to one cucherai, which is patrilineal and exogamous. Clans are also used nowadays as surnames on Ayoreo ID cards. On Ayoreo clans in everyday life, see Otaegui (2013). On the relationship between uñacai and clans, see Otaegui (2019). Ayoreo describe the songs they like and dislike with the adjectives “unejna” (delicious) and “dioco” (tasteless), respectively. “Unejna” equally applies to tasty food, or some fresh wind coming during a hot day. “Dioco” describes tereré when its flavor is washed out, and the leaves must be renewed. I use the term habitus in the sense of Bourdieu (1977). See Estival (2005, 2006a) and Riester and Zolezzi (1999) for more transcriptions and studies of Ayoreo songs. War was a common practice with ritual elements among Chaco groups, see for example Sterpin (1993) on scalp hunting among the Nivakle. There is no exact translation of this word in the New Tribes Missions dictionary (Higham et al. 2000). I have found, however, the related entry “ingoningai” (glory) (Higham et al. 2000: 439). If we add the third-person possessive prefix, it becomes dangoningai. Let us remember that the Higham et al. dictionary was based on the Bolivian variant of Ayoreo, in which the sound [d] at the beginning of the word has its equivalent [n] in the Paraguayan variant, i.e., dangoningai would be nangoningai, “his glory.”

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24. -ingójna -gai is a verb, whose meaning is, according to the New Tribes Missions dictionary, “sing a victory chant (to); chant victoriously about (to)” (Higham et al. 2000: 440). 25. See the detailed description and transcription of one performance by Braunstein (1976– 1977), and the structuralist analysis of this oral genre by D’Onofrio (2003). 26. Lines from pinangoningai registered at Jesudi. 27. Fox is usually a trickster in Chaco mythology (cf. Tola 2009). 28. Here is a summary of the story, based on Amarilla-Stanley (2001: 10–14). At the time when birds were people, they went to a lagoon to look for fish. They found a lot and left some fish in a dwell. The fox, a woman, was with them. The fishermen went back to the camp, while the fox stayed behind under the pretext of having a thorn in her foot. She opened the dwell and all the fish escaped. The fishermen discovered that and decided to kill the fox. Quiraquirai (Polyborus plancus, southern crested caracara), shaman and inventor of the pipe, finds her hidden under tree cork. They decide to take her to the top of a tree and have sex with her there. She is left there and is unable to descend. The lizard hears her complaints and helps her go down. 29. On the use of new communication media—such as AM radio and short-wave radio— among the Ayoreo, see Estival (2006b) and Bessire (2011). 30. See Fischermann (1988: myth 15) on the myth of the moon and the rejection of immortality, and Casalegno (1985:188) for the story of the man who became a peccary and taught them how to avoid hunters. 31. The First Men (Jnanibajade) and the First Women (Chequebajedie) are people from mythic time, when animals and humans were not yet different. 32. Although healing spells appear extensively in the literature on Ayoreo, we knew of only two occasions in which people of Jesudi used spells during our fieldwork. 33. Ayoreode uruode is a tenseless language (Bertinetto 2013). 34. “chi; it is said; he/she/it says; they say that . . . used when quoted indirectly” (Higham et al. 2000: 205). 35. On one occasion, during those months of couples’ relationship problems, we were returning to Jesudi at night, on the back of a truck. We were looking at the clouds in the moonlight. One older lady explained then that when clouds were “cho chiqui chiqui” (“like chiqui chiqui,” the texture of a cumulus cloud), Ayoreo men would cheat on their wives. 36. The plasticity of beliefs depending on personal situations has been well documented since the founding work of Evans-Pritchard among the Azande ([1937] 1993: 492). 37. In linguistics, “grammaticality” means that the phrase is well formed according to the rules of the grammar. “Acceptability” means that the phrase is considered appropriate and meaningful within a context. “Acceptability” is related to performance, i.e., how a language is supposed to be used. A phrase can be grammatical (well formed) but not acceptable (people do not say that) (Chapman and Routledge 2009: 1–2). 38. Humor is a fundamental aspect of everyday Ayoreo interactions, and it would require further analysis that exceeds the limits of this contribution. I have addressed in a previous work Ayoreo humor as an intentional playful slide of meanings leading to the reinforcement of specific values (Otaegui 2019: 243). 39. This seems to be similar to the evocative use of place names by the Western Apache to make comments on the behavior of people (Basso 1988: 106). 40. The different spelling might be due to the fact that this dictionary (Higham et al. 2000) is based on the Bolivian variant of Ayoreo. 41. In the last years, also through WhatsApp messages.

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42. These two songs contained in one case a dialogue between a man and his mother who did not accept his new wife, and in the other a monologue by a woman who missed her ex-husband, whom she had just left. 43. In the same issue, Severi (2014) recalls from Jakobson’s paper on translation ([1959] 1971) the concept of “transmutation.” “Transmutation” is the third type of translation the great Russian linguist described, and it is the “interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of non-verbal signs system” ([1959] 1971: 261). Severi addresses problems posed by cultural translation as an opportunity to dwell upon thought processes, and analyzes three Amazonian examples of transmutation, going from mythology to iconography and music (for a similar discussion of myth and music in this volume, see Hill, Chapter 6). As I focus on verbal signs in the source (e.g., oijnane) and in the target (lyrics of irade) transmutation does not apply. It must be said, however, that I have not analyzed the musical patterns of songs and laments, so my analysis is limited in that sense. 44. In Peircean terms, the three elements—representamen, object, and interpretant—are all signs.

References Alexiades, Miguel, ed. 2013. Mobility and Migration in Indigenous Amazonia: Contemporary Ethnoecological Perspectives. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Amarilla-Stanley, Deisy. 2001. Oé chojninga: Relatos bilingües ayoreo-castellano. Biblioteca Paraguaya de Antropología 40. Asunción, Mexico: CEADUC. Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bartolomé, Miguel. 2000. El Encuentro de la Gente y los Insensatos: La Sedentarización de los Cazadores Ayoreo en el Paraguay. Asunción, Mexico: Instituto Indigenista Interamericano. Basso, Keith. 1988. “Speaking with Names: Language and Landscape among the Western Apache.” Cultural Anthropology 3(2): 99–130. Bauman, Richard. 1975. “Verbal Art as Performance.” American Anthropologist New Series 77(2): 290–311. Bernand-Muñoz, Carmen. 1977. Les Ayoré du Chaco Septentrional: Étude Critique à partir des Notes de Lucien Sebag. La Haya: Mouton. Bertinetto, Pier. 2009. “Ayoreo (Zamuco): A Grammatical Sketch.” Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale Superiore 8: 1–59. ———. 2013. “Ayoreo (Zamuco) as a Radical Tenseless Language.” Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale Superiore 12: 1-16. Bessire, Lucas. 2011. “Ujnarone Chosite: Ritual Poesis, Curing Chants and Becoming Ayoreo in the Gran Chaco.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 97(1): 259–89. Bórmida, Marcelo, and Mario Califano. 1978. Los Indios Ayoreo del Chaco Boreal: Información Básica Acerca de su Cultura. Buenos Aires: FECYC. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Braunstein, José. 1976–1977. “Cigabi Va a la Matanza. Un Canto de Guerra de los Ayoreo.” Scripta Ethnologica 4(2): 32–54. Bremen, Volker von. 1994. “La Significación del Derecho a la Tenencia de la Tierra para los Pueblos Tradicionalmente No-Sedentarios del Chaco Paraguayo.” Suplemento Antropológico 29(1–2): 143–62.

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———. 2008. “Impactos de la Guerra del Chaco en la Territorialidad Ayorea.” In Mala guerra. Los indígenas en la Guerra del Chaco (1932–35), ed. N. Richard, 333–54. Asunción/Paris: ServiLibro/ Museo del Barro/ CoLibris. Briggs, Charles. 1992. “‘Since I Am a Woman, I Will Chastise My Relatives’: Gender, Reported Speech, and the (Re)production of Social Relations in Warao Ritual Wailing.” American Ethnologist 19: 337–61. ————. 2008. Poéticas de Vida en Espacios de Muerte: Género, Poder y Estado en la Cotidianeidad Warao. Quito: Abya-Yala. Casalegno, Ugo. 1985. “Les Ayoré du Gran Chaco par leurs mythes: essai de lecture et de classement des mythes Ayoré.” PhD diss., Université de Paris VII. Chapman, Siobhan, and Christopher Routledge, eds. 2009. Key Ideas in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. D’Onofrio, Salvatore. 2003. “Guerre et récit chez les Indiens Ayorés du Chaco paraguayen.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris 89(1): 39–81. Descola, Philippe. 2005. Par-delà nature et culture. Paris: Gallimard. Estival, Jean-Pierre. 2005. “Introducción a los Mundos Sonoros Ayoreo: Referencias, Etnografía, Texto de Cantos.” Suplemento Antropológico 40(1): 451–502. ———. 2006a. “Memória, emoção, cognição nos cantos irade dos Ayoré do Chaco Boreal.” Mana 12(2): 315–32. ———. 2006b. “Os caçadores e o rádio: sobre o novo uso dos meios de comunicação entre os Ayoreo do Chaco Boreal.” Anthropológicas, 17 (1): 103–14. Evans-Pritchard, Edward. (1937) 1993. Brujería, magia y oráculos entre los Azande. Barcelona: Anagrama. Feld, Steven. 1990. “Wept Thoughts: The Voicing of Kaluli Memories.” Oral Tradition 5: 241–66. Fischermann, Bernd. 1988. Zur Weltsicht der Ayoréode Ostboliviens. Bonn: Rheinische FriedrichWilhelm-Universität. Goodman, Nelson. 1978. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett. Hanks, William. 2014. “The Space of Translation.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(2): 17–39. Hanks, William, and Carlo Severi. 2014. “Translating Worlds. The Epistemological Space of Translation.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(2): 1–16. Higham, Alice, Maxine Morarie, and Paul Greta. 2000. Ayoré-English Dictionary. Sanford: New Tribes Mission. Jakobson, Roman. (1959) 1971. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In Roman Jakobson: Selected Writings II, 260–66. The Hague: Mouton. Mashnshnek, Celia. 1991. “Las Categorías del Discurso Narrativo y su Significación en la Cultura de los Ayoreo del Chaco Boreal.” Anthropologica 9: 19–38. Morello, J., Andrea Rodríguez, and Mariana Silva. 2009. “Clasificación de ambientes en áreas protegidas de las ecorregiones del Chaco húmedo y seco.” In El Chaco sin bosques: la Pampa o el desierto del futuro, 53–91. Buenos Aires: Orientación gráfica. Otaegui, A. 2011. “Los Ayoreos Aterrorizados: Una Revisión del Concepto de Puyák en Bórmida y una Relectura de Sebag,” Runa – Archivo para las Ciencias del Hombre 32(1): 9–26. ———. 2013. “Los nuestros que están lejos, los otros que están cerca. El afecto, la comida y los clanes en la cotidianeidad de los ayoreos del Chaco boreal.” In Gran Chaco. Ontologías, poder, afectividad, eds. Florencia Tola, Celeste Medrano, and Lorena Cardin, 161–86. Buenos Aires: Asociación Civil Rumbo Sur.

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———. 2014. “Les Chants de Nostalgie et de Tristesse des Ayoreo du Chaco Boréal Paraguayen. Une Ethnographie des Liens Coupés.” PhD diss., École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. ———. 2015. “Le tamis triste des chants. Sur les traductions altérées des événements chez les Ayoreo du Chaco paraguayen.” Annales de la Fondation Fyssen 29: 9–18. ———. 2019. “‘I’m Crying for the Beautiful Skin of the Jaguar’: Laments, Non-humans and Conviviality among the Ayoreo of the Northern Chaco.” In Non-Humans in Amerindian South America: Ethnographies of Indigenous Cosmologies, Rituals and Songs, ed. Juan Janvier Rivera Andía, 224–51. New York: Berghahn Books. Overing, Joanna. 2003. “In Praise of the Everyday: Trust and the Art of Social Living in an Amazonian Community.” Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 68(3): 293–316. Overing, Joanna, and Alan Passes, eds. 2000. The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native Amazonia. London: Routledge. Peirce, Charles S. 1955. Philosophical Writings of Peirce. Edited by J. Buchler. New York: Dover Publications. Riester, Jürgen, and Graciela Zolezzi, ed. 1999. Cantaré a mi gente: canto y poesía ayoreode. Santa Cruz de la Sierra: APCOB. Santos-Granero, Fernando. 2000. “The Sisyphus Syndrome, or the Struggle for Conviviality in Native Amazonia.” In The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native Amazonia, ed. Joanna Overing and Alan Passes, 268–87. London: Routledge. Sebag, Lucien. 1965. “Le chamanisme Ayoreo (II).” L’Homme 5(2): 92–122. Severi, Carlo. 2014. “Transmutating Beings: A Proposal for an Anthropology of Thought.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(2): 41–71. Sterpin, Adriana. 1993. “La chasse aux scalps chez les Nivakle du Gran Chaco.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 79: 33–66. Tola, Florencia. 2009. Conceptions du Corps et de la Personne dans un Contexte Amerindien: Les Toba du Gran Chaco. Paris: L’Harmattan. Urban, Greg. 1988. “Ritual Wailing in Amerindian Brazil.” American Anthropologist 90(2): 385–400. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1996. “Images of Nature and Society in Amazonian Ethnology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 25: 179–200. ———. 2002. “O nativo relative.” Mana 8(1): 113–48.

CHAPTER 6

The Chant-Owner and His Music Musical Creativity and Verbal Artistry in the Ritual Life of an Amazonian Community JONATHAN D. HILL

  

Introduction This chapter forms part of a long-term effort to document and understand the complex interrelations that connect verbal artistry (e.g., mythic narratives), musicalized speech genres (i.e., ritually powerful chanted and sung speech), and the language of everyday social life in an Amazonian community. Interest in these interconnections between music and myth can be traced back to Levi-Strauss’s influential argument that mythology forms a mediating category between “two diametrically opposed types of sign systems—musical language on the one hand and articulate speech on the other” (1969: 27). Levi-Strauss’s approach called attention to the intertextual linkages between mythic meanings and musical sounds. In this sense, mythic narratives about music and its origins can be understood as a meta discursive commentary about musicalverbal arts, or an intracultural/-linguistic translation between specialized, ritually powerful genres of musicalized speech and the articulate speech of everyday social life. In a more general, comparative sense, this approach to understanding interrelations among myth (verbal art), music (ritual performance), and articulate speech is useful for interpreting mythic narratives found widely across Lowland South America that describe the origins of musical practices—both verbal and instrumental—as a radical step in the process of creating culturally and linguistically specific universes of form and meaning from the undifferentiated animal-humanness of primordial mythic times. Levi-Strauss never clearly demonstrated his theory of myth as the mediator between musical language and articulate speech in The Raw and the Cooked (1969) or the other three volumes of the Mythologiques (1973, 1978, 1981), yet his structuralist approach did stimulate subsequent generations of researchers to look more closely into the nexus of interrelations between myth and

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music. Levi-Strauss’s myth-centered approach to musical language and articulate speech provides an important point of departure for understanding the interrelations between music and myth in Lowland South America. However, it is only one of several possible approaches, and in my view, it is not the most important and productive one. The Levi-Straussian model privileges myth over ritual performances of music and the language of everyday social life. When we remove myth from the pedestal that Levi-Strauss placed it upon and instead place musicalized speech and sound at the center of analysis, a more productive theoretical approach to myth-music interrelations begins to emerge. Placing musical sound and speech at the center leads to an understanding of music as the principle means of mediating relations between the animal-humans of primordial mythic times and fully human beings, both living and dead, of historical times. And by extension, music becomes a means for mediating relations between human beings as members of social communities (however locally defined as families, clans, phratries, language groups, etc.) and a wide variety of “others,” defined not only as mythic animal-humans but also as various categories of spirit-beings, nonhuman species or objects, other Indigenous groups, affines, and non-Indigenous peoples. A more balanced approach to relations between musicality and speech began to emerge in the 1980s and ’90s (e.g., Seeger 1987; Basso 1985; Graham 1995; Hill 1993) and became a major feature of discourse-centered approaches to culture in works such as Native South American Discourse: “It is impossible to study language use in lowland South America without paying attention to the intimate relationship between musicality and speech” (Sherzer and Urban 1986: 9). These earlier works provided insights that have been developed and supported through a number of ethnographic studies from a variety of linguistic affiliations and across widely separate geographic locations in Lowland South America (Beaudet 1997; Brabec de Mori 2013; Brabec de Mori, Lewy, and García 2015; Cesarino 2011; Franchetto and Montagnani 2012; Hill 2009a, 2011; Hosemann 2013; Mello 2005, 2011; Menezes Bastos 1999a, 1999b; Montagnani 2011; Oliveira Montardo 2009; Oliveira Montardo and Dominguez, eds. 2014; Piedade 2004, 2011; Seeger 2004; Townsley 1993; Whitten and Whitten 1988). These works have demonstrated the central importance of verbal and musical artistry in ritual performances across Lowland South America and have begun to lay the groundwork for new comparative understandings of the place of musical sounds and restricted discourse genres in ritual, cosmology, and everyday social life. There is a large and rapidly growing amount of reliable, high-quality ethnographic knowledge based on intensive, long-term fieldwork with specific Indigenous peoples and a critical mass of professionally archived research collections of recorded musical and verbal arts

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(Cesarino 2011; Franchetto and Montagnani 2012; Hill 2016; Hill and Castrillon 2017; Hosemann 2013; Mello 2005, 2011; Montagnani 2011; Oliveira Montardo 2009; Piedade 2004). Our ability to document and analyze deeper levels of Indigenous cultural creativities requires attention not only to music and speech as distinct semiotic codes but also to the complex interrelations between music and speech. Music, or more specifically musicalized speech and instrumental sound, provides a privileged means for human trafficking with the undifferentiated world of mythic animal-humans, while language and speech (including mythic narratives) are the pathway to fully differentiated, socialized men and women and clearly distinct groups of kin and affines. Yet the boundary between music and speech, or musicality and lexicality, is extremely fuzzy and permeable, and it is precisely in these gray areas of lexicalized musical sounds (e.g., musical “voices”) and musicalized speech that we find the sources of Indigenous cultural creativity. In the context of this rapidly growing number of ethnographic studies of specific Indigenous ways of conceiving and practicing musical and verbal arts in their ritual and everyday social lives, the need for developing new ways of theorizing these expressive forms across cultural, linguistic, historical, and other differences grows increasingly pressing. In particular, it is important to identify, and in many cases create, signifying instruments (McDowell 2000; Hill 2016) that can both acknowledge and valorize the tremendous diversity of culturally specific genres of music and speech found across Lowland South America and also identify musical and linguistic practices that are widely shared and that are performed in comparable social and ecological contexts. The twin fields of ethnomusicology and linguistic anthropology have so far largely failed to create a vocabulary for describing, much less an adequate method and theory for analyzing, the complex musical-and-verbal processes and the multiple ways in which musicality and lexicality interact with one another that are at the heart of Indigenous Amazonian cultural creativity. In a study of the poetics of ritual power among the Arawak-speaking Wakuénai of the Venezuelan Amazon, I introduced the terms “musicalization” and “mythification” as theoretical tools for describing and analyzing the mutual interactions between the musicality of speech and the classificatory power of language. “Musicalization” is the more powerful, dynamic process of transforming the basic semantic categories of mythic being into a musically dynamic, expanding universe of places and spirit-names. “Mythification” is the complementary, less powerful process of stabilizing the language music by using the verbal categories of mythic being to construct a relatively steady flow of vocal sound. In musicalization, the musicality of speech activates the poetic potentials of

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semantic, taxonomic thought, resulting in expanding, chaotic, highly complex patterns of meaningful sound. In mythification, the semantic activity of naming unfolds primarily within rather than between categories of mythic being, constraining the explosive, chaotic creativity of language music to produce orderly, bounded patterns of meaningful sound. (Hill 1993: 20–21)

I have continued to apply the concept of musicalization as defined in my 1993 book in more recent publications and public presentations, including the present chapter and the presentation upon which it is based. The complementary concept of mythification also plays an important role in the following pages, but as I have done in recent publications, I will broaden the term to “lexicalization” as a way to open up more space for exploring the stabilizing effects of verbal semiotic codes in general rather than limit the concept’s scope only to highly poeticized genres of mythic and ritual discourse. Beginning with a study of Indigenous resistance to economic exploitation in the Upper Rio Negro in 1981 (Hill 1994), I have also developed the concept of musicalization as a theoretical concept for analysis of social and historical interactions between Indigenous Amazonian peoples and various categories of non- or semi-human others. Given the central importance of speech and sound, listening and hearing, in Amazonian communities (Basso 1985; Beaudet 1993, 1997; Brabec de Mori 2011; Hill 1993; Hill and Chaumeil 2011; Menezes Bastos 1978, 1995, 1999b; Seeger 1979, 1991), it is appropriate to develop theoretical models of sociality that are grounded in specifically Amazonian semiotic ideologies that privilege sound over vision and other senses for managing the transformative relations between humans and various kinds of “others” (nonhuman species and objects, affines, spirit-beings, etc.). In previous publications (Hill 1993, 1994, 2013) I have used the term musicalization to refer to this process of using non- or semi-verbal patterns of sound to enact various kinds of social transformation: life cycle transitions, shamanic journeys, affinal exchanges, revitalization movements, political-economic resistance, and so forth. Musicalization, or the production of musical sounds as a way of socializing relations with affines, nonhuman beings, and various categories of “others,” is perhaps best understood as a process of creating a naturalized social space in which human interactions are densely interwoven with the sounds and behaviors of fish and other nonhuman animal species. By paying close attention to the details of musical sounds and their organization in ritual and ceremonial performances, we can better understand how Indigenous Amazonian peoples enact these transformations between self and other, human and nonhuman, living and dead, kin and affine. By giving primary attention to musical sounds and their interrelations with verbal forms and meanings, I do not intend to deny that similar transformations

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can unfold in other, more visible and tangible dimensions of ritual performance such as body ornamentation, masks, petroglyphs, geoglyphs, and consuming or exchanging of foods, but to assert that the musical and auditory dimensions of ritual and ceremonial performance are regarded as primary by Indigenous Amazonian peoples and should therefore be given similar priority in the theoretical models developed by ethnologists for interpreting such performances. Theoretical models based on visual-spatial metaphors run the risk of mistranslating Indigenous linguistic and cultural practices by implicitly placing them into modern scientific epistemologies that privilege visual-spatial representation (e.g., distanced observation) as a basis for objectivity (Fabian 1983). I propose that the concept of musicalization is valid and useful for cross-cultural comparison among Indigenous Amazonian communities precisely because it is a process with deep roots in Indigenous cosmologies. This chapter aims to link the theoretical concepts of musicalization and lexicalization together with the semiotic concept of transmutation, or intersemiotic translation of verbal signs by means of nonverbal sign systems ( Jakobson 1959; Severi 2014). By focusing on non-arbitrary relations or analogies between relationships within verbal, musical, visual, and other semiotic codes as well as patterns that cut across relationships among different codes, researchers can gain novel insights into Indigenous processes of knowledge production and cultural creativity. By connecting the concepts of musicalization and lexicalization to the concept of transmutation, I hope to open a broader conversation about Indigenous Amazonian ethnoaesthetics that will allow for new insights cutting across visual, musical, verbal, bodily, and other semiotic codes.

Cultural Translation, Transmutation, and Metacommunication Studying the interrelations between lexicality and musicality presents some especially challenging problems of translation that require close collaboration with Indigenous interlocutors to ensure that translations attend to the Indigenous experience of verbal and musical artistry (McDowell 2000; Hill 2016). In an article called “Transmutating Beings: A Proposal for an Anthropology of Thought,” Carlo Severi (2014) revisited Jakobson’s theoretical approach (1959) to translation to argue that the processes of cultural translation include not only interlingual translation, or translation proper (interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language) but also two other forms of translation: intralinguistic interpretation (interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language) and transmutation (intersemiotic translation of

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verbal signs by means of nonverbal sign systems). Moreover, instead of viewing translation as a problem to be confronted, Severi urges us to “consider the ethnography of translation as a chance to observe the dynamics and structure of thought processes, and to study how they operate in different cultural contexts” (Severi 2014: 44). “Transmutating Beings” is a brilliant, erudite, and beautifully written article that deserves a close reading by all scholars of South American ethnology. Severi’s intersemiotic approach takes us across verbal, visual, and musical codes in three Indigenous communities of the Guyanese Highlands. Among the Yekuana of the Venezuelan Amazon, for example, weaving designs into baskets is understood as a creative process that transforms artifacts into powerful mythic beings, and the weaving of baskets is in turn closely related to ritual singing (Guss 1990: 85). Severi argues that none of these intersemiotic patternings of narrative discourse, visual designs, and sequences of sound can be reduced to simple one-to-one correspondences. Rather, “the stuff transmutation ‘is made of ’ is relationships” (Severi 2014: 60), and the order established by transmutation emerges from nonarbitrary relations or analogies between relationships within each semiotic code and across relationships among different codes. Another way of understanding transmutation is to explore systematic patterning across different semiotic codes as processes of metacommunication that focus attention on the codes themselves and their interrelations rather than the verbal, visual, bodily, musical or other social contents or contexts.1 Using this approach allows for a broadly holistic, intersemiotic analysis that aims to discern thought processes that play out in verbal, choreographic, social, ecological, musical, and other dimensions of ritual and ceremonial performance (Hill 1979). Metacommunicative processes operate across multiple semiotic codes in ways that include verbal and visual codes but that do not privilege them over musical and auditory codes. The ethnographic examples in the following sections of this chapter are taken from my fieldwork with the Arawak-speaking Wakuénai communities of the Upper Rio Negro (or Northwest Amazon) region of Venezuela in the 1980s and ’90s. The analysis of ritually powerful singing and chanting will demonstrate that transmutation is an integrated metacommunicative process in which the translation of musical sounds into verbal meanings is equally if not more significant than the complementary translation of verbal meanings into musical sounds. As discussed in a previous section, I refer to the translation of verbal into musical codes as “musicalization,” or the musical energizing of language into a transformational force that iconically embodies transitions in the human life cycle as well as the transformations between different categories of beings: living and dead humans, mythic ancestors and human descen-

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dants, human and nonhuman beings, male and female humans, consanguineal and affinal kin, Indigenous and non-Indigenous humans. I refer to the complementary translation of musical codes into verbal codes as “lexicalization,” or the use of linguistic form and meaning as a way of stabilizing and constraining the hyperanimate power of musicality in order to ensure the accurate transmission of mythic and other verbal arts across generations of human beings. In terms of the dynamics and structure of thought processes, musicalization can be understood as an Indigenous form of creating, exploring, and opening up all sense modalities to find new ways of interpreting, understanding, and imagining the world. Conversely, lexicalization is an Indigenous form of focusing, ordering, classifying, specifying, and shutting out all sensual stimuli in order to attach consciousness to a single place within the world. The following analysis does not attempt to explore transmutation that develops across visual as well as verbal and musical codes. However, one interesting generalization that would be worthy of more empirical research is the analogy between musicalization and weaving or painting designs on baskets, ceramic vessels, musical instruments, human bodies, and even entire landscapes. For just as musicalization elevates mere words and speech into powerful cultural tools for effecting transformations between categories of human social beings and various kinds of nonhuman spirit-beings, so also the weaving, engraving, or painting of designs transforms mere artifacts, bodies, or other physical entities into a mythic realm of powerful animal-humans.2 In much the same way that terminology, method, and theory for studying interrelations between musicality and lexicality remain underdeveloped, anthropology has yet to develop a vocabulary and set of conceptual tools for comparative studies on the interrelations between visual-tactile and musical-verbal codes. Severi (2014: 47) argued that “transmutation proper” consists of the translation of visual images into sequences of sound but does not take a step further to consider the translation (or transmutation) of sequences of sound into verbal signs. The converse processes of translation of music and language into visual signs is well developed in societies that have systems of musical notation and writing. Musicography is the representation of sounds in visual symbols and is quite familiar to anyone who has pursued formal musical training. Are there parallel or analogous processes of translating musical-and-verbal signs into visual-and-tactile signs in societies where verbal and musical artistry are based entirely on oral (or aural) teaching, learning, and performance? And if so, what would such an “ethnomusicography” consist of and how would it operate? Finding answers to these questions is beyond the scope of the present chapter and will open up important directions for future research. Among other things, this research will require explorations of the ways in which musical, verbal, and visual codes enter into Indigenous concepts of spatial move-

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ments and place-making and how these concepts in turn enter into knowledge production and cultural creativity.

Musicalization and Lexicalization in Action Male and female initiation rituals among the Wakuénai require a ritual specialist, or “chant owner,” to perform a lengthy series of songs and chants (malikái) that musicalize the transition from childhood to adulthood. The main performer, or chant owner (malikái limínali), is accompanied by a second singer/ chanter, who may be an apprentice learning to become a chant owner himself or a shaman (malírri). These ritual performances of chanted and sung speech are musical transmutations of the narratives about the second creation of the world, or a period when the struggle between the trickster-creator (Inapirrikuli, or “Made-from-Bone”) (Hill 2002, 2009a) and the primordial human mother (Amaru) resulted in the opening up of the world into a plurality of peoples and places through the playing of sacred flutes and trumpet. The mythic image of an expanding world is enacted in a verbal process of spirit-naming called “going in search of the ancestral names,” or the movement across many different categories of mythic spirit-owners of edible fish, game, and plant species that will become part of a healthy adult man or woman’s everyday diet.3 The ritually powerful verbal process of spirit-naming, or “going in search of the ancestral names,” is in turn transmuted into sequences of dynamic musical sounds, including the use of different starting pitches, microtonal rising, crescendo/ decrescendo, loud-soft contrasts, acceleration and deceleration of tempo, and continuous percussive sounds.

Figure 6.1. Musicalization of mythic imagery and spirit-naming in chanted speeches (malikái) during female initiation ritual.

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We hear musicalization at work in the men’s playing of sacred waliáduwa and molítu flutes4 during the closing moments of a male initiation ritual. The stable, repetitive melodic phrase of the waliáduwa flutes is sharply punctuated by the louder bursts of sound from the molítu flute-player, and all four instruments participate in a more dynamic process of musicalization through the gradual fading out of the instruments’ sounds as the group of men paddle away from the village to end the ritual transformation of boys into men.5 Chanting during initiation rituals illustrates how musicalization acts as a dynamic form of creativity that gives sonic, culinary, choreographic, spatial, and other sensuous dimensions to verbal processes of spirit-naming and mythic narratives about the original coming-into-being of natural species and humanly constructed social places. At the same time, however, the transformational creativity of musicalization does not operate in a vacuum but can only be productively put into practice within the cosmological structure based on the stabilizing process of lexicalization, or the translation of musical codes into verbal codes. This complementary way of building a stable structure takes the form of opening and closing songs that bracket the lengthy series of chanted speeches and that invoke the celestial umbilical cord that connects the mythic ancestors in the sky world to their human descendants, both living and dead, in the world of forests and rivers that were initially created by the musical naming power of the proto-human being, whose voice constituted the “powerful sound that opened up the world” (kemakani hlimeetaka hekwapi). The pair of opening and closing songs makes use of the same four pitches, which are sung rather than chanted,6 and which translate the melodic patterning of upward and downward tonal movement across four distinct, stable pitches into verbal imagery of the celestial umbilical cord (hliepule-kwa dzakare) that connects pow-

Figure 6.2. Lexicalization of sung speeches (malikái) into mythic images of celestial umbilical cord.

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erful mythic beings in the sky-world to their human descendants at the mythic center (or “navel”). In this way, a stable musical pattern that moves up and down between distinct pitches is used to build a vertical axis of ritual power, or the mythic umbilical cord that continues to nourish humans and the nonhuman species, forests, and rivers that are the sources of life. The same basic contrast between complementary processes of musicalization and lexicalization operates in shamanic healing rituals. Shamanic curing songs (malirríkairi) are musicalizations of the shamanic journey away to and back from the spirits of recently deceased persons and nonhuman forest animal, bird, and fish spirits that can cause sickness and other misfortunes to living people. Shamans’ musical journeys away from and back to the world of living people are concretely embodied in the technique of singing the outward-bound journey in a louder voice and the return to this world in a ventriloquistic, soft echoing of the melody and verses. Shamanic musicalization uses microtonal rising, loud-soft contrasts, acceleration/deceleration, crescendo/decrescendo, and different starting pitches along with a multitude of bodily gestures, acts, and postures, snuffing hallucinogenic powder, and blowing tobacco smoke to create a hyper-stimulating sensual overload. These musical, bodily, and other nonverbal codes transmute verbal communication into a powerful weapon capable of destroying disease-causing spirits and into a magical vehicle for retrieving peoples’ lost body-souls from the place of death. Conversely, the chant-owner’s counterwitchcraft song (malikái) narrates the mythic voyage of the first victim of witchcraft in a canoe made of beeswax and his gradual, yet only partial, recovery through invoking the spirit-names of bee-spirits and the many species of flowering trees that they transform into honey. A single arc of melodic sound consisting of four pitches repeated many times without any microtonal rising, acceleration/deceleration, or crescendo/decrescendo is transmuted into the coolness, sweetness, and purity of

Figure 6.3. Musicalization in shamanic curing songs (malirríkairi).

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Figure 6.4. Lexicalization of sung speech (malikái) into counterwitchcraft narrative.

the bee-spirits, beeswax, flowers, and honey as well as the verbally constructed passage from downstream areas through the center of the world and up to the remote headwaters of the Guainía and Vaupés rivers7. The counterwitchcraft song is a sung narrative, or a transmutation of musical sound into the realm of verbal storytelling. The chant-owner sings the narrative while sitting motionlessly in a hammock inside a house and staring straight ahead. From time to time, he stops to blow tobacco smoke over the manioc drink that the witchcraft victim will eventually drink.8 The sensory deprivation of the chant-owner’s counterwitchcraft ritual is a way of intensively focusing on the verbal imagery of calming, cooling, purifying, and recovering, and the transmutation of these verbal codes into musical codes serves to shut out any thoughts or stimuli that might interfere with the continuous flow of sung narrative speech. Together with the hyperanimated overloading of the senses in shamanic curing songs, the chant-owner’s counterwitchcraft ritual acts as a metacommunicative process defining the upper and lower limits of everyday human social experience through establishing the transmutability of musical and verbal codes as an ultimate transcendent principle.

Musical Creativity, Spirit-Naming, and Mythic Imagery Perhaps the most central problem facing cultural anthropologists, as both humanists and scientists, is how to translate processes of verbal, musical, and other cultural creativity across vast linguistic, cultural, and sociohistorical differences in a way that is coherent and readable but that somehow manages to convey most of the emotional overtones, degree of (in)formality, and implicit knowledge of the original spoken, chanted, or sung discourses. All too often what gets lost in translation is the sensuous musicality of the original performance. Or to state the problem in broader terms, “the task of the anthropol-

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ogist involves a very special kind of hubris, for he undertakes to represent the creativity of a subject-culture through the analytical processes of his science, and hence through the creativity of his own culture” but without falling into the role of “the scientist [who] preempts creativity as a property of his own culture and denies it to that of the native, entailing a hubris not unlike that of the artist who usurps the forms of divine creation for use within his own designs” (Wagner 1972: 3–4). In his essay on transmutation, Severi criticized the recent trend among cultural anthropologists to write about Indigenous Amazonian cosmologies as “ontologies” for mistranslating these native worldviews as pseudo-Parmenidean ontologies and in doing so rendering them as “coherent systems of thought: ‘unique, immobile, and unchanging’ as the Parmenidean concept of Being” (2014: 61). In short, treating Indigenous cosmologies as if they were “ontologies” is a prime example of what Wagner (1972) has called the scientific preempting of Indigenous forms of creativity.9 What makes Indigenous Amazonian cosmologies so interesting and significant for anthropologists is “their unsystematic character, the fact that they always leave a space open for different strategies of thought” (Severi 2014: 62). Studying transmutation across codes—verbal, visual, and musical—provides access to Indigenous ways of creatively opening up social spaces for the imaginative creation of interspecific beings, or metacommunicative processes that allow people to acknowledge the otherness of the other while at the same time remaining securely rooted in their own culturally specific identities. “The analysis of the forms of thought implied by transmutation leads to the conclusion that another form of ‘ontology,’ based on very different principles, exists in the same area where perspectivism allegedly rules every cultural expression of meaning. We might call it a plural ontology for transmutating beings, linked to ritual action and visual thinking” (Severi 2014: 64). One of the main objectives of this chapter has been to integrate the Jakobsonian concept of transmutation as developed in Severi’s article (2014) on transmutating beings with my own studies of musicalization and lexicalization in ritually sung, chanted, and narrated discourses among the Wakuénai of the Venezuelan Amazon (Hill 1993, 2011, 2013). Musicalization and lexicalization lend themselves quite readily to the concept of transmutation across semiotic codes as a source of Indigenous creativity. My research with the Wakuénai suggests that the interrelations across musical and verbal codes are of primary significance and that visual imagery is important but less central for understanding the creativity inherent in transmutations in Indigenous ritual discourses than musical and verbal artistry and their interrelations. “Transmutation proper” may not rely so much on translating visual images into sequences of sound (Severi 2014: 47) so much as the two-way translations

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from musical sounds into verbal discourses and vice-versa, with visual imagery forming an important secondary dimension deriving mainly from narrative discourses. The centrality of musical-verbal interrelations is not unique to the Wakuénai of northwestern Amazonia but is clearly evident in ethnographic cases from various regions of Lowland South America (e.g., Graham 1986, 1995; Townsley 1993; Piedade 2011; Mello 2011; Seeger 1987; Whitten and Whitten 1988, 1993). These studies provide ample support for the notion that musical and verbal interrelations are the primary media through which Indigenous Amazonian peoples creatively engage with the invisible realm of otherthan-human spiritual beings. Particularly strong empirical cases include the Yaminahua of eastern Peru, whose shamans use “twisted,” or opaque, language in their songs as a means for creating visions of the spirit-beings that are causing a patient’s illness (Townsley 1993). Shamans are clearly aware of the underlying sense of their koshuiti metaphors and refer to them as tsai yoshtoyoshto—“twisted language” (literally: language-twisting twisting). But why do they use them? All explanations clearly indicated that these were associated with the clarity of visionary experience which the songs were intended to create. “With my koshuiti I want to see— singing, I carefully examine things—twisted language brings me close but not too close—with normal words I would crash into things—with twisted ones I circle around them—I can see them clearly (Townsley 1993: 460).

For the Yaminahua, the process of creatively interacting with spirit-beings is grounded in the specialized lexicality of sung speech, which serves as the means for gaining controlled access to “clearly see” things. For the Canelos Quechua of eastern Ecuador, “Music itself, it is thought, comes from the spirit world and passes through creative humans to transmit complex thoughts and feelings to other humans, and from humans to spirits” (Whitten and Whitten 1988: 22). Through singing and telling myths, Canelos Quechua women who are master potters, or strong visionary women, gain access to visual-tactile imagery that is in turn given material expression as 2-dimensional designs painted on the surface of ceramic vessels or as 3-dimensional figurines of mythic animal-humans (Whitten and Whitten 1993). The translation, or transmutation, of women’s musical-verbal imagery into visual-tactile codes is a process of materializing the occult (Hill 2009b) that allows Canelos Quechua women to transform the potentially destructive and dangerous power of mythic spirit-beings into socially creative knowledge, beauty, and healing powers that complement the ritual power of male shamans.

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In a similar manner, the complex interrelations between men’s sacred flute music and women’s collective singing in the Upper Xingu region of central Brazil provides the Wauja with a means for transforming the life-threatening powers of kawoká and other disease-causing spirits (apapáatai) into sources of individual health and social renewal (Piedade 2011; Mello 2011). Wauja shamans are called “seers” (iakáapa)—and it is through their singing and the men’s playing of sacred flutes named after the most powerful apapáatai spirit, or kawoká—that they receive the visual imagery for making designs placed on masks and other artifacts. Groups of men give material, visual substance to the apapáatai spirits by wearing large, circular masks as they dance on the village plaza. The relationship between kawoká and the sacred flutes bearing the same name is so direct that no masks are even necessary: “The mask of the kawoká is the flute, and their music is the epiphany” (Piedade 2011: 244; Hill 2013: 328). For the Wakuénai, musicalization is a wellspring of cultural creativity that energizes, brings to life, sets in motion, and transforms narratively constructed visual imagery and verbal processes of spirit-naming that describe an expanding world of nonhuman species, rivers, forests, and human communities. Musicalization opens up spaces for heightened creativity and danger in which chant-owners and shamans transform each individual person’s life cycle into a work of art and each generation of men and women becomes part of ongoing processes of making new worlds. Through transmutation of verbal imagery into a parallel universe of musical sounds, the Wakuénai use musicalization to episodically construct a poetics of ritual power that connects human and nonhuman beings. Like the Yaminahua pathways of shamanic knowledge, Wakuénai musicalization is not reducible to a mere “mise en scène of established, ‘traditional’ discourses of meaning and order” (Townsley 1993: 450) but is better understood as a form of cultural creativity that is radically open to the new, or “an ensemble of techniques for knowing. It is not a constituted discourse but a way of constituting one” (Townsley 1993: 452). As a wellspring of creativity, musicalization cannot operate in a cosmic void. The chant-owner’s open-ended creativity through musicalization is not infinitely expandable. Rather, it must always open up worlds of meaning and sounds in relation to limits that allow ritual specialists to channel ambiguously creative and destructive powers of musical sound in constructive ways, such as safely guiding individuals and groups through transitional moments in the ongoing cycles of life and death. These limits are established through complementary processes of lexicalization, or transmuting musical sound patterns into verbal, narrative imagery such as the singing-into-being of a celestial umbilical cord during initiation rituals or singing the narrative journey of the first victim of witchcraft.

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Conclusion In this chapter I have explored complementary processes of musicalization and lexicalization as illustrations of what Severi (2014), following Jakobson (1959), has called “transmutation,” or intersemiotic translation of verbal signs by means of nonverbal sign systems. The examples of ritual power touched upon also call for moving beyond language-centered approaches to transmutation as a process of translating nonverbal (visual, musical, etc.) into verbal codes by demonstrating how the inverse processes of musicalization, or translating verbal codes into nonverbal, musical codes, is a potent source of cultural creativity in Wakuénai cosmology and ritual performance. The principle of transmutability between musicality and lexicality allows for an open-ended interpretive framework that approaches translation across codes as intersemiotic processes of metacommunication. Studying these processes of metacommunication is an exercise in the ethnography of cultural translation that can reveal underlying dynamics and structures of thought in ways that go far beyond the limits of verbal communicative codes and the disembodied, silent modes of language-centered interpretation.

Jonathan D. Hill is Professor Emeritus and former Chair of Anthropology at Southern Illinois University and Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Vytautus Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. He is the author of Keepers of the Sacred Chants: The Poetics of Ritual Power in an Amazonian Society (1993) and Made-from-Bone: Trickster Myths, Music, and History from the Amazon (2009); editor of Rethinking History and Myth: Indigenous South American Perspectives on the Past (1988) and History, Power, and Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492–1992 (1996). He is coeditor of Comparative Arawakan Histories: Rethinking Language Family and Culture Area in Amazonia (with Fernando Santos-Granero, 2002); Burst of Breath: Indigenous Ritual Wind Instruments in Lowland South America (with Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, 2011); and Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia: Reconstructing Past Identities from Archaeology, Linguistics, and Ethnohistory (with Alf Hornborg, 2011). His research interests include ethnohistory, ethnomusicology, and verbal art as performance with a focus on Indigenous Amazonia. He has done fieldwork with the Arawak-speaking Wakuénai (Curripaco) of southernmost Venezuela in the 1980s and 90s and served a three-year term (2014–17) as President of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America (SALSA).

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Notes 1. The term metacommunication is taken from Jakobson and Halle (1956) who defined the metacommunicative function of language as verbal acts that place primary emphasis on code rather than messages (poetic function), context (referential function), or other dimensions of speaking. Although Severi does not use the term metacommunication in his 2014 essay, his focus on intersemiotic patternings, or relationships within and across semiotic codes, is consistent with Jakobson’s definition of the metacommunicative function of language. 2. The term “animal-humans” is specific to the space-times of undifferentiated mythic beings and is not as broad in scope as the phrase “various kinds of non- or semi-human spirit beings,” which includes recently deceased humans, ancestor spirits, affines, speakers of other Indigenous languages, and non-Indigenous people. In other words, the phrase encompasses all kinds of other-than-human beings, not just mythic animal-humans. 3. Spirit-naming in malikai singing and chanting includes all living things—aquatic animals, forest animals, birds, insects, and plants—that are edible, medicinal, or otherwise useful and with which human beings have bodily contact in the course of everyday activities. The most powerful spirit-names in malikai refer to mythic patrilineal ancestors that originated when Made-from-Bone raised them from a hole beneath the rapids at Hipana on the Aiari River and gave each of them sacred names and pairs of male and female tobacco spirits. 4. Waliáduwa flutes are said to represent the outer three fingers of the hand of Kuwái, the primordial human being of mythic narratives. Unlike other sacred flutes and trumpets that groups of adult men play during male initiation rituals, the Waliáduwa do not have animal namesakes but refer to the concept of rejuvenation (Hill 1983, 1993) or possibly to a newly wedded woman ( Journet 2011). Molítu flutes are named after a species of frog that sings during periods of relative dry weather in order to “tell” men and women when to fell trees for new gardens, when to burn the drying vegetation, and when to weed (Hill 1983, 1984, 2019). Readers can listen to the sound of these instruments in the KPC002 (Curripaco) collection of digital recordings in the Archives of Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA, www.ailla.utexas.org). 5. Ritual performances of the molítu flute are another clear illustration of the transmutation of verbal into musical codes. The sound of these flutes is said to “speak” to women who are secluded inside a separate house during periods when groups of men perform on sacred flutes and trumpets outside. Women shout questions through the walls of the house to men outside, and molítu answers their questions (Hill 1993, 2011; Hill and Castrillon 2017). 6. Sung speech refers to verbal or semi-verbal vocal sounds that make use of movements across two or more distinct pitches, or tones that are clearly (audibly) separated by intervals of one hundred cents (one chromatic half-step) or larger. Chanted speech makes use of the same vocal intonation as sung speech but without recognizable or audible movements across distinct pitches. Ritual specialists also set both sung and chanted speeches into motion by slithering upward in microtonal rising (Hill 1983, 1985, 1993). 7. It is noteworthy that the association of downstream areas with death and disease as well as the reversal of disease with movements upstream to remote headwater areas is consistent with the history of the Upper Rio Negro region. Missionaries, slave traders, and exogenous diseases all entered the region from downstream areas during the colonial period, and Indigenous migrations up to remote headwater areas were important ways of surviving and escaping these destructive forces.

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8. The act of performing malikái songs, chants, and orations is referred to as “blowing tobacco smoke” (inyapakáati dzéema), and chant-owners are referred to in regional Spanish as “sopladores.” 9. Anthony Webster made a similar critique of Viveiros de Castro’s perspectivism as a theoretical approach that ignored or even negated ambiguities, metaphor, and other poetic dimensions of Indigenous discourse in favor of a “modernist referentialist language ideology” (2019: 171).

References Basso, Ellen. 1985. A Musical View of the Universe: Kalapalo Myth and Ritual Performances. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Beaudet, Jean-Michel. 1993. “L’Ethnomusicologies de l’Amazonie.” L’Homme 126(28): 527–33. ———. 1997. Souffles d’Amazonie: Les orchestres tule des Wayãpi, Vol. 3. Nanterre: Société d’Ethnologie. Brabec de Mori, Bernd. 2011. “Die Lieder der Richtigen Menschen. Musikalische Kulturanthropologie der indigenen Bevölkerung im Ucayali-Tal, Westamazonien.” PhD diss., University of Vienna. ———, ed. 2013. “The Human and Non-human in Music: Listening to the Indigenous Peoples of Lowland South America.” Special issue, Ethnomusicology Forum 22(3). Brabec de Mori, Bernd, Matthias Lewy, and Miguel A. García, eds. 2015. Mundos audibles de América. Cosmologías y prácticas sonoras de los pueblos indígenas. Estudios Indiana 8. Berlin: Iberoamerikanisches Institut / Gebr. Mann Verlag. Cesarino, Pedro de Niemeyer. 2011. Oniska: Poética do Xamanismo na Amazônia. São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva S.A. Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Constructs Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Franchetto, Bruna, and Tomasso Montagnani. 2012. “When Women Lost Kagutu Flutes, to Sing Tolo Was All They Had Left.” Journal of Anthropological Research 68: 339–56. Graham, Laura. 1986. “Three Modes of Shavante Vocal Expression: Wailing, Collective Singing, and Political Oratory.” In Native South American Discourse, ed. Joel Sherzer and Greg Urban, 83–118. Berlin: Mouton and Gruyter. ———. 1995. Performing Dreams: Discourses of Immortality among the Xavante of Central Brazil. Austin: University of Texas Press. Guss, David. 1990. To Weave and Sing: Art, Symbol, and Narrative in the South American Rainforest. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hill, Jonathan D. 1979. “Kamayura Flute Music: A Study of Music as Meta-Communication.” Ethnomusicology 23: 417–32. ———. 1983. “Wakuenai Society: A Processual-Structural Analysis of Indigenous Cultural Life in the Upper Rio Negro Region of Venezuela.” PhD diss., Department of Anthropology, Indiana University. ———. 1984. “Social Equality and Ritual Hierarchy: The Arawakan Wakuenai of Venezuela.” American Ethnologist 11(3): 528–44. ———. 1985. “Myth, Spirit-Naming, and the Art of Microtonal Rising: Childbirth Rituals of the Arawakan Wakuenai.” Latin American Music Review 6(1): 1–30. ———. 1993. Keepers of the Sacred Chants: The Poetics of Ritual Power in an Amazonian Society. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

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———. 1994. “Musicalizing the Other: Shamanistic Approaches to Ethnic-Class Competition in the Upper Rio Negro Region.” In Religiosidad y Resistencia Indígenas hacia el Fin del Milenio, ed. Alicia Barabas, 105–28. Quito: Abya-Yala. ———. 2002. “‘Made from Bone’: Trickster Myths, Musicality, and Social Constructions of History in the Venezuelan Amazon.” In Myth: A New Symposium, ed. Gregory Schrempp and William Hansen, 72–88. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2009a. Made-from-Bone: Trickster Myths, Music, and History in an Amazonian Community. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ———. 2009b. “Materializing the Occult: An Approach to Understanding the Nature of Materiality in Wakuénai Ontology.” In The Occult Life of Things: Native Amazonian Theories of Materiality and Personhood, ed. Fernando Santos-Granero, 235–61. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 2011. “Soundscaping the World: The Cultural Poetics of Power and Meaning in Wakuénai Flute Music.” In Burst of Breath: Indigenous Ritual Wind Instruments in Lowland South America, ed. Jonathan Hill and Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, 93–122. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ———. 2013. “Instruments of Power: Musicalizing the Other in Lowland South America.” In “The Human and Non-human in Music: Listening to the Indigenous Peoples of Lowland South America,” Special issue, Ethnomusicology Forum 22(3): 323–42. ———. 2016. “Signifying Instruments: Reflections on the Magic of the Ethnographer’s Sound Recordings.” In Flower World: Music Archaeology of the Americas, Vol. 4, ed. Matthias Stöckli and Mark Howell, 65–78. Berlin: Ekho-Verlag. ———. 2019. “Signifying Others: The Musical Management of Social Differences in Amazonia.” In Non-Humans in Amerindian South America: Ethnographies of Indigenous Cosmologies, Rituals and Songs, ed. Juan Javier Rivera Andiá, 277–99. NewYork: Berghahn Books. Hill, Jonathan D., and Juan Castrillon. 2017. “Narrativity in Sound: A Sound-Centered Approach to Indigenous Amazonian Ways of Managing Relations of Alterity.” El oído pensante 5(2): 5–34. Retrieved 14 October 2021 from http://revistascientificas.filo.uba.ar/index .php/oidopensante/article/view/7490/6702. Hill, Jonathan D., and Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, eds. 2011. Burst of Breath: Indigenous Ritual Wind Instruments in Lowland South America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Hosemann, Aimee. 2013. “Women’s Song Exchanges in the Northwest Amazon: Contacts between Groups, Languages, and Individuals.” In Upper Rio Negro: Cultural and Linguistic Interaction in Northwestern Amazonia, ed. Patience Epps and Kristine Stenzel, 245–70. Rio de Janeiro: Museu Nacional. Jakobson, Roman.1959. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” On Translation 3: 232–39. Jakobson, Roman, and Morris Halle. 1956. Fundamentals of Language. Gravenhage: Mouton. Journet, Nicolas. 2011. “Hearing Without Seeing: Sacred Flutes as the Medium for an Avowed Secret in Curripaco Masculine Ritual.” In Burst of Breath: Indigenous Ritual Wind Instruments in Lowland South America, ed. Jonathan D. Hill and Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, 123–46. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1969. The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology, Vol. 1. Translated by John and Doreen Weightman. New York: Harper and Row. ———. 1973. From Honey to Ashes: Introduction to a Science of Mythology, Vol. 2. Translated by John and Doreen Weightman. New York: Harper and Row. ———. 1978. The Origin of Table Manners: Introduction to a Science of Mythology, Vol. 3. Translated by John and Doreen Weightman. New York: Harper and Row.

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———. 1981. The Naked Man: Introduction to a Science of Mythology, Vol. 4. Translated by John and Doreen Weightman. New York: Harper and Row. McDowell, John. 2000. “Collaborative Ethnopoetics.” In Translating Native Latin American Verbal Art: Ethnopoetics and Ethnography of Speaking, ed. Kay Sammons and Joel Sherzer, 211–32. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Mello, Maria Ignez C. 2005. “Iamurikuma: Música, Mito, e Ritual entre os Wauja do Alto Xingu.” PhD diss., Department of Anthropology, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil. ———. 2011. “The Ritual of the Iamurikuma and the Kawoká Flutes.” In Burst of Breath: Indigenous Ritual Wind Instruments in Lowland South America, ed. Jonathan D. Hill and JeanPierre Chaumeil, 257–76. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Menezes Bastos, Rafael José de. 1978. A Musicológica Kamayurá: para uma Antropologia da Communicação no Alto Xingu. Brasilia: FUNAI. ———. 1995. “Esboço de uma Teoria da Música: para além de uma Antropologia sem Música e de uma Musicologia sem Homem.” Anuário Antropológico 93: 9–73. ———. 1999a. A Musicológica Kamayurá: Para uma Antropologia da Comunicação no Alto Xingu. 2nd ed. Florianópolis, Brazil: Editora da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. ———. 1999b. “Apùap World Hearing: On the Kamayurá Phono-Auditory System and the Anthropological Concept of Culture.” The World of Music 41(1): 85–96. Montagnani, Tomasso. 2011. “I am Otsitsi: Ritual Music and Acoustic Representations among the Kuikuro of the Upper-Xingu.” PhD diss., Department of Anthropology, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Oliveira Montardo, Deise Lucy. 2009. Através do Mbaraka: Música, Dança e Xamanismo Guarani. São Paulo: Editora Universidade de São Paulo. Oliveira Montardo, Deise Lucy, and Maria Eugenia Dominguez, eds. 2014. Arte e Sociabilidades em Perspectiva Antropologica. Florianopolis, Brazil: Editora UFSC. Piedade, Acácio Tadeu de C. 2004. “O Canto do Kawoká: Música, Cosmologia e Filosofia entre os Wauja do Alto Xingu.” PhD diss., Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Retrieved 14 October 2021 from https://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/bitstream/ handle/123456789/86556/200953.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. ———. 2011. “From Musical Poetics to Deep Language: The Ritual of the Wauja Sacred Flutes.” In Burst of Breath: Indigenous Ritual Wind Instruments in Lowland South America, ed. Jonathan D. Hill and Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, 239–56. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Seeger, Anthony. 1979. “What Can We Learn When They Sing? Vocal Genres of the Suyá Indians of Central Brazil.” Ethnomusicology 23: 373–94. ———. 1987. Why Suya Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991. “When Music Makes History.” In Ethnomusicology and Modern Music History, ed. Stephen Blum, Philip Bohlman, and Daniel Neuman, 23–35. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ———. 2004. Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Severi, Carlo. 2014. “Transmutating Beings: A Proposal for an Anthropology of Thought.” In “Translating Worlds,” ed. William Hanks and Carlo Severi. Special issue, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(2): 41–71. Sherzer, Joel, and Greg Urban, eds. 1986. Native South American Discourse. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Townsley, Graham. 1993. “Song Paths: The Ways and Means of Yaminahua Shamanic Knowledge.” In “La remontée de l’Amazone,” ed. Philippe Descola and Anne-Christine Taylor. Special issue, L’Homme 33(2–4): 449–68. Wagner, Roy. 1972. “Introduction: The Masks of Meaning.” In Habu: The Innovation of Meaning in Daribi Religion, ed. Roy Wagner, 3–16. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Webster, Anthony. 2019. “(Ethno)Poetics and Perspectivism: On the Hieroglyphic Beauty of Ambiguity.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 29(2): 168–74. Whitten, Dorothea, and Norman E. Whitten, Jr. 1988. From Myth to Creation. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ———. 1993. “Creativity and Continuity; Communication and Clay.” In Imagery & Creativity: Ethnoaesthetics and Art Worlds in the Americas, ed. Dorothea S. Whitten and Norman E. Whitten, 309–56. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

CHAPTER 7

How to Transform the World(s) Generating Transactive Timescapes through Myths, Songs, and Magic Formulas in the Guianas MATTHIAS LEWY

  

Introduction The aim of this chapter is to analyze the creation and transformation processes of world(s) among the Indigenous Pemón living in Southern Venezuela, the Western part of Guyana, and Northern Brazil.1 This “changing of the world(s)” refers primarily to intentional shamanic, especially acoustic performances that transform the perceptions of members of different collectives.2 In this regard, perception in terms of seeing and hearing is connected with different ontologies or forms of identification based on the distinction of physicality and/or interiority (Descola 2005). Myths, songs, and magic formulas (tarén) will be examined as techniques of performance together with individual forms of knowledge to reveal the creative processes in rituals and everyday life. This requires a brief introduction to Pemón cosmology, whereby special attention is paid to the problems that arise when neglecting sound phenomena, which will be illustrated by the “San Miguel movement” (Thomas 1976). Pemón ideas about the multiverse and the associated ideas of coexisting timescapes populated with specific human and nonhuman entities are introduced. Halbmayer (2004; 2010: 531) proposed the concept of timescape to approach the cosmological conceptualization of Carib-speaking groups from a vertical instead of a purely horizontal orientation. Based on Overing (1985, 2004), Halbmayer uses the idea of the multiverse which, in contrast to the universe, is based on several timescapes as well as a “continuity of discontinuity” between these worlds. Thus, time can be seen as an “ordered relationship of continuity and discontinuity. Modern time is based on a discontinuous continuity, a continuity that prevails over and is based on discontinuous units. These units of time or periods have a beginning and an end; they may be ‘clipped together’ linearly, and are associated with notions of before and after” (Halbmayer 2004: 127). The idea of timescapes, on the other

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hand, is based on a continuous discontinuity, an overarching discontinuity whose reproduction produces continuity not primarily as continuous antagonism of discontinuous units, but rather “in the continuous coexistence of different, and therefore spatial-temporally discontinuous, units and their change” (Halbmayer 2004: 127). I will show how transspecific communication in ritual performances, myths, songs, and magic formulas is capable to transcend these coexisting timescapes. This process is intrinsically creative, as the very moment of sound performance creates another form of temporal timescape that can be denominated as transactive timescape. I will argue that restricted and unrestricted versions of such transactive timescapes may distinguished. The category of restricted transactive timescapes is mainly constituted by an intonation of formalized sounds as it happens in pia’san (shaman) and orekotón (areruya and cho’chiman) songs. It is restricted to the involved shamans and spirits as well as the human and nonhuman participants of orekotón rituals, who are all aware of interacting inside a ritually enacted transactive timescape. The performance of magic formulas (tarén) creates in contrast unrestricted transactive timescapes. The magic formulas can be performed by any person who has the appropriate abilities and knowledge. The target entities and noninvolved humans are exposed to this transactive timescape without conscious awareness or intention and without possibility to step out of it. The performance of myths includes and explains both sound practices and their capacity to transform the multiverse. Myths need to be understood in two different ways: on one hand, they become written texts within academic discourse which serve as the basis for the description and analysis of cosmological relationships, and on the other hand, they are a verbal performance practice intimately related to other performances, such as songs and tarén (magic formulae), which are part of transspecific communication and interaction. The performance of myths is mainly defined by its sound. Thus, a Pemón myth never stands alone as a spoken story: every myth (tauron panton) is related to a magic formula (tarén) and a song (eremuk), and every song refers to a magic formula and to a myth. These performative genres are the knowledge of pia, which is reserved for Indigenous specialists like the pia’san (shaman) and ipukenak3 (wise person, ritual leader). The actions of a pia’san are referred to as pia’ipa which means “performing pia knowledge.” Thus, our conception of myth must expand beyond the idea of a story, a spoken or written text that describes the interaction of the entities of the multiverse. It must be understood as a performance that interacts as a mode of existence itself, making the world to be transformed and establishing a continuity between discontinuous timescapes. Perspectivist thinking of mythical complexes may show that these transformations and perspectives of the world exist, but only auditory performance reveals

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how the visual thinking and perception—including their transformation—are enacted and controlled. The differentiation characteristics between these genres will be developed step by step, for which the method of intersemiotic translation (transmutation) is introduced. A central focus of this article is on transformation and retransformation processes which are generated by means of performance. These are directly related to a mythical complex and, therefore, to specific timescapes of the Pemón multiverse, namely serewarö (the here-and-now), wakü pata (paradise), and pia daktai (the beginning-and-end). By highlighting the commonly neglected aspects of formalized sound production and perception, this chapter challenges the so far developed academic concepts of Pemón cosmology.

Academic Constructions of Pemón Cosmology An initial explanation of Pemón cosmological connections between different times and spaces can be found in the work of the literary scholar Lyll Barceló Sifontes Abreu (1982). In her conception different spheres overlap and locations are taken from stories and myths. Barceló Sifontes Abreu locates worlds such as the landscape, the area of rain, clouds, sun, and moon as levels, similar to the under- and upperworld systems of the old Mexica people, to which colors, behaviors, and intentions of different entities are assigned. For example, the entities of the black underworld are called nopuerikok (Barceló Sifontes Abreu 1982). Indeed, also the Catholic missionaries Cesáreo de Armellada and Mariano Salazar, who worked in the Gran Sabana throughout the twentieth century mentioned that this term was used by a group of Indigenous people living in Guyana (Armellada and Salazar 2007: 137). Yet, none of the Pemón people I asked about this term knew of any such denomination, although they did not rule out the possibility that their ancestors could have called dangerous entities or other real human beings by this name. According to Armellada and Salazar (2007: 137), the nonopueni are “a kind of dwarf species” who live in the underworld and who are responsible for seismic movements. The very idea of cosmological layers had already been introduced by the German anthropologist Koch-Grünberg, who described the Taurepán concept of worlds as follows: “Under our earth it is just like here, a sky, mountains, rivers, forest. There are three layers under our earth. For those who live below, the floor of those who live above them is heaven” (1923: 175).4 According to Koch-Grünberg there are ten upper-world layers: “places like this one with many inhabitants. The floor of the upper layers always forms the sky of the lower ones.”5 These individual areas become smaller and smaller upwards and downwards, “since the whole is more or less conceived as a sphere” (1923:

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176).6 His collection of myths contains the story of Wazamaímē, who, on the instructions of his mother-in-law, digs a hole so deep that he “penetrates the sky which is under the earth” (Koch-Grünberg 1923: 175; 1916: 112). He further mentioned that there appear to be more “layers” (the German original word is “Abteilungen,” sections) known only by the “strongest shamans”: “There are people like us in all these places” (Koch-Grünberg 1923: 175).7 The “people” that live directly under the local earth, called onóbeleko, are as human as the Pemón, only “smaller and fatter” and with a right eye only, since the left one had been cut out in early childhood. Like their human counterparts, they have large plantings of Yucca (Koch-Grünberg 1923: 175). As Armellada and Salazar (2007: 137) mention, also the nopuerikok entities have a lot of Casabe bread due to an intensive yucca production. Barceló Sifontes Abreu (1982), divided the upper world not in ten but into five layers: the landscape with table mountains (tepuy), the savannah (tei), and the water (tuna) belong to the first level. She named that area nonkiran, “tierra” (earth), associated with the color red. The area of the etito or “rey de los zamuros” (“king of the vultures,” also known as the “king vulture”) lies between the earth and the clouds and is linked to the color roriwa (blue-green). It is the habitat of the birds. However, today’s specialist could not confirm these terms as taxonomically relevant to Pemón cosmology. Sifontes Abreu may have mistaken nonkiran with nonapi, which is the term for the red ferrous earth of the savannah. Equally questionable is what she called the uradanta layer, the location of lightning (warana-pi patasek), because this term actually means “the end of the world,” a “dark place,” or “a kind of tunnel” (Armellada and Salazar 2007: 207). According to Armellada and Salazar (2007: 219), lightning belongs to the level of the clouds; while the king vultures inhabit the level above. The association of the color blue(-green) with that area can neither be found in any other academic reference nor could I confirm its existence in contemporary Indigenous discourse. The anthropologist David Thomas writes that “it is my experience that . . . the religion of the Pemón does not go deeply into cosmological notions” (1973: 35, qtd. in Halbmayer 2010: 194). Halbmayer (2010) wonders why Thomas changed his mind when a few years later he published about a prophetess, who claimed in 1974, that the Archangel San Miguel had appeared to her. In June– July 1975, Thomas realized a short field trip to Uriman and Wonkén where he interviewed leaders of what he labeled “the San Miguel movement.” Although he anonymized his sources of information, his “Informant B” can be identified as the well-known ipukenak pachi (female ritual leader) Lucencia Decelis who—just like other ipukenak participate in the orekotón ritual (see below)— had a transspecific interaction with San Miguel nearby Ikabarú. Based on this short visit and an analysis of a few words used in areruya and cho’chimuh songs,

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Thomas concluded that: “An analysis of the transcription of the songs of San Miguel . . . shows that: l) the shape is analogous and directly comparable with the songs of the Hallelujah and the Chochimuh” (1976: 39).8 He also published a drawing by Decelis used to explain how the orekotón rituals work, which Thomas is limiting to the “San Miguel movement.”9 In this drawing several zones of timescape layers are represented: Wei/God, purgatory, orekotón (world),10 paradise of the shamans, world, and hell (see Thomas 1976: 43). Based on my own conversations with orekotón specialists (Lewy 2011, annex 2: 20; 2012: 61) similar designations of these layers or timescapes may be found there: the wakü pata (paradise), the kak münata (heaven’s gate, or what Thomas referred to as “Wei,” (Dios or God), and the makoi area (Thomas’s “paradise of the shamans,” or hell) around the cho’chi (church or ritual house, Thomas’s orekotón). What is missing in Thomas’s descriptions is the transspecific interaction that in the very moment of song and dance performances produces transactive timescapes. Central parts of Decelis’s repertoire generated through her interactions with San Miguel are still in use today by orekotón specialists. Thus, it is not surprising that a specific “San Miguel movement” could neither be confirmed by Kersten (1988: 102)11 nor by myself during the fifteen years I spent living in that area (see also Lewy 2011: 49ff.). It must be emphasized that every ipukenak (ritual leader) in orekotón rituals (areruya and cho’chiman) has a relationship with a nonhuman entity12 in the wakü pata (paradise), one of the timescape layers in the Pemón multiverse. Ramón Oronóz had a transspecific relationship to San Miguel and Lucencia Decelis was a propagator of the orekotón movement. Both Oronóz and Decelis had invented the aguinaldo pemón13 sessions as part of orekotón rituals (Lewy 2011). It is also relevant that Decelis was an important ipukenak pachi (female ritual leader) as well as an aguinaldo pemón teacher in the orekotón community, something that was often mentioned to me by orekotón specialists. Thus, constructions of Pemón cosmologies in the academic literature are not only very vague, but sound practices have been largely ignored. The example of Thomas’s misconception of a “San Miguel movement” illustrates that including in one’s analysis songs as formalized sound interactions may lead to a better understanding of Pemón (or any Indigenous) cosmology. The analysis of formalized sound interactions not only helps to describe Indigenous concepts in a more adequate manner but also to understand how and/or in which ways specific entities of different collectives are interacting with each other, and transform the perceived world of the other. Formalized sounds are agents for creating transactive timescapes, an action that in Western words could be described as creativity or invention. This leads us to some of the central questions in this article: How can these transactive timescapes be identified? How is the

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associated auditory knowledge transmitted? To answer these questions a short reflection about the concepts of the multiverse and timescapes in Pemón cosmology is necessary.

The Pia Daktai, Serewarö, and Other Coexisting Timescapes In Lewy (2012), I proposed that the Pemón multiverse comprises the “mythical” or “the beginning-and-end” world (pia daktai) and the contemporary layer of “here and now” (serewarö) following some ideas proposed by Armellada and Guitérrez Salazar (2007). It bears mentioning that Gutiérrez Salazar characterized the pia daktai from a Christian missionary position, describing it as “glorified time of the ancestors” full of “harmony,” and the “here and now” (serewarö) as the contrasting epoch of envy and strife, triggered by the cultural hero Makunaima’s transformation of the world. Gutiérrez Salazar identified the basic axiom of the pia daktai timescape as a state when all “things”—or rather, all entities—“without exception, were people” (2002: 9). But in difference to the missionary’s concept, pia daktai is not a past but a coexisting timescape where all entities are always persons, and only in the serewarö, the “here and now,” do the entities of the pia daktai have different physicalities and are for example humans or animals. The two coexisting timescapes, pia daktai and serewarö, serve as a starting point for this discussion, as both are characterized, on the one hand, by landscape and/or spatial determinants and, on the other hand, by temporal aspects. All entities that can be seen by ordinary Pemón belong to the serewarö. The landscape layer is generated by the savannah, the tepuy (table mountains), and the tuna (water). In this landscape, various places such as waterfalls or caves can be located as mythscapes (Overing 2004), in which transspecific communication is possible. These spatial determinants are entrances to the pia daktai, the time of the beginning and the end. In the pia daktai, the individual landscape segments are further diversified, as there are individual layers of the landscape to which specific entities are assigned; for example, the mawariton (spirits) that live in the table mountains, and the rató, the father of all water entities.14 A further coexisting timescape is wakü pata (paradise), which is located in the area of the sun and can be contacted via the orekotón rituals (Lewy 2011). The venue for these rituals is the cho’chi (ritual house). The orekotón members include all those involved in the orekotón rituals (areruya and cho’chiman), that is, those living members of the Pemón who regularly perform the dance songs in the cho’chi as well as the mensajeros (messengers or agents) that take the yekatón (soul) of the human participants to the kak münata (heaven’s gate) and into the wakü pata. Between kak münata and wakü pata, the deceased yekatón of

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former human ritual participants live together with the Christian spirits, such as San Miguel, San Francisco, Jesús, and potorí (God). Deceased ritual leaders (ipukenak), such as Auka, Tarikirian, Püreri pachi, or Ramón Oronóz, are also there. These entities act during the rituals as mensajeros who accompany the living human yekatón on their journey from the body into their world and back again (Lewy 2011, 2012). The wakü pata is a timescape that coexists with the serewarö. During the dance song rituals held in the cho’chi, these two timescapes meet to create an overlapping transactive timescape. In addition, the makoi layer is generated whose evil entities try to kidnap the yekatón of human orekotón while dancing and singing. For this reason, the dancers are stomping their right foot on the floor to create a sound barrier,15 making it impossible for makoi entities to hear the dancers’ transspecific interaction with the Christian spirits in the wakü pata. The sound of the impact is said to make it more difficult for the makoi entities to hear the vocals directed towards the wakü pata (Lewy 2011, 2012).

Transmutation as Method The method used here for understanding the interlocking of visual perception and the sonic creation of the world was developed by Carlos Severi (2014), based on Jakobson’s concept of transmutation (see also Hill, Chapter 6, and Brabec de Mori, Chapter 4) or intersemiotic translation: . . . we could go a step further, and formulate the hypothesis that Jakobson’s logical distinction characterizes not only “language” and nonlinguistic codes, but also the exercise of thought itself. In this way, we could pass from an abstract opposition between “thought” (defined as rationality and categorization) and “language” (essentially defined as grammatical patterns) to the study of a set of multiple relations between forms of cognition (related, for instance, to ritual action and visual thinking) and intralinguistic, interlinguistic, and intersemiotic forms of translation. As we have seen, these forms of translation do not exist only between different languages, but also between different codes, and different pragmatic contexts, within a single culture (Severi 2014: 64).

Applying this idea of transmutation, one must consider the interwoven sound performances of myth, songs, and magic formulas as one semiotic code system that interacts with the visual code system as a second code system in an ontological unit. The appearance of this unit must be translated for our construction of “thoughts,” even if “each code is organized following its own rules. In other words, there is indeed semiotic heterogeneity” (Severi 2014: 50). This leads us back to the question of the transactive timescapes, as different semiotic sound performances produce different effects on the transformation

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of the world(s). Here, transmutation as method serves for an understanding of how visual and auditory code systems interact and how this interaction is related to the process of constituting transactive timescapes. The main source for revealing that code system lies in its practices and transmissions.

The Metacommunication of Myths As mentioned above, a myth can be stripped of its sound dimension, lowering the quality of transspecific interactions to the semantic level of a plot that can be rendered in written language (See Hill, Chapter 6). The timescape pia daktai can be identified via an analysis of myths. In this context, the notion of “myth” describes those interactions that are located in the pia daktai timescape, in which all human and nonhuman entities—such as animals or elements like fire, water, or rain—are humans. It is a kind of personhood in which the species were distinguished by their physical characteristics, such as, long noses, wide mouths, etc. Furthermore, the notion of myth refers to reflexive moments in performance that can directly influence the interactions and perceptions of entities in other timescapes, in particular in the serewarö, the “here and now.” One of my Pemón teachers explained that the extract of written myth in general is seen as a manual of how pia humans interact with each other inside the mythical timescape (pia daktai), and how this interaction can affect entities in the serewarö: in other words, how “humans with knowledge” can transform the world of the Other by using this interaction with the pia humans. Even from the extracted version of a written myth, the mechanism of the performed version can be reconstructed. It can be shown how the telling of a myth transcends timescapes while being performed. The following example of a transcribed myth illustrates this kind of transcendence: In bygone times, the shaman Ameluazaípu lived on the headwaters of the Surún16 at the savannah Mauarí-baté17 near the Waitiliyén Mountains. Just at the moment when he was vomiting water,18 the Mauarí Uazala-lueni encountered him. He was vomiting water as well not far from him. They talked to each other until the Mauarí walked away. Other people called on Ameluazaípu, asking him to dance and drink Kashiri [manioc beer] with them. Only he knew how to dance and to sing Muruá. He invented it on his own. So he went there to dance. His sister was Aleunápen. He danced with his sister. A lot of people danced behind them. Then Ameluazaípu became drunk so that he was not able to dance anymore. He laid himself down into his hammock and fell into a deep sleep. Then

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another came and woke him up saying: “Let us continue dancing, brotherin-law!” He stood up to dance again. He went out of the house with a thick dance stick made of bamboo, Walungá, in his hand. He went on dancing. Then, the Mauarí came out of their house Me-tépe and met him. He sang: epá taká le yáwé uyé poléme epá taká le yáwé wazálálu-wenin a-ya a-ya ha-ya ameluazaípú epá taká le yáwe. (It was a lie that he vomited water when I met him It was a lie that he vomited water, Arára-killer.19 a-ya a-ya ha-ya Ameluazaípu, it was a lie that he vomited water.20) Then the Mauarí took him to their house Amatá-tepe.21 The Mauarí took his sister to their house Me-tépe. Before his sister entered the house, she hung up her pubic apron over the entry of the house.22 Ameluazaípu hung up his necklaces made of peccary teeth, Amatá, over the entry of the house. You can see the things there until today. If a person has to die and passes by that place, Ameluazaípu appears with his Amatá around his neck and the Walungá in the hand just in front of his house Amatá-tepe. The human who sees that goes home and dies in a few days. The song which Ameluazaípu had sung before he entered the house is the Muruá which we sing today—Ameluazaípu is the dance leader of the Mauarí. (Koch-Grünberg 1916: 123; English translation in Lewy 2016: 54).

The mawariton (Koch-Grünberg writes “Mauarí”) are spirits or, rather, regular pia humans of the pia daktai. They are mainly the interiorities of former pia’san, who are dead in the serewarö due to the absence of a physicality. They are bad spirits and therefore, they are feared by common Pemón people, but not by pia’san, who are always in touch with them. In the first part of the myth, the shaman Ameluazaípu and the Mauarí are talking to each other. Rather than rendering the content of that conversation, it is only said that they were vomiting water. This act refers to a widespread and widely known practice of pia’san to “strengthen the voice.” Koch-Grünberg (1923: 212) and Pemón specialists alike explain the importance of a shaman’s strong and well-trained voice (Lewy 2012: 58). Vomiting water is a metonym for “strengthening the voice” as well as for learning songs, as it is known that shamans learn songs from waterfalls (Lewy 2016: 53). Thus, it is implied that Ameluazaípu was learning a mawari song. The reader is told that Ameluazaípu had composed the song on his own (“Only he knew how to dance and to sing Muruá. He invented it on his own”). Yet, KochGrünberg’s insertion of the song lyrics—“It was a lie that he vomited water”—

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implies that the Mauarí did not teach Ameluazaípu any songs. Thus, the song lyrics contradict the information that Ameluazaípu had known the song and the dance of the Mauarí. This apparent ambivalence can be understood in terms of transmutation, considering that singing a muruá song is always a performance that merges the pia daktai and the serwarö timescapes, thus generating a third—a transactive—timescape. The lyrics of this prototype of muruá reflect the qualities of transspecific communication through the sound formalization of words. Singing stands as the highest quality level for interaction. The mawariton (spirits) may not listen to the spoken language of a myth because of the mentioned lower quality of transspecific communication, compared to a sung text that is intoned in the form of the respective genre. Koch-Grünberg’s informant Mayuluaípu performed the song as part of the myth for the ethnologist but not with the proper words. Mayuluaípu decided to sing about a lie that the pia’san vomited water. This means that Mayuluaípu was awake and audible not just for the Pemón collective, but also the mawariton (spirits). Since he had to assume that at the moment of telling and performing the myth—in particular the song for the ethnologist—this performance would be heard by the spirits as well, he disguised the song to protect the Pemón people in attendance, including Koch-Grünberg. Both circumstances (mentioning vomiting and singing about the lie of vomiting) indicate that a transmission of a muruá song from the Mauarí Uazála-luéni to Amēluazaípu had indeed happened, but it was not about the fact that it was a lie that he vomited water. The spirits appear on the narrative text level after the shaman became drunk. They know what Amēluazaípu describes in his song lyrics at the narrative level of the myth, and they are not pleased with that, which is the reason why they take him and his sister with them. On the transmission level between Koch-Grünberg and Mayúlaipu, the latter has taken the usual protective measure of disguising or masking song lines in muruá chants, a technique that most shamans use when it comes to their work of healing. And it is that technique of disguising that reveals the code system of how to establish a transactive timescape. In conclusion, myths can be seen as a performance of metacommunication. They reflect on what is happening when a transspecific interaction is established, and, at the same time, they act as sound entity transmitting how this transspecific interaction is perceived by human and nonhuman listeners. After showing how songs are used for establishing transactive timescapes, the characteristics of myths as part of magic formulas (tarén) will be further discussed. This deepens the idea of “myth as manuals” as my Pemón teacher said, explaining how myths reveal the semiotic systems of songs and magic formulas and how myths are used as a translator between them.

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Shaman Songs and Orekotón Performances Restricted Transactive Timescapes Shaman songs are agents that transcend the coexisting timescapes of the multiverse. They serve as an interaction between and for different pia pemón23 entities (including pia humans, humans, animals, plants, and spirits) in the pia daktai as well as in the serewarö. As shown in the above example of the myth of the muruá, it is the formalized sound of singing that has the highest quality of transspecific communication. There are other genres, notably the parishara and tukuik24 (Lewy 2011, 2012), in which dance, song, body painting, as well as the actual dance clothing play an important role in defining the qualities of transspecific communication. It is not the semantic meaning of the sung words but rather the formalization of the sound that makes transmutations (intersemiotic translations) possible. Thus, there are two forms of sound signs in such songs. One refers to the understanding of sung human Pemón words intelligible for all humans and spirits alike. The other form is the generally nonintelligible intonation of the same song, where words melt into nonsemantic syllables aiming to establish a restricted transactive timescape between the shaman and a specific spirit. Both forms aim at generating a transactive timescape, but do so by using two different forms of sound signs. The transactive timescape is generated by singing and, thus, transcending the coexisting timescape. While this restricted transactive timescape exists only between the shaman and the specific spirit in the very moment of interaction, an unrestricted transactive timescape includes more entities as will be explained below in the context of magic formulas. For interacting with the mawariton in the pia daktai, shamans use the genre of muruá or marik (the Pemón-Kamarakoto equivalent of the Taurepán’s muruá) as the formalized sound agent of transspecific communication between the pia’san (shaman) and the mawariton (spirits). At the semantic level of the myth, the text reflects the process of perception between the entities of the whole timescape. For example, birds are perceived by normal human beings in their animal form (physicality), while they are seen by the shaman as particularly beautiful mawarí (spirit) women in a humanized form, such as a pia pemón entity in the pia daktai timescape. In this timescape the interactions are defined on a pia pemón level. This means that the relationships and interactions take place as they would between humans. In the marik song teewanmaken müro by Raimundo Pérez (Kavanayén) from 2005 the action of seduction is reflected in the lyrics of which an excerpt is presented here. The shaman tries to seduce the spirits that he perceives as pia pemón women.25

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1. Teewanmaken müro: Kumaraka pachi 2. etarimaiko, Newunewu pachi 3. Tukuchiwa pachi, Newunewu pachi 4. etarimaiko, etarimaiko 5. Kumaraka pachi, Kumaraka pachi 6. etarimaiko, Turönöwö pachi

1. She refuses: Kumaraka pachi26 2. I insist, Newunewu pachi27 3. Tukuchiwa pachi,28 Newunewu pachi 4. I insist, I insist 5. Kumaraka pachi, Kumaraka pachi 6. I insist, Turönöwö pachi29

On the other hand, the performed song itself is an agent that connects the coexisting timescapes of the serewarö and the pia daktai, thereby generating a transactive timescape in the very moment of the performance. Without this transactive timescape, the healing could not be accomplished. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Penaken wechi yau Pemonkon wechi yau Iwoto yerü’po Iwarkarumutu pe Pioyok Penaken wechi yau Pemonkon wechi yau Pia pe wechi yau Iwoto yerü’po Iwarkarumutu pe Pioyok

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

When I was (in) the ancient times When I was a Pemón (human-human) I wore the bag, the tapir’s teeth Pioyok When I was (in) the ancient times When I was a Pemón (human-human) When I was the beginning I wore the bag, the tapir’s teeth Pioyok

The distinctive feature of the pia pemón entity is evident in the excerpt of the marik song pioyok30 by Raimundo Pérez from 2005 demonstrated above. The mawari, that is, the pia pemón entity of the pioyok, once gave the song to the living via a pia’san (shaman). It needs to be mentioned that the pia’san is a living human being that can interact regularly with spirits. The spirits respect this special human being. They can even be dominated by the pia’san. Most of the spirits are former living pia’san. After they died, they left their bodies to stay with their yekaton (soul) in the table mountains with all other spirits. While pia’san are alive, they have the same perception as all other spirits, which means they are able to recognize all pia pemón entities. It is a sensory perception that makes pia’san unique in the human society, an ability that is requested for healing. In the marik song pioyok, the singer is pioyok (“I”) who tells that he wore a necklace when he was a human (line 2), like Amēluazaípu in the myth.

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In addition, the excerpted lyrics of the marik songs paiyo and paitata both by Raimundo Pérez from 2005 refer to the metacharacteristic of an entity that is perceived by the human eye in the serewarö, and with its characteristics of a pia pemón entity in the pia daktai: the latter perspective is reserved for the pia’san only. In the marik song paiyo illustrated below it is the long mouth of the fish paiyo: 1. Tüpotü yakanok 2. Paiyo 3. yei, yei

1. With his long mouth 2. Paiyo 3. yei, yei

And in the marik song paitata presented below it is the red color karutu of the fish paita (lines 1 and 4) that exist in both timescapes: as animal body in the serewarö and as an anthropomorphic pia pemón in the pia daktai. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Karutu epu do’no Esemenuka potü mö Paita, Paita Karutu epu do’no Tunawada rarimö Esemenuka potü mö Paita, Paita Tu’karo yemenuru dau Moroko yemenuru dau Esemenuka potü mö Paita, Paita

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Under the root of the karutu tree I painted myself (the body) Paita, Paita Under the root of the karutu tree In the great water I painted myself (the body) Paita, Paita With all my colors With the color of the fish I painted myself (the body) Paita, Paita

Furthermore, the two dimensions of the muruá or marik song—1) the lyrics, 2) the formalized sound of the lyrics—illustrate the difference in the values of perceptions between seeing and hearing when transactive timescapes emerge. While the physical appearances can vary depending on the perception of the world(s), the sonically dominated interaction with each individual pia pemón entity is constant. In the course of the healing ritual, the spirits (mawariton) come to the place of healing. They are in their pia pemón state, that is to say, present as an anthropomorphic interior with their pia pemón characteristics, and must not be seen by the patient (see Lewy 2012). A direct reference to the reflection of the transspecific communication of “calling” (echiripöti)31 is shown in in the excerpt of the marik song weikoko by Raimundo Pérez from 2005, in which the shaman contacts the spirit. The “Son of Mawari” (line 3) is requested to transform himself. The shaman sings to contact the pia pemón interiority of the bird weikoko, which flies down and takes

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a seat on the shaman’s bank (murei). To make the appearance of weikoko pia pemón entity possible, the timescapes of the multiverse have to be transcended. 1. Tüiwanasen 2. Weikoko 3. Imawari müre ko 4. Weikoko

1. Transform yourself! 2. Weikoko 3. Son of Mawari 4. Weikoko

The text of the second song called pioyok reflects the performance of the healing as well. In this performance, several entities in the pia pemón state are present. Singing—in its ontological unity of the performance of formalized sound and semantic level of text—stands for the presence of the respective entity “with certainty” (Wittgenstein 1970). According to Koch-Grünberg, one way this was accomplished was by changing the voice: Suddenly you hear a rough voice speaking and singing. Rato, the “water mother,” the monster of the rivers, has appeared. Then again, a very high, female voice can be heard, sometimes close, sometimes far. An excellent ventriloquism. One voice quarrels with the other. (Koch-Grünberg 1923: 196)32

There is also a change on the semantic level of text, which in its way also changes the formalization of the sound and/or musical form. In the process of healing, the text becomes increasingly incomprehensible phonetically, aiming to prevent other specialists from interacting with the spirits involved, as well as excluding other spirits by semiotic sound coding. In other words, the communication between the pia’san and the pia pemón entity or spirit becomes increasingly more private. This indicates the need to dissolve or alienate the semantic level of the text by the singer in the very moment of the interaction with the spirits. To summarize, the semiotic code of disguising the semantics of songs shows the following principle: less human intelligibility of the lyrics means a more established transactive timescape. This transactive timescape is fully established when pia’san and spirits are interacting. Common Pemón people are excluded visually but not auditorily. However, there is an auditory exclusion because of the unintelligible words and variations of the melodic figures. For this reason, access to the transactive timescape is restricted to shamans and specific spirits. The orekotón rituals (areruya and cho’chiman) had been created by transforming the original pia’san ritual (Lewy 2011, 2012) due to the increasing interaction between shamans and Christian missionaries (Butt 1960). While in the healing ritual of the shamans only the patient, the shaman and the respective spirits are present, in the orekotón rituals, a multitude of human and nonhuman entities are involved. Christian spirits or former ipukenak descend

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from the coexisting timescape waku pata (paradise) into the ritual room, similar to the spirits in the healing ritual. But then they rise into the kak münata with the yekatón (souls) of the human participants. For this reason, a transactive timescape is constituted. The innovation of orekotón rituals was realized by adding these two additional co-existing timescapes: the wakü pata (heaven) and the kak münata (heaven’s door). Thus, the intimate shaman-spirit interaction becomes a community ritual, which means that any participant can learn to be part of a transactive timescape. The orekotón transactive timesscape is built, in the very moment, when the messengers descend from the wakü pata into the cho’chi, the ritual house in the serewarö. This moment is called dapón33 (bank). Participants have to learn to receive their dapón by separating their yekatón from their body. Here, the singing continues to be intelligible for all humans and nonhumans. It is the dance that excludes the makoi (bad-spirits) by stomping with the right foot on the ground. The produced sound of the hard footsteps beating the soil makes it impossible for the makoi to hear the songs that contact the messengers in the wakü pata. However, it has to be pointed out that every ipukenak (ritual leader) or ipukenak pachi (female ritual leader) has a special relationship with a pia pemón entity. As I mentioned before, Ramon Oronóz had a special relationship to San Miguel, and Lucencia Decelis was a propagator. Furthermore, I interviewed a prophet in Kavanayén in 2006, who described to me how he establishes an interaction with San Francisco de Asís (Lewy 2011). Another experience refers to my interaction with Florinda Hernández, a propagator for the ipukenak Raúl from Uruyen, who died a few years ago. Raúl had a special relationship with püreri pachi (anthropomorphic interiority of the yucca plant). Florinda Hernández told me that the quality of intimate relationships is defined by the direct communication between human and nonhuman entities. She can see püreri pachi, but she does not interact with her. Thus, she still receives the songs from püreri pachi via Raúl. She sings songs aiming to interact with the yekatón of Raúl, Christian spirits, or püreri pachi. That means, she generates a transactive timescape in the very moment of singing and dancing areruya. In all these cases, the transspecific interaction takes place via the nonhuman orekotón living in the wakü pata, that is, former ritual leaders or Christian spirits (Lewy 2012). Thus, the hereby established transactive timescape is, like the shaman-spirit interaction, restricted. It is restricted to the participants of the orekotón ritual and the messengers from wakü pata. Certainly, orekotón rituals are now being practiced communally which distinguishes these rituals from the sole claim of the shaman’s knowledge. However, in both cases innovations and/or creative processes heavily depend on specialists, even though this seems somewhat more permeable in the case of the orekotón rituals. In all cases, the formalized vocalization transcends the

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timescapes of the multiverse and, thus, ensures a transspecific interaction of all taxonomically relevant pia pemón entities. In conclusion, it can be said that the restricted transactive timescapes in healing rituals are generated between the pia’san and the spirit by singing. The transactive timescape is established when the two parts are communicating, audible for common Pemón but unintelligible because of the lyrics and melodic variations. The access to the transactive timescape is limited as well, because the transactive timescape is established between the human and nonhuman orekotón by dancing. Sound barriers (foot stomping on the soil) exclude noninvited nonhumans (makoi). It is the body movement of dancing that may separate the soul from the body, and certain songs to reunite both parts in the final phase of the rituals (Lewy 2011).

Tarén Unrestricted Transactive Timescapes of Everyday Life The sematic codes of magic formulas (tarén) are different from those of songs. Magic formulas can be performed by any person who has the appropriate abilities and knowledge. The interaction takes place via the pia daktai timescape, although the aforementioned relationship between the shaman and the spirit or between the human and nonhuman orekotón is not necessary. When analyzing the principles of a magic formula (tarén) and its function, the following structure can be observed: in the first part of a tarén a description or “myth” is told. This story takes place in the pia daktai, the narrative background defined by the actions of the cultural heroes Makunaima and his brothers (Anschikran, Chirikö, etc.). In this first narrative part called emeté (Ernesto Pinto de Kukenán, Rubén Arfe de Chirikayán, cited in Armellada 1972: 50), one pia entity inflicts harm on a second pia entity. A third pia entity helps the second one to overcome that harm. In most cases, the third pia entity is either a predator entity or has another special relationship to the first one that is defined by domination. Typical stories deal with the moroné, diseases by which the first pia entity harms the second pia entity or one of its related family members. Usually, the most vulnerable member of the family will be attacked, so that in the end, there are more than two or three entities involved. It is important to note that the helping third pia entity knows how to attack the first one by aiming to cure the second one. In the narration part of the “Tarén Against the Moroné of the Ducks,” for example, the moroné of the ducks once attacked a child of a pia’san because the child had eaten duck’s meat (Armellada 1972: 55). It is said that the moroné of the ducks took the child’s yekatón with them. The child got sick and most

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likely would have died if the helping pia entity, the pia hawk, had not been able to locate the child and liberate its soul. The second part of the tarén narration includes the description of the performance of the magic formula, along with the explanation of how to think the words and to murmur them into air, water, or another material. In the case of charging the air with words, this ontological unit must be thrown or blown to the entity, whose visual perception it is attempting to change. The words are the names of the third entities, but not their names of the serewarö: the entities must be announced by their secret pia names. The transmission of the names takes place between a wise person (ipukenak) or someone in the process of becoming an ipukenak, although the original source are the shamans who received the secret names directly from the entities themselves. The transmission of knowledge is similar to the one in shaman songs and orekotón rituals. But how does the tarén work in the serewarö? When thinking and murmuring the names of the third pia entity, the perspective of a person in the serewarö is changed. For example, when discussing the theory of Amerindian perspectivism proposed by Viveiros de Castro (1997) with the Pemón specialist Balbina Lambos,34 she criticized his omission of the level of tarén, saying that: “A jaguar sees us as prey when it is hungry, but if it is not hungry, it does not see us. And in instances where a hungry jaguar sees us as prey, we can change its view with a magic formula.” To make her point, Balbina Lambos recounted the myth of the fire and the jaguar. This myth has been published by Koch-Grünberg (1916: 129), but not as an emeté (narrative part) of a tarén. The narration says that there was once a fight between the fire—which in the pia daktai has the appearance of a little man—and the jaguar. The jaguar lost the fight, and from this time on, he respected the fire, trying to avoid any contact with it. The “tarén to change the view of a hungry jaguar” (Balbina Lambos, personal information) refers to the pia entity of the fire: the third pia entity. By applying it to the jaguar, the hungry jaguar sees humans as fire and no longer as prey. The humans continue to see themselves as humans. Applying tarén means to claim to be the third pia entity in the serewarö. By murmuring the tarén to the hungry jaguar, the pia daktai is the operative timescape where the pia jaguar (the second pia entity) listens to the pretended human’s real name, which is the pia name of the fire. The result is that the perspective of the jaguar in the serewarö has been changed and he will not attack the humans (Lewy 2017; Lambos and Lewy 2018). This interaction between different semiotic systems (the visual and the sonic system) generates the transformation of the world as seen by the jaguar. The humans neither transform themselves nor are they transformed by others; it is only the hungry jaguar’s perception of the world which is being transformed. This process of generating certainty is the interaction of the auditory code sys-

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tem (the performance of magic formulas) with the visual code system. That is, I can convince any entity via its pia entity that “I am not Balbina Lambos or Matthias Lewy, but another pia entity that dominates the target entity by murmuring the names of that specific pia entity” (Lambos and Lewy 2018). Thus, in contrast to songs, magic formulas transcend the timescapes of the universe without contacting the spirits directly. They are used to inform the pia entity of a target entity by calling the name of the dominating third pia entity (the helper), so that the target entity becomes certain about the world he or she sees. Doing tarén stands for the creation of unrestricted transactive timescapes. Several entities are intentionally and/or unintentionally involved and the perception of these entities can be changed in the continuous coexistence of different, and therefore spatial-temporal discontinuities (Halbmayer 2004). In other words, it can be said that the semiotic system of magic formulas is different from that of songs, but both performances create a transactive timescape. The words of a magic formula include a specific name of a pia entity producing the effect of changing the perception of the world of the target entity or the other humans’ point of view in relation to the target entity. The myth is the emeté that serves as a “manual” or translator, as it reflects how the semiotic system was created and how it works. Finally, it bears mentioning that the framing of the mythical complex (myths, songs, magic formulas) is mainly defined by the known interactions between the pia entities in the pia daktai timescape. But the relations between the pia entities can also be generated by inventions or experiments beyond the shaman’s interactions. Magic formulas against various types of cancer, for instance, are relatively new; they are based on the idea that the pia entities of certain snake species are applied to the diseased cells of the human body, since it is snakes’ pia entities that destroy the damaged cells. Another example is the use of magic formulas to fight an illegal, violent land occupation by non-Indigenous Venezuelans on Indigenous territory in 2016. On a small section of approximately four thousand square meters, located on a slope, the non-Indigenous people threw stones, while the Indigenous people defended their space by their presence: they stood in four rows, each three to four meters apart without directly defending themselves or even attacking. Some of them practiced magic formulas. The principle of that magic weapon was to “humanize” the stones by experimenting with different known names of stone pia entities from other contexts, based on the idea that all stones are part of tey (savannah); that is, they were once transformed by Makunaima. Both, the stones and Makunaima, are therefore part of the collective. The tarén worked for most of the Indigenous defenders, mainly for those who had already experiences using magic formulas. Beginners suffered by being hit by stones.

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The process of “humanizing” things that are part of the collective and that can become taxonomically relevant points to the enormous capacities of the creative and generative dealings with the timescape pia daktai and the transactive timescape of a being tarén state that is a substantial part of the serewarö.

Conclusion As mentioned at the beginning, the concept of transmutation as method had been developed by Carlos Severi (2014) in the context of Yekuana intersemiotic relations between verbal and nonverbal signs. Similarly, the Wayampi “Suite” Moyotule (Beaudet 1983; 1997: 139) consists of several sound pieces that are assigned to other entities, such as monkeys, birds, insects, mammals, and fish, which in their entirety generate the anaconda. The sounding anaconda suite is thus the “acoustic image” of a “complex invisible being” (Severi 2014: 58). The method of transmutation was applied here to uncover the semiotic signs for establishing a transactive timescape. Such is a timescape in which entities located in different timescapes (pia daktai, wakü pata, serewarö) interact with each other, mainly through transspecific communication. Three performances were discussed that deal with the perceptions of “seeing” and “hearing”: Myth performances, shaman songs including orekotón rituals, and magic formulas. The first example of myth performance, transmitted via a written text, shows how the technique of disguise is used to hide semiotic codes by substituting them with another semiotic code. For individual performances, it is important to recognize that when the myth is being correctly performed, the spirits listen as well. Thus, it is necessary to take protective measures during the transmission process. The transmission of myths as spoken language is difficult to understand for the mawariton, though not incomprehensible. This is illustrated by the performance of emeté, the first part of a tarén performance. The pia entities are linked to individual positions of power (predator/prey) by telling the story (emeté), in which the order of the cosmos is constantly generated anew. For this reason, in the example referred to above, Mayuluaípu sings that “it is a lie,” which reflects the real action of disguising by substituting the semiotic codes. Here, it is to avoid the establishment of a transactive timescape and to protect the listeners. In shaman’s songs a verbal to nonverbal transposition takes place, whereby the higher the quality of the transactive timescapes, the more unintelligible the text becomes for common Pemón. The songs of the pia’san marik or muruá address specific entities in the pia daktai, inviting them to interact. For an intense, exclusive, and direct interaction between the pia’san and the mawariton, it is necessary to disguise human language (semantics or words). The degree of

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creativity and the generation of this interaction is left to these two entities, who constantly reproduce the order of the cosmos within their ontology. This also includes the orekotón rituals (areruya and cho’chiman). The difference to shaman rituals is that these rituals include more human groups as part of a temporal transspecific collective that is established by singing and dancing. The nonverbal sign in this context is produced by the body performance (foot stomping the soil) and by avoiding makoi (bad spirits) that could disturb the established transactive timescape. Beside singing shaman songs a second category of transactive timescape is produced by the magic formula tarén. By thinking, whispering, or chanting a tarén, the “naming” takes place; that is, the speaker defines the self as the healing pia entity. This creates an auditory certainty brought about via the pia entity of a target entity. This interaction does not include a reflexive moment of the target entity itself, because only shamans have the capacity to know who tries to change their world. Thus, the seen world is changed and/or redefined by formalized sound. In other words, the tarén itself is the vehicle of transmutation, as the human speaker sees him/herself as human while, for example, the jaguar sees the human as fire. The semiotic code of the pia daktai, which is described in the emeté (belonging to myth/narrative part of the tarén) refers to the situation which is applied in the serewarö by using the tarén. The pia daktai modus is applied to the jaguar but not to the humans. The jaguar stays inactive which means it is less a transactive but an actively transformed or changed timescape. This does not apply to the pia’san because they are always aware of all timescapes at once. It needs to be mentioned that transactive timescapes generated by magic formulas can be integrated as new parts into the coexisting timescape serewarö. This happens, for instance, in case a magic formula is applied and the produced circumstances stays in its crystalline state. By contrast, songs (eremuk) do not change or transform the serewarö in the way magic formulas do. While tarén via the pia daktai timescape defines the perspective of the world via an indirect interaction by pretending to be the specific pia entity, singing involves a direct interaction between a human pia entity (pia’san) and nonhuman pia entities. It is, therefore, reserved for the pia’san, because only they can actually act in the pia daktai. Newly created transspecific interactions are primarily practiced by ipukenak (wise person) who have the knowledge of the tarén. The very intimate interactions of the shamans and the very limited accessibility means that the ipukenak are preferred by ordinary Pemón when it comes to changing the world, which is the basis in the healing process of diseases. The degree of implementation is also much easier, as everyone—from the novice to the high-level specialist— can practice tarén.

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Finally, creativity and inventions are closely connected to the act of establishing a transactive timescape where transspecific communication between different coexisting timescape is possible. The transspecific communication is realized by three different forms of formalized sounds (speaking, singing, chanting) that represents three different semiotic systems: speaking refers to myth, singing to shaman’s song and the orekotón movement, and chanting and whispering to the magic formulas. As songs are mainly received from nonhuman entities (spirits in the pia daktai or Christian spirits in wakü pata), the act of innovation lies in contacting and receiving those songs. In the academic discourse, new songs are mainly perceived in the orekotón movement nowadays. Elsewhere I have dealt with the principles of appropriating Western Christian songs and their retransformation into the musical system of Indigenous people (Lewy 2011). Although changes in performance can be observed (e.g., in the aguinaldo pemón, Lewy 2012), the central intention to establish the transactive timescapes remains constant. In its restricted form (shaman songs and orekotón ritual), establishing transactive timescapes is reserved to the pia’san (shaman) and the contacted spirits or members of the orekotón community. In its unrestricted form, the constant transformation of the other’s perception by sounds generates transactive timescapes via tarén that define the world(s) of everyday life.

Matthias Lewy is a cultural anthropologist and comparative musicologist who received his PhD from Free University of Berlin. He was a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Brasilia (2014–19). Since 2019, he is Senior Scientist at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. For more than fifteen years he has been researching and working with Indigenous groups in the border region between Venezuela, Brazil, and Guyana. His focus is on auditory anthropology, Indigenous sound ontologies (“About Indigenous Perspectivism, Indigenous Sonorism and the Audible Stance: An Approach to a Symmetrical Auditory Anthropology,” 2017) and sorcery (“Los Cantos de Kanaima,” 2018). Further interests are in the field of collaborative research, collaborative archiving, and collaborative curating in the context of ethnographic museums. He participated in several exhibitions as sound curator, including the Humboldt Lab Berlin, Humboldt Forum Berlin, Grassi Museum Leipzig, and the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève. He coedited the volume Sudamérica y Sus Mundos Audibles (with Bernd Brabec de Mori and Miguel García, 2015) and authored the article “Generating Ontologies of Historical Sound Recordings: Interculturality, Intercollectivity, and Transmutation as Method” (2019).

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Notes 1. This chapter is based on cooperative work with the Indigenous specialists of the Pemón (Arekuna, Taurepán, Kamarakoto). For the last fifteen years, I have lived and worked in the border area between southern Venezuela, northern Brazil (Estado Roraima), and neighboring Guyana. 2. The term “collective” is used to describe the interactions of all relevant entities (e.g., humans, plants, animals, ghosts) as part of a general taxonomy of the Pemón groups (Descola 2005). It must be underlined that the relevant Pemón taxonomy is not a continuum. 3. The notion ipukenak means wise person as well as it is the designation of the orekotón’s (areruya, cho’chiman) ritual leader. In the text it will be translated into English in parentheses due to the used corresponding meaning. 4. Original Text: “Unter unserer Erde ist es geradeso wie hier, ein Himmel, Berge, Flüsse, Wald. Es gibt drei Abteilungen unter unserer Erde. Für die weiter unten Wohnenden ist der Boden der über ihnen Wohnenden der Himmel” (Koch-Grünberg 1923: 175). All translations are mine. 5. Original text: “zehn Orte wie hier mit vielen Bewohnern. Der Boden der oberen Abteilungen bildet immer den Himmel der unteren” (Koch-Grünberg 1923: 176). 6. Original text: “da das Ganze mehr oder weniger als Kugel gedacht ist” (Koch-Grünberg 1923: 176). 7. Original text: “An allen diesen Orten gibt es Leute wie wir, aber klein und dick” (KochGrünberg 1923: 175). 8. Original text: “Un análisis de la transcripción de los cantos de San Miguel . . . muestra que: l) la forma es análoga y comparable directamente con los cantos del Aleluya y del Chochimuh,” (Thomas 1976: 35). 9. Decelis’s original manuscript was analyzed by the author, but cannot be discussed any further due to source protection. 10. Thomas writes that the notion “orekoton” refers only to ritual leaders (1976: 45). Due to my experiences with areruya and cho’chiman, all entities (human and nonhuman actors) who participate in an areruya or cho’chiman are orekotón (Lewy 2011). 11. Kersten (1988: 102) writes in a footnote (18): “The San Miguel cult, according to two Arekuna and Taurepan informants, is called ‘San Ramón,’ after the Kamarakoto Indian who started it. He was (or is) according to this personal communication ‘the holy man who had a vision and then become founder and leader of the church.’ In 1985 in the Kabanayén and Santa Helena (Taurepan) areas it was not known, whether the San Miguel and/or San Ramon phenomena still existed.” 12. The term “entity” is used here from the conceptual field of metaphysics as “thing” and/or “being.” It appears in relevant visible and invisible fields but, above all, in audible areas of perceptions. 13. “Aguinaldo” is a Venezuelan music genre performed during Christmas time from the 16th of December until the 31st of December in Christian god service and in special events. Aguinaldos pemón are versions of Venezuelan aguinaldos in the Pemón language or new songs performed by the leader of orekotón. The songs are received directly from nonhuman agents or prophets. Aguinaldo pemón are played during the entire year in the beginning or final phases of orekotón rituals (Lewy 2011, 2012). 14. Due to ethical reasons only known entities or groups of entities like the mawariton (sprits of the table mountains) and the rató (spirit of the water) are mentioned in this chapter.

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15. Brabec de Mori (2015: 109f.) describes this for the festivities of the Shipibo-Konibo. The women wear skirts with seeds attached at the bottom (tanoni), which hit one another during the dance movements and thus fulfill the function of row rattles. The resulting sound serves as a barrier that keeps away certain spirits from human festivity: the rattle sound prevents them from hearing the songs that are also used to interact with the other spirits. 16. Surumú (footnote from Koch-Grünberg’s original, 1916: 123). 17. This is the “Creb-savannah” (footnote from Koch-Grünberg’s original, 1916: 123). 18. A kind of inner purification (footnote from Koch-Grünberg’s original, 1916: 123). Shamans drink water from time to time until they vomit, particularly water with foam taken from the cataracts. I often observed that they vomit several times and then drink again. 19. The narrator explicitly said that the words of the danced song are a bit different from common life (footnote from Koch-Grünberg’s original, 1916: 123). 20. The translation is made by the narrator and reflects only his interpretation (footnote from Koch-Grünberg’s original, 1916: 123). 21. Two mountains close to each other (footnote from Koch-Grünberg’s original, 1916: 124). 22. On a rock (footnote from Koch-Grünberg’s original, 1916: 124). 23. The notion “pia pemón entity” refers to all kinds of interiorities in all timescapes. There are numbers of different names for spirits, human, animal, and plant interiorities (like souls) which can be different from their “pia human” designations. 24. Parishara and tukuik are dances practiced together. They are performed for hunting (parishara) or fishing (tukuik) and at the parishara festival. At this festival, named after the parishara dance, various groups from the area gathered in one place. 25. It also illustrates the gender discourse on power within the collective. The human pia’san approaches the spirit women by being adamant. The pia pemón women must reject the pia’san’s advances by saying that they have no interest. Although this insistence is a demonstration of the pia’san power, he acts on behalf of a suffering person. He must intimidate the mawari women in order to find the soul for his client. If a pia’san pachi (female shaman) performs that ritual, the gender roles of the mawariton are reversed. 26. Kumaraka pachi is the name of a female mawariton/bird. 27. Newunewu pachi is the name of a female mawariton/bird. 28. Tukuchiwa pachi is the name of a female mawariton/bird. 29. Turönöwö pachi is the name of a female mawariton/bird. 30. Pioyok is the name of a male mawariton/bird. 31. This term is still used today, for example, when people are called over a long distance (Lewy 2011: 94). 32. Original Text: “Plötzlich hört man eine rauhe Stimme sprechen und singen. Rato, die ‘Wassermutter,’ das Ungeheuer der Flüsse, ist erschienen. Dann wieder läßt sich eine ganz hohe, weibliche Stimme hören, bald nahe, bald fern. Eine vorzügliche Bauchredekunst. Die eine Stimme zankt mit der anderen” (Koch-Grünberg 1923: 196). 33. The notion “dapón” means “bank” referring to a base of something or someone. A typical example is the soil that serves as base for a plant. The dapón of every ritual participant is in the wakü pata (paradise). Orekotón messengers deliver the dapón down from wakü pata to the ritual house. The moment when the dapón meets his or her owner can be described as trance (Lewy 2011, 2012). 34. Balbina Lambos is an Indigenous researcher. She was Capitana in the Canaima community, inhabited mainly by Pemón-Kamarakoto.

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References Armellada, Cesáreo de. 1972. Pemontón Taremurú. Caracas: UCAB. Armellada, Cesáreo de, and Mariano Gutiérrez Salazar. 2007. Diccionario Pemón: PemónCastellano, Castellano-Pemón. Caracas: UCAB. Barceló Sifontes Abreu, Lyll. 1982. Pemontón Wanamari: to maimú, to eseruk, to patasék; el Espejo de los Pemontón: su Palabra, sus Costumbres, su Mundo. Caracas: Monte Avila Ed. Beaudet, Jean-Michel. 1983. Les Orchestres de Clarinettes Tule Des Wayãpi Du Haut-Oyapock. Paris: Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. ———. 1997. Souffles d’Amazonie: Les Orchestres Tule Des Wayãpi, Vol. 3. Nanterre: Société d’Ethnologie. Brabec de Mori, Bernd. 2015. “El Oído no-humano y los Agentes en las Canciones Indígenas: ¿un ‘Eslabón Perdido’ Ontológico?” In Sudamérica y Sus Mundos Audibles: Cosmologías y Prácticas Sonoras de los Pueblos Indígenas, Indiana 8, ed. Bernd Brabec de Mori, Matthias Lewy, and Miguel García, 99–117. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. Butt, Audrey J. 1960. “The Birth of a Religion. The Origin of a Semi-Christian Religion among the Akawaio”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 90: 66–106. Descola, Philippe. 2005. Par-delà Nature et Culture. Paris: Gallimard. Gutiérrez Salazar, Mariano. 2002. Cultura Pemón. Guía Mítica de la Gran Sabana. Caracas: UCAB. Halbmayer, Ernst. 2004. “Timescapes and the Meaning of Landscape: Examples from the Yukpa.” In Kultur, Raum, Landschaft: Die Bedeutung des Raumes in Zeiten der Globalität, ed. Ernst Halbmayer and Elke Mader, 136–54. Frankfurt: Brandes & Apsel. ———. 2010. Kosmos und Kommunikation. Weltkonzeptionen in der südamerikanischen Sprachfamilie der Cariben, Vol. 1, 2. Wien: Facultas. Jakobson, Roman. 1959. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” On Translation 3: 232–39. Kersten, Maarten. 1988. “Indian Dances for Chichikrai: Three Syncretistic Cults among the Pemon-Indians of Venezuela.” In Continuity and Identity in Native America, Essays in Honor of Benedikt Hartmann, ed. Maarten Evert et al, 84–110. Leiden: Brill. Koch-Grünberg, Theodor. 1916. Vom Roroima zum Orinoco. Ergebnisse einer Reise in Nordbrasilien und Venezuela in den Jahren 1911–1913, Vol. 2. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. ———. 1923. Vom Roroima zum Orinoco. Ergebnisse einer Reise in Nordbrasilien und Venezuela in den Jahren 1911–1913, Vol. 3. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. Lambos, Balbina, and Matthias Lewy. 2018. “Theodor Koch-Grünberg’s Living Musical Archive and the ‘Sharing Knowledge’ Project: Reflections about an Engaged Ethnomusicological Project.” In V Jornada de Etnomusicologia e III Colóquio Amazônico de Etnomusicologia, ed. Sonia Chada, Líliam Barros Cohen, Adriana Couceiro, Marcus Facchin Bonilla, Paulo Murilo G. do Amaral, and Tainá M. Magalhães Façanha, 74–95. Belém: UFPA. Lewy, Matthias. 2011. Die Rituale areruya und cho’chiman bei den Pemón (Gran Sabana/Venezuela). Berlin: FU Berlin. ———. 2012. “Different ‘Seeing’ – Similar ‘Hearing.’ Ritual and Sound among the Pemón (Gran Sabana/Venezuela).” Indiana 29: 53–71. ———. 2016. “The Transformation of the ‘Worlds’ and the Becoming of ‘Real Human’: Amerindian Sound Ontologies in Guiana’s Songs and Myths.” In Music in an Intercultural Perspective, ed. Antenor. F. Corrêa, 49–60. Brasília: Strong Edições. ———. 2017. “About Indigenous Perspectivism, Indigenous Sonorism and the Audible Stance: Approach to a Symmetrical Auditory Anthropology.” El Oido Pensante 5(2): 1–22. ———. 2018. “Los Cantos de Kanaima.” ILHA Revista de Antropologia 20(1): 89–116.

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Overing, Joanna. 1985. “Today I Shall Call Him ‘Mummy’: Multiple Worlds and Classificatory Confusion.” In Reason and Morality, ed. Joanna Overing, 152–79. London: Travistock Publications. ———. 2004. “The Grotesque Landscape of Mythic ‘Before Time’; the Folly of Sociality in ‘Today Time’: An Egalitarian Aesthetics of Human Existence.” In Kultur, Raum, Landschaft: Zur Bedeutung des Raumes in Zeiten der Globalität, ed. Elke Mader and Ernst Halbmayer, 69–90. Frankfurt am Main: Brandes and Apsel/ Südwind. Severi, Carlo. 2014. “Transmutating Beings: A Proposal for an Anthropology of Thought.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(2): 41–71. Thomas, David John. 1973. Pemon Demography, Kinship, and Trade. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. ———. 1976. “El movimento religioso de San Miguel entre los Pemon.” Antropológica 43: 3–52. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1997. “Die kosmologischen Pronomina und der indianische Perspektivismus.” Bulletin de la Société Suisse des Américanistes, Schweizerische AmerikanistenGesellschaft 61: 99–114. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1970. Über Gewißheit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Part III   

Creativity and Shifting the Context of Signification

CHAPTER 8

Basketry, Mythology, and Shamanism in the Amerindian Cultures of Venezuela An Ancestral “Art” Facing Innovation MARIE CLAUDE MATTÉI MULLER

  

Basketry1 is undoubtedly one of the Amerindian peoples’ most used handicrafts, especially in the Amazon region, considering the amount and diversity of artifacts woven from vegetable fibers. As is well known nowadays, in addition to playing a fundamental role in the material culture, the traditional basketry of Amazonian peoples can also convey messages concerning the producers’ perception of nature, social organization, and, in other words, their conception of the world. Since the 1960s, anthropological research has discovered a close relationship between basketry, mythology, and shamanism in most Amerindian cultures. This relationship, not only rooted in the woven artifacts’ iconography but also manifest in most ritual activities has been described in several studies on South American basketry, especially with regard to the Guianas to which the Indigenous basketry of Venezuela belongs (Caputo 2014; Mattéi Muller 2009; Davy 2007; van Velthem 1998, 2005; Díaz Peña 1993; Guss 1989; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985; Ribeiro 1985; Mattéi Muller and Henley 1978; Hames and Hames 1976; Wilbert 1975; Roth [1924] 1970). During the past four decades, the deeper analysis of Amazonian mythologies has led not only to the rereading function and enhanced understanding of myths but has fostered a new approach to the intertwining of myths and the “arts of memory,” in Carlo Severi’s terms (2012: 457). This includes basketry. In several publications on the so-called oral societies of the Americas, Severi has studied the nature and role of the iconography of Amerindian basketry by attributing to it an informational and mnemonic function. At the same time, Amerindian cultures have undergone significant changes on social, economic, territorial, political, and spiritual levels. This also holds true for the Indigenous peoples2 of Venezuela. While most of them have gradually abandoned certain ancestral practices such as working with ceramics, wood, and cotton, however, some communities from different linguistic families have breathed new life into basketry by using a new iconography, new tech-

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niques, new raw materials, and by producing new objects and creating a new style. Similar to the role of ancestral basket-making as a guarantor of history and knowledge woven into the body of the artifacts, such changes and innovations have modified not only the role of basketry within the socioeconomic organization of communities but also its memorizing power. In this chapter I address these issues by focusing on the basketry of five peoples of Venezuela—the Panare, Ye’kwana, Warekena, Yanomami, and Warao— using recent data and taking the country’s current situation into consideration.3

Basketry and Mythology The study of Amerindian mythologies, especially those of South America, has experienced an unprecedented boom in the second half of the twentieth century, when the work of Lévi-Strauss introduced a fundamental methodological break with the anthropological currents of that time. In his perspective, myths are no longer considered to be simple, “naive” tales of so-called primitive societies with unwritten traditions, but are crucial sources of information that represent communication channels between the “real,” visible world and the “mythical,” invisible world. These can be seen and transmitted only by shamans through their performances and chants. It is precisely in the myths that the origin and the raison d’être of all things, including basketry, can be found. The Mythical Origin of Basketry In most Amerindian cultures, basketry is associated with the supernatural world of primordial times. Specific spirits are generally seen as providers and guardians of the vegetal material used in the production of various artifacts. In the following I introduce five of these spirits from myths of the Panare, Ye’kwana, Warekena, Yanomami, and Warao. Amana According to the Panare,4 a Carib-speaking people living in Bolívar state in southern Venezuela, Amana is the spirit who owns mananke, the itiriti-plant (Ischnosiphon arouma),5 the most important fiber for many Amazonian cultures, especially Carib and Arawak speakers. Amana takes the form of a huge multicolored snake, anaconda with coral skin , that lives in swampy areas where the itiriti plant grows. But even Amana has his private places where the weaver could not collect the raw material. So, the Panare weaver must know exactly where, when, and how to collect it. If he breaks the rules, he may provoke the fury of Amana who shoots deadly arrows with his breath, called amana tachi.

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They are nothing other than the rainbow, the principle of death in the Panare worldview.6 Edodicha According to the Ye’kwana, who also belong to the Carib family, the itiriti plant was brought from heaven by the ancestral spirit Edodicha, an ally of the creator Wanadi. In the mythical world, baskets are objects reserved for culture heroes who are endowed with shamanic powers and capable of transforming the baskets into devouring monsters if necessary. When the old Maha’noma wanted to take revenge on the Shiricheña, the Star People, he wove many big baskets and threw them in the river where they turned into anaconda, caiman, alligator, piranha, and ray. He put a lot of big baskets in the canoe. He threw them in the water. He threw one, and it changed into an anaconda; another and it changed into a caiman, another into an alligator, another into a piranha, another into a ray. The lagoon was filled with vermin and [demons] Mawari. Maha’noma wove, wove, and threw away his baskets (Civrieux 1970: 208).7

Nápiruli According to the Warekena, an Arawakan people living in Amazonas state near the Brazilian border, the creator Nápiruli brought the baskets of itiriti in the three colors of white, black, and red, to this world, along with many other things. “Then came the days of Nápiruli’s arrival . . . The people were very joyful and you could hear the sound of all the instruments that existed in the world coming from the sky and from Nápiruli’s retinue. They brought instruments and Nápiruli brought many kabána kuali (petroglyphs) depicting the ways of how to build houses, make baskets, handicrafts, canoe designs, benches, the imákanasi, and people’s names” (González Ñanez 1980: 118).8 Pokorayoma and Thothoriyoma For the Yanomami, also living in Amazonas state, it was the female spirit Pokorayoma who wove the baskets for the first time. She found them lovely and gave her knowledge to the human beings. Then she turned into the partridge, called pokora that builds pretty and well-made nests on the ground. The Yanomami weavers occasionally also use itiriti fibers, but their favorite material for baskets is the vine masimasi9 (Heteropsis flexuosa, Araceae), jealously guarded by the female spirit Thothoriyoma,10 the guardian of all hanging vines: “If you plan to collect masimasi vine, you should not tell anyone, not even your husband, because Thothoriyoma can also hear you and hide, so you will not find anything,” advised a Yanomami grandmother in Koshekapïwei (Upper Orinoco, Mattéi Muller 2009: 113).

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The Siawani Cannibals and the Metamorphosis of a Young Warao The Warao tell that in the remote days of their first ancestors, they did not know how to weave baskets. It was only after a cruel battle with a people of cannibals named Siawani that they first got to know all the diverse kinds of baskets and tools that they later possessed. In the Orinoco delta, palm trees grow in abundance, in particular the moriche palm, but itiriti was scarce on the Warao’s land. So, one day an adolescent boy told his parents that he would turn himself into an itiriti plant: I am going to transform myself so that our descendants will no longer suffer from a lack of itiriti. I want those Warao who will be born as craftsmen to employ my body in the manufacture of many different useful thing. Just a few days after . . . he began transforming himself into a plant, his feet into the roots and his hair into the leaves. (Wilbert 1975: 5)

For the Warao and Panare the itiriti spirit is a snake. “The Itiriti-Spirit appears in the dreams of the weaver in the form of a serpent, with a cigar and a set of tutelary spirits” (Wilbert 1975: 5). Thus, the itiriti is endowed with personhood and a specific magic that causes respect and fear. For this reason, the preparation of such material must be approached very carefully and in such a way that the leavings from the stem’s epidermis are not treated as mere waste. It is forbidden to burn worn-out baskets among these groups. They must be left to decompose naturally. In short, in the mythologies from the cultures mentioned above, the basketry material is always conceived as the property of supernatural beings so that human beings have only the usufruct along with by numerous constraints. The weaver must ask for permission from the masters even to collect the material. He is also neither entirely free to choose the form of the baskets nor their designs and colors but has to observe the rules of his culture’s weaving tradition, as will be discussed below.

Iconography of Guianese Indian Basketry The ethnographers who described Guianese Indigenous arts and crafts during the first half of the twentieth century tended to assume that the designs of tessellate11 basketry had consistent and widely accepted meanings. Roth shows more than fifty tessellate baskets from various Indigenous groups of the Arawak, Warao, and Carib language families (Roth [1924] 1970: 356–67). Only for one or two of these designs does he give more than one meaning, thus leaving the reader to assume that the remainder of the motifs has a uniform meaning throughout Guiana. This is in fact far from true. The pattern identified

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Figure 8.1. Nutmeg (Roth [1924] 1970: 356), Woroto sakedi, the devil’s face paint (Guss 1989: 123).

by Roth as a representation of the nutmeg tree (Roth [1924] 1970: 356, fig. 168c) represents, according to the Ye´kwana of the Caura River, Woroto sakedi (Guss 1989: 172, fig. 1), a highly important icon of their basketry, to which I will return below. Guss included in his book this drawing published by Roth, but he did not mention Roth’s interpretation. Such a lack of uniformity in the interpretation of the drawings exists not only among different ethnic groups but also within the same ethnic group. What Guss calls Kutto (1989: 200, pl. 20), the ancestor of the frog kutto, is identified by Hames and Hames in roughly the same time period as Kikwe, another frog or a toad (1976: 19) in a Ye’kwana community of the Caura River (Bolivar state) and as Washadi, tapir (1976: 20), in a Ye’kwana community of the Padamo River (Amazon State). When I showed a copy of the photo of Kutto to the Ye’kwana in Maripa on the Caura River, they said that this was not Kutto but the toad Kwekwe, sleeping, which you could tell by the position of its legs. When anthropologist Paul Henley and I tackled the problem of the meaning of drawings on the Panare twill-plaited round basket, wapa (Mattei Muller and Henley 1978), we made the same observation in the communities of Colorado and Turiba where the best weavers were found. The identification of some zoomorphic figures was Figure 8.2. Kutto, frog; only universally accepted when there was a very Kwekwe or kikwe, toad; or obvious visual clue in the figure such as the mon- Washadi, tapir? (Hames and key with its tail curling upwards or downwards. Hames 1976: 20).

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As for the non-figurative drawings, only three of them were identified—ya’ra pujpë, tortoise shell, and ankata pujpë, corydoras shell (Callichthys callichthys), from their resemblance to the shells’ dorsal part, and akërë yon, jaguar’s eye, from the small black crosses very common in the itiriti basketry. The Panare iconographic tradition has a multiplicity of beautiful combinations of geometric, kinetic, and chromatic patterns with two or three colors for which the only identification we got was tuwën tyamin, which means “free drawing.” These drawings were no longer evenly distributed within the same ethnic group. The richness and diversity of the iconographic repertoire varies in terms of communities and geographic areas. When we showed photos of wapa woven by the Panare of the Colorado area to those of the Guaniamo River, who were more isolated from the criollo world at that time, the latter not only failed to recognize the drawings of the wapa but even refused to believe that they were woven by Panare. They still knew their mythology and still wove utilitarian artifacts, but they did not use these kinds of icons. The same observation has been made for the Ye’kwana basketry of Venezuela (Caputo 2014: 420). Even the weavers do not always agree on the meaning of the drawings that cover their baskets and some of them become highly censorious when told about the meanings given by members of other communities or even their own community. The inconsistencies concerning the identification of certain drawings apparently imply that their importance lay not in the terms used to identify them but that they were carriers of a set of referents, or of relations, which could vary according to context, community, or weaver. One point seems clear and generally accepted, however: basketry has a supernatural, mythical owner therefore it is in myths that anthropologists of the second half of the twentieth century have searched for answers.

Iconography and Mythology The Mythical Bestiary Amerindian myths, especially the genesis myths, describe a world where the boundary between human beings and animals is fluid. To a human the animal is a kind of alter ego with whom s/he can communicate. Mythical times are the age of metamorphosis when every being and every thing were allowed to change their state. The myths’ protagonists make abundant use of their power to pass from a human appearance to that of an animal and vice versa. Four animals predominate in the mythological Amazonian bestiary: the snake, the jaguar, the monkey, and the frog or toad. All of them are represented not only on ceramics, paintings, and sculptures but also on basketry. Their iconic rep-

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resentations on baskets and their specific function in the myths vary from one Indigenous culture to the next, but in all mythologies these ancestral spiritanimals are extremely powerful, most often negative, and are in the service of certain culture heroes in the mythical world and in the service of shamans in the human world given that they are usually the most important tutelary animals of shamans. I present the mythical animal-spirits associated with basketry, focusing on their graphic representations and on some of their main behavioral features. The Snake It is the most emblematic figure that can be found in most mythologies of the Americas, and one of the most frequently depicted figures in Carib basketry (Davy 2007; Guss 1989; Mattéi Muller 2009; van Velthem 1998). The mythical snakes do not resemble the natural species, although they are often compared with the gigantic anaconda and the venomous coral snake. Snakes belong among the forces of evil, because they are associated with the world of death and poison. Among the Panare, Amana, the mythical anaconda, owner of the itiriti plant, is generally represented by a bold sinuous line. Among the Ye’kwana, it is Awidi, the ancestral spirit of the coral snake (micrurus corallinus, Elapidae), who is represented by a coiled sinuous line.

Figure 8.3. Amana, anaconda (Panare, from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

Figure 8.4. Awidi, coral snake (Ye’kwana, from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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There is also Wiyu, the feathered anaconda female spirit, master of the rivers, the rainbow and the Mawari, an evil spirit that may look like a big anaconda. It is metonymically represented by a geometric pattern called Mawari e’sadi, the interior of Mawari’s house. Among the Yanomami, Wathapërariwë is the ancestral spirit of the bright-skinned rainbow boa called watha (Epicrates cenchria, Boidae), gifted by nature with beautiful designs upon its skin. This boa drawing is also an important pattern of body painting for shamans. According to the myth, because of its beautiful body adornment, Wathapërariwë provoked the jealousy and fury of Prereimariwë who changed into the Figure 8.5. Mawari e’sadi, the interior of Mawari’s house (from Marie Claude Mattéi region’s largest venomous pit viper Muller, personal collection). (Lachesis muta, Viperidae).

Figure 8.6. Yanomami woman painting Watha drawing. Photo by Marie Claude Mattéi Muller.

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The Jaguar Another important zoomorphic figure in many South American mythologies is the jaguar, which Lévi-Strauss has analyzed in detail in his Mythologiques (1964, 1967). The jaguar is the most dangerous and widely feared spirit, because it kills, devours, and takes revenge. He is a friend of evil but also a powerful collaborator of great shamans. As mentioned above, the Panare recognize the jaguar’s eyes, akërë yon, in the small black crosses that decorate the round tray (wapa). They also weave the jaguar’s body in a figurative and fairly realistic design, depicting its spotted or black skin, long tail, and ears, in different positions. This figurative representation of the jaguar was presumably introduced during the 1970s. It appeared in only two communities (Colorado and Turiba), but it did not spread. The Ye’kwana have a more stylized, metonymic pattern called Mado fedi, jaguar’s face, that is nearly identical to that of Woroto sakedi, the “devil’s face paint” or the “mask of death” who is believed to be the in- Figure 8.7. Young Panare weaving the ventor of all the basket designs. jaguar in Turiba. Photo by Marie Claude Mattéi Muller.

Figure 8.8. Mado fedi, jaguar’s face (Ye` kwana waja; from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

Figure 8.9. Woroto sakedï, the devil’s face paint (detail from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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Interpretation of graphic drawings : Primary form? It is precisely this drawing that Guss bases his argument on when he claims: “For not only did Woroto sakedi ‘invent’ all the designs, but the one named for him provides the primary form12 upon which the others are based. It is this symbol that is in every way the basic form of the baskets” (Guss 1989: 106). This concept approximates the notion of urform, a kind of “primordial matrix,” a visual pattern proposed by Anne Christine Taylor (2008) in her article “Arte y mito en las culturas amazónicas.” In various publications, Severi (2009, 2011, 2012, 2014) has commented upon and reanalyzed these Ye’kwana drawings in the light of his theory of the “chimerical space” with “hidden presences of the image.” He states: The visual terms that translate the names of spirits are all derivations of a single graphic pattern:13 a sort of inverted “T” representing Odosha. Here it is clear that a few simple geometrical transformations allow all the other mythical characters to be derived from a single graphic pattern. In fact, the graphic representations underline the simultaneous multiplicity of the creatures (monkey, toad, or serpent) and their deeper original unity. The different characters are, thus constructed from one fundamental form and form part of a wider system that not only identifies particular characters, but also their possible relationships. (Severi 2012: 461)

Anthropological research on Amerindian basketwork, prior to the work of Guss and Severi (Mason 1904; Roth [1924] 1970; Schmidt 1942) revealed the great diversity of these graphic patterns and their amazing distribution in the northern region of the Amazon basin. Schmidt even wanted to find a mathematical formula to explain their production process and also their evolution but without success. Other contemporary researchers (Frikel 1973; Ribeiro 1985; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985; van Velthem 1998, 2005), similarly dedicated like Guss to the study of the basketwork of the Carib, Arawak, and Tukano peoples of the northern Amazon basin, reached the same conclusions: the itiriti basketry designs are not improvised because they contain coded elements, anchored in multiple configurations which generate graphic representations of a mnemonic nature whose meanings are intimately linked to a corpus of mythical entities and narratives, inherent to each people. Many of these designs are found in the basketry of peoples belonging to very different cultures. This graphic heritage common to this Amazonian area is easily explained by the use of the same raw material (herbaceous plant of the Marantaceae family), flat strips, quite rigid, of natural coloration combined with red or black coloration and the same plaiting and twilling techniques. All these factors make it possible to generate a set of geometric drawings that each people transmits from generation to generation as markers of a cultural identity. What does not seem en-

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tirely convincing in Guss and Severi’s argument is the fact that the genesis of all the designs present in Ye’kwana basketry are “mere derivations” of a single basic form. The Woroto drawing, undoubtedly important in Ye’kwana iconography, is part of what could be called the devil’s quatuor. These are the four geometric drawings of four figures representing evil in Ye’kwana mythology that have many similarities with the so-called basic form, Woroto (the devil or the death according to D. Guss) and his three acolytes, Mawari (the monstrous anaconda), Mado (the jaguar), and Awiri (the coral snake). But their occurrence is episodic in basketwork. Numerous Ye’kwana baskets present geometric designs that do not seem to have any affinity with the inverted T, named by Severi. Moreover, this basic form is generally absent from baskets that have figurative drawings. The Figurative Basketry Drawings of the Amerindian Peoples of the Orinoco-North Amazon Basin Guss notes, “among the most prominent of these other baskets [are] those incorporating figurative designs,14 several of which were important characters in the narrative of the waja15 origin” (Guss 1989: 115). Two of the most important figures are Yarakaru, the capuchin monkey, and Warishidi, the spider monkey. Yarakaru, Capuchin Monkey In Ye’kwana mythology Yarakaru is known for playing pranks and doing mischief, always ready to steal to satisfy his enormous ambition. He is a nephew of the creator, Wanadi, but incited by Odosha, the bad twin brother and rival of Wanadi, he opened the chest where Wanadi kept his power, tobacco, and also the night. When opening it: night broke out . . . thus came the darkness in our world, because of Yarakaru . . . he was left blind. He could no longer see either Heaven or Earth; he got scared, he ran in the dark, not as a man, but as a white capuchin monkey. So he was changed as a punishment. He is the grandfather of all the Yarakaru, he was the first to release the night in the past. (Civrieux 1992: 45)16

The image of the capuchin monkey (Cebus olivaceus) is frequent on Ye’kwana basketry. It can also be

Figure 8.10. Arkon, capuchin monkey (Panare, from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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found on Panare basketry, but it is not part of traditional Panare iconography. In the late 1960s some Panare from Colorado and Turiba met with Ye’kwana weavers in Caicara del Orinoco and admired the figurative designs of the latter’s baskets. So, they began copying them. Warishidi, Spider Monkey Warishidi is particularly important for our topic insofar that he was an ally of Odosha, Wanadi’s bad brother, and the one who carried in his large bag among many other things all the basketry artifacts with all the different drawings, and in order to hide them in his bag, he made them tiny with his magic. But the men discovered his secret and grabbed his bag so they could know all kinds of baskets and copy all the designs. He is represented with a tail curving upward while Yarakaru’s tail is bent downward. Kwekwe, Frog or Toad Another figurative representation is that of the frog or toad Kwekwe, also called Wanadi hiñamohüdï, Wanadi’s wife. As Wanadi felt lonely without his first wife, Kaweshawa, who was kidnapped by Kurunkumo, the ancestor of the black curassow (Crax nigra), had the idea of having another woman come to his mind. Wanadi was sitting on his jaguar-shaped shaman bench, thinking, thinking. He was sad; he had his feather-crown, his maraca, his cigar, and his shamanic pegall decorated with several little frogs. On the pegall he put the maraca. Now he dreamed one of the frogs painted on the pegall: -frog, frog, woman, you are alive, you are a woman, so he sang, smoking. Thus, a woman was born, Wanadi hiñamohüdï was born as Wanadi’s wife; it was the same frog painted on the pegall. (Civrieux 1992: 59–60)17

Therefore, this figure is frequently depicted on the shaman’s kanwa.18

Figure 8.11. Ke’kwe the frog or Wanadi hiñamohüdï, Wanadi’s wife (Ye’kwana, from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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Wanadi decided to free his first wife Kaweshawa from the abuse by Kurunkumo. In order to accomplish this, he had to resort to various tricks, among them metamorphosis. He changed into a cockroach: He changed her [Kaweshawa] into another cockroach . . . So like spirits, they climbed the center pole of the house. They climbed; when they reached the top, like two spirits, Wanadi became a crimson-backed woodpecker, she a frog . . . He flew far away with the frog, his wife, hanging from his beak, going down, going up. They came to a tall tree, called faru hidi. It was heaven. When they got there, the bird climbed up the stick, they changed into man and woman, what they really were. (Civrieux 1992: 64, 67)19

Wanadi Tonoro, Wanadi’s Bird, Crimson Woodpecker and Dede, the Fishing Bat The iconic representation of the crimson-backed woodpecker (Campephilus melanoleucos) looks like the letter V intersecting with another inverted V, which makes a cross-shaped design. The design is reminiscent of the characteristic feature of this bird whose black back has white V-shaped feathers. Thus, the graphic design called Wanadi tonoro, Wanadi’s bird, or Wanadi motai, Wanadi’s shoulders, on the basket metonymically represents Wanadi when he has changed into the bird. The woodpecker is sometimes associated with Dede, the fishing bat (Noctilio leporinus), as shown in the basket below. In the time of ancestors, Dede was a friend of Wanadi, who had instructed him not to drop Huehanna, the stone-shelled egg that contained the Akato, the invisible and immortal spirits of the powerful earth men who were yet to be born. When we look at the basketwork of the peoples of Orinoco-Guiana region and northern Amazonia we find that most of them have a wide set of highly varied geometric patterns but they do not usually weave figurative drawings: this is the case of the Arawak peoples in Brazil (Ribeiro 1985), of the Tukano peoples in Colombia (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985), and also that of the Carib and Arawak peoples of Venezuela (Mattei Muller 2009). The figurative drawings do not have the same diffusion as the geometric patterns, even across Ye’kwana territory that extends into Brazil. The Ye’kwana as well as the Wayana (van Velthem 1998), Carib groups, living along the Paru de Leste River in the north of the state of Pará (Brazil) seem to be the only ones to have developed a rich set of figurative drawings in their traditional iconographic repertoire. One might speculate that the realistic representations could have been produced later, but by whom and why? It is well known that the baskets have always been important objects of exchange. Would the figurative drawings give a greater exchange value? Could it be that the origin of these drawings corresponds to another creative process instead of being mere derivations of a primordial icon?

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These questions merit further research which requires an excellent knowledge of mythology and iconography but also of the history of peoples’ migrations and exchanges. Guss’s anthropological analysis published in his book To Weave and to Sing: Art, Symbol and Narrative in the South American Rain Forest (1989) is subtle, complex, and enlightening, but his interpretation of the iconography of Ye’kwana basketry is not entirely convincing. It fails to consider the totality of the drawings, their diversity, their heterogeneous distribution, the possible influences by other peoples, the variable meanings of the images, and the inventive capacity of either the weaver or the informant. Hames and Hames (1976: 21) mention the name of a geometric design called Kasu nohudidi (Kasu’s idea) that would have been invented by a Ye’kwana man named Kasu about a hundred years ago in the Padamo river region (Amazonas state). Anthropological literature has tended to focus on the nonarbitrary character of the iconography inexorably linked to the mythical past. But during the past four decades, numerous changes have profoundly disturbed the status of basketwork. In Venezuela various Indigenous peoples abandoned this ancestral art. Others, on the contrary, tried to renew it and often this revitalization occurred thanks to chance meetings or individual initiatives. Yanomami Iconography The iconography of Yanomami basketry differs significantly from that of the Carib and the other cultures discussed above. First of all, the Yanomani use a different technique to weave the designs onto the body of their baskets. Carib and Arawak basket makers produce the designs by crossing the previously painted strips with the unpainted ones. The Yanomami women paint the drawings onto the outer surface of the finished baskets. Moreover, only a few drawings are associated with mythological characters. All I found were references to snakes (oru), felines (ïra), and ghosts (pore). The graphic elements usually are very simple and capture outstanding physical characteristics of some animals, plants, hills, or rivers but their meaning is not always culturally codified and may vary according to the person consulted. The feline figure is metonymically represented by three graphic elements that are reminiscent of the characteristic black spots on the feline’s skin, which makes it easy to identify them. Three feline species can still be found in Yanomami territory: Ïra tipikiwë, “spotted feline,”20 the jaguar (Panthera onca) whose skin has peculiar rosettes with a black outer edge and a black dot inside; yaomi, ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) whose skin has round black spots of its body; and Washaema parokowë, the margay (Leopardus wiedii) whose skin has hook-shaped (parokowë) or semi-circled black spots without any black point inside.

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The snake watha is represented by a long, bold sinuous line. A short, fine sinuous line may represent the path of the warora snail or that of an earthworm or caterpillar, whereas a short, broken line can be interpreted as the tracks of the hupëriwë ants. A succession of parallel and vertical lines may be a series of aligned trees, hii hi shaririwë; a series of shorter parallel and vertical lines stand for oni kasha, caterpillar design. Black dots may represent, depending on their size, sekisekima nathe (grasshopper’s eggs), moka nathe (frog’s eggs), or yoyo nathe (toad’s eggs), whereas a larger round black spot may be pore mamo, the ghost’s eye. Shown in this chapter are only a few examples from the rich repertoire of graphic elements that characterize Yanomami basketry. The fauna of the Amazon jungle with its vast diversity of birds, fish, insects, mammals, and reptiles, offers an infinite range of designs through which the Yanomami express their inspirations. Arawak Iconography: The Itiriti Design of Warekena Basketry The basketry of the Warekena has only geometric designs. One of them, called itiriti leaf, is supposed to represent the leaf of the itiriti plant. It is a bicolored, red and black design made up of several squares, all facing in opposite directions. An elderly Warekena stated, “It is made to show the itiriti in a way that it is clear to the people that the itiriti plant has its leaf, because this plant was sent to us by Nápiruli” (Díaz Peña 1993: 135).21

Figure 8.12. Itiriti leaf (Warekena, from Natalia Díaz Peña 1993: 97).

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Basketry, Shamanism, and Rites of Passage Basketry artifacts are omnipresent in many initiatory rites, more particularly in shamanic initiation and rites of passage. Some of these objects are very important insofar as they are endowed with magical power that intervenes during the initiation and subsequent ritual practices. Basketry and Shamanic Initiation With regard to the jaguar as an icon of Amazonian basketry, I have already pointed to its fundamental role in shamanism as the shaman’s most important tutelary animal-spirit. The jaguar’s protection and power are difficult to obtain and many aspiring shamans fail in their effort. The Ëwey’ Basket, the Jaguar´s Skin (Panare) In Panare culture, the apprentice shaman must submit to various tests to acquire his personal tutelary spirits that will guide, protect, and accompany him until his death. To obtain the Jaguar Spirit the future shaman must weave two open hexagonal crisscross-patterned baskets called ëwey’, and paint them black on the inside. The black-painted basket metonymically represents the spotted skin of the jaguar. The apprentice must place the baskets in a previously selected and purified place. After a few days he returns and if he sees claw marks instead of the two baskets, this means that a jaguar couple has agreed to become his tutelary spirits. Sehoro a Bahanarotu, “Itiriti Shaman” (Warao) The Warao shaman, wisidatu, must weave a large torotoroida from itiriti for keeping his ritual objects, especially the big sacred maraca, decorated with carved and painted designs called jenu mataro, “maraca of the supreme being.” In this case the relationship between the shaman and the itiriti is so symbiotic that the shaman ends up becoming a sehoro a bahanarotu, that is to say, “an itiriti shaman.” “Through continuous handling of the cane, the wasi (weaver) is believed to be converted by the spirit of itiriti into an itiriti shaman (sehoro a bahanarotu) . . . Each time the craftsman splits an itiriti stem, he feels the pith pass by his finger” (Wilbert 1975: 5). Wilbert adds that “the itiriti shaman” can later change himself into the master-weaver shaman, wasi bahanarotu, thus receiving exceptional powers. “The basket maker observes that the palms of his hands become whitened with time and believes that eventually a small hole, visible only to himself, will appear in each. This hole is the spiritual emblem of the master wasi (weaver)” (Wilbert 1975: 5). Through this hole flows the magical sap of the Itiriti Spirit that

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reaches the fingers of the weaver when he prepares the fiber. Then the Spirit enters his arms, his body “as do the worms of itiriti that dig tunnels in the cane” (Wilbert 1975: 6). Thus, the Itiriti Spirit will always accompany the shaman, working with him in his task as a weaver. Ritual Basketry Artifacts of the Shaman In addition to the shaman’s chest there are a large number of ritual objects woven with vegetal fibers. The Kurripako, Arawak people from Rio Negro, weave maracas and ritual percussion instruments, for example, the Piaroa, make a maraca from a calabash completely covered with woven palm leaves. The Piaroa weave another interesting percussion instrument that plays an important role in the famous ritual of Warime: the rattle wiwitö rediyu, Furthermore, there are the beautiful ritual weapons of the Ye´kwana, suwi wayutahûdi, yadiwadu, decorated with woven itiriti, and ceremonial crowns worn by men among the Panare, Ye’kwana, Kurripako, Piaroa, Wayuu, and other peoples on festive occasions. Basketry and Rites of Passage Murankïnëto, Initiation of Young Panare Boys Among the Panare, the rite of passage for young boys between the age of seven and nine involves the making of specific baskets. They are bicolored, made from leaves of the coroba palm (Attalea macrolepsis) and woven exclusively for the murankïnëto rite, the putting-on of the boys’ first loincloth. There is also a bicolored mat that covers the canoe filled with fermented drink.

Figure 8.13. Murankinëto, initiation of young Panare boys. Photo by Marie Claude Mattéi Muller.

Kasijmakasi, Initiation of Young Warekena Men Among the Warekena this rite of passage is celebrated for girls and boys between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. For the girls, it corresponds to her first menstruation. The boys’ ritual differs in particular with regard to the requirement of weaving baskets. The rite has a double function: in addition to being a social marker that indicates the initiate has reached marriageable age, it also serves as a clan marker. The initiate gets to know his imákanasi, that is, his totemic animal that defines the range of possible matrimonial alliances in

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an exogamic society. Natalia Díaz Peña, who has researched Warekena basketry (1993), found very few imákanasi: bachaco (Atta laevigata) ant path, woodpecker’s back, piranha’s cheek, and some fish’s spotted skin. Since the Warekena population has severely declined, many imákanasi are said to have been lost. In his book Mitologia Guarequena (Warekena Mythology, 1980), Omar González Ñanez explains the mythical origin of the imákanasi as follows: in primordial times animals were like human beings and the soul Figure 8.14. Crimson-backed wood- of those mythical ancestors constitutes pecker’s shoulder (Warekena, from the imákanasi of people; in other words, Natalia Díaz Peña 1993: 95). people are the descendants of animal. In those times there was a totem tree where the imákanasi of all the people of the earth dwelt. During the initiation of the kasijmákasi males, the Warekena make a ritual object that consists of two baskets, a sieve, and a round tray, kasijmeli, looking like wapa with a support made of wooden rods upon which the baskets are placed. It is called kalidama. This object plays a crucial role in the celebration. The imákanasi must be woven on the body of the sieve, while on the wapa another design called dzuli must be woven. The creator Nápiruli drew it for the first time. He gave it the name of Dzuli, the one who, for not wanting to follow all the rules of the ritual, fell ill, and his illness ceased only when Nápiruli covered the kalidama with the wapa. The design is perpetuated to remind the initiate, kasijmanewi, that he

Figure 8.15. Kalidama, sieve with wapa (from Natalia Díaz Peña 1993: 183).

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must not break any rule. I failed to find any graphic representation or more detailed information on the Dzuli design. The initiate must learn, together with his parents and the organizers of the ritual, how to weave his imákanasi, which is led by a shaman as master of ceremony. The imákanasi, generally zoomorphic (tapir, jaguar, snake, fish, bird for example) or phythomorphic (leaf of different species of plant) is also painted on the initiate’s back. Very spicy ritual food, also called kalidama, is placed on the sieve with the wapa serving as a cover. Moreover, specific songs and dances mark the different stages of the initiatory passage. At the end of the ritual, the baskets are distributed among the community members in order to stimulate exchange and strengthen affective ties among them. Kutto Shidiyu, the Frog’s Bottom Basket, Initiation of Young Ye’kwana Men As among the Warekena, the initiation of young Ye’kwana men involves not only the making of basketry but also the creation of an exclusive design. Guss states, “The importance of basketry in every aspect of Ye’kwana life makes a natural yardstick with which to measure the maturity and character of [a] developing male” (Guss 1989: 79). Basket-making serves an indispensable function in the transition to the status of marriageable man. Guss describes at length all the steps a young man must take in order to be acceptable to his future wife’s parents. “The man must first weave for his bride, a series of baskets in a strictly prescribed order. The first one . . . is the Kutto shidiyu, the ‘frog’s bottom’ . . . this ‘wedding basket’ will be the only one the couple uses to eat from over the coming year” (Guss 1989: 81). Kutto Shidiyu is a simple little basket, a variation of the circular tray (waja), finely woven but monochromatic without any iconographic design. Then the young man has to weave with natural fibers successively a manioc press, a sieve, and a fire fan. After a year of matrimonial life, he must weave the final and most beautiful basket, the waja tomennato, a bicolored flat circular tray that replaces the Kutto shidiyu. For this basket the weaver must choose a very special design that will be used for all the baskets that the husband will weave for his wife. “As long as they remain together, the special images woven into this ‘painted’ waja will be a clear statement and uniqueness of their bond” (Guss 1989: 82). Today, this practice is either disappearing or has already become obsolete in most Ye’kwana communities, whereas the weaving of manioc presses remains an indispensable requirement for any head of a family in many communities. However, it is no longer compulsory for a young man to weave a manioc press for his future wife. Today the manioc presses are woven by men of the Sanïma people, close neighbors of the Ye’kwana.

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Changes in Basket-Making Baskets have always been objects of exchange and barter, between individuals of the same community as well as between members of different communities of the same area. It is interesting to note that Yanomami women do not generally use the baskets they have woven themselves; they are traded for new items like machetes, scissors, clothes, or soap.22 The exchange with members of other Indigenous communities or criollos gives the Yanomami access to new techniques, materials, designs, tools, and ways to use things. This kind of exchange was already noticed by Koch-Grünberg during his stay in the Ye’kwana community of La Esmeralda on the upper Orinoco. The Ye´kwana weavers, upon discovering the baskets of the Arawak peoples residing in the same area, began to copy them and very quickly were able to produce baskets even more beautiful and of better quality than those made by the Arawak (KochGrünberg [1924] 1982: 239). New Iconographic Repertoire of the Panare As mentioned above, in the late 1960s some Panare from the communities of Colorado and Turiba (Bolivar State) saw some Ye’kwana baskets. These were finely woven with a wide range of geometric and figurative designs—some-

Figure 8.16. Panare wapa with tapir drawing (from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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thing the Panare had never seen before. Traditional Panare basketry had only geometrical designs with a chromatic combination of two or three colors (black, red, and the fiber’s natural color) and a nice kinetic effect by optical illusion. The meeting with the Ye’kwana marked the beginning of a new style of Panare basketry that was to exhibit a variety and richness never before encountered among the Indigenous handicrafts of Venezuela. Panare basketry designs included not only monkey, frog, jaguar, and human being but also numerous novel zoomorphic figures such as tapir, centipede, spider, cat, dog, birds, deer, and fish. Even more surprisingly, the new designs showed objects completely foreign to Panare culture, which had only recently been introduced in the context of a newly constructed road across their territory. They included bags, cars, cattle trucks, jeeps, planes, and helicopters. Such decorative elements obviously served a commercial purpose unconnected to the mythological references and traditional patterns discussed above. The Panare weavers’ freedom of expression manifests itself with regard to their ancestral knowledge and induces them to modify the shape of the wapa. It is not necessarily round but may also be oval, that of the shaman’s tupupukumën chest is not always rectangular but may also be square. The designs’ arrangement on the basket’s body is no longer subject to the historic criteria of composition, when the main figure appeared in the central square template.

Figure 8.17. Panare wapa with helicopter drawing (from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

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This composition has been replaced by transverse or vertical bands, something like friezes with complex patterns, sometimes fragile because the plaiting is not as tight as before and the criterion for quality is originality rather than solidness.23 The exceptional boom of Panare basketry during the 1970s and 1980s occurred only in the communities next to the new road from Caicara del Orinoco to Puerto Ayacucho. The push for innovation came to stagnate in the 1990s and has declined in recent years due to numerous factors, internal and external. Nowadays, a few Panare continue weaving but the new iconographic repertoire is under threat of extinction. Excellence of a New Ye’kwana Women’s Art of Basket Weaving When the Ye’kwana men produced less and less itiriti basketry, some women from the Caura communities of Bolivar State (in particular Boca del Nichare and Santa María de Erebato) began to make their load baskets more attractive so they could be offered for sale. These changes in basket production started more than fifty years ago. Since itiriti material was reserved for men, the women continued to use their own vegetal material, the mamure vine, weaving deep and strong baskets (wïwa), monochromatic without any decoration. As no iconographic tradition for this kind of baskets existed, the women used strips dyed in different colors with chica (Arrabidaea chica H.B.K)24 or industrial dyes to achieve more variety in colors. First, they tried to reproduce the beautiful designs of the waja and kanwa in their new wïwa baskets. They copied the geometric designs like the broken lines called ahisha, white egret, or the concentric squares called wayamu kadï, literally “like the morrocoy tortoise” (referring to the similarity of the drawing to the shell of this tortoise). Then they went on to weave the figures of monkey and frog common in itiriti basketry. The commercial success of their baskets encouraged the women to weave designs never seen in traditional basketry like armadillo, curassow, duck, deer, fish, dog, and even the shape of a house. In place of the itiriti reed they used the more flexible and less fragile liana in order to create new shapes, new sizes, and new models with new designs. Progressively the women weavers Figure 8.18. The new wïwa basintroduced a set of innovative patterns, proket with frog design (Ye’kwana, ducing baskets of great artistic value exclufrom Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection). sively created for commercial use. The few

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communities that are involved in this trade have reached a level of excellence in basket-weaving that has made them prominent not only in their socioeconomic organization but also at international fairs and exhibitions. For obvious reasons this market is declining at present, but one can hope that other times will come. New vegetal materials, new techniques, new products Palm Fibers Palm fibers (Arecaceae) were traditionally little used in basketry by the Amerindian peoples of the Guiana Highlands, to which Venezuela belongs. Palms were primarily used as food plants. In fact, the use of palm fibers in basketry is a characteristic of southern Amazonian peoples, as noted by Brazilian anthropologist Berta Ribeiro, a renowned expert on the Indigenous art of Brazil, especially on weaving. Based on the comparative analysis of the use of the three plant species—itiriti (Marantaceae), mamure vine (Araceae), and palm (Arecaceae)—in Amazonian basketry she states: Among the ethnic groups of the macro-Jê linguistic family and others form central Brazil such as the groups of the Alto Xingu, the use of palm trees predominantes . . . for basketry and twine. Among the groups in the northern Amazon prevails . . . the use of the marantaceae, that is to say the itiriti . . . Among the groups of the tropical forest—Makú and Yanomami—prevails the use of flexible vines (Araceae). (Ribeiro 1985: 131)

In Venezuela the leaves of some palms like the cucurite (Attalea maripa) or coroba palm (Jessenia Polycarpa Karst) have been used to this day to make carrier baskets for transporting firewood, crops, fruits, or game. The chiquichiqui palm (Leopoldinia piassaba Wallace) is now used by the Rio Negro communities, mainly by the Baré and Baniwa to weave baskets, trays, jugs, flower vases, trivets, table mats, cup holders, and many others objects. Other palms like the moriche (Mauritia Flexuosa) or cumare palm (Astrocaryum aculeatum G. Meyer) were occasionally used in weaving hammocks. Presently palms fibers have sometimes been replaced by nylon threads that are easier to work with. Two peoples, however, the Warao and Hiwi, continue to make moriche hammocks and bags. The New Moriche Palm Basketry The moriche palm grows on swampy riverbanks and in savanna swamps in the southeastern area of Venezuela, mostly in the states of Amacuro Delta and Amazonas. Until now only the Warao of the Orinoco delta and the Hiwi (Guajibo), in the area around Puerto Ayacucho (Amazonas State) use this

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Figure 8.19. Warao Basket made from moriche palm fibers (from Marie Claude Mattéi Muller, personal collection).

fiber to weave a finely crafted basketry for trade. Thanks to them, the moriche palm is today one of the most valuable kind of palm fiber for the new Indigenous basketry of Venezuela. Only in the 1960s was the moriche palm used in basket-making. The important innovation of this practice lies in the introduction of a novel technique, that of coiling. This technique, very common among the cultures of North America, Mexico, and some areas of Africa and Asia, was not used previously by the cultures of the Orinoco Basin. Lokono women from Guyana learned it from an Amerindian woman from Canada, who came to the area as an Evangelical missionary. Later the Lokono women taught not only Warao women but also a group of weavers from Suriname and French Guiana. Thus, the new style of basketry spread across the region. In fact, when I visited the community of Araguaimujo in the Orinoco delta ten years ago, I met a Guianese woman who had taught a new semi-open criss-

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cross weaving technique that the Araguaimujo weavers were using to make bags of a new style. The Hiwi (Guajibo) communities in the vicinity of Puerto Ayacucho (Amazon State) are the most productive and most creative weavers who offer a wide variety of products made from moriche fibers: bags, backpacks, vessels, plates, baskets, trays of all kinds and sizes, matchstick baskets, bread baskets, curtains, dolls, hair barrettes, animal effigies, and so on. Some New Raw Materials The Warao of Santa Rosa de Arawao have started using the water hyacinth stalks (Eichhornia crassipes Mart.) to elaborate various products like hats, bags, baskets, containers, bowls, mats, fans, and coasters. This strong, invasive and fast-growing aquatic plant, superabundant in the Orinoco delta is considered an ecological plague given that it wreaks havoc among the local flora and fauna due to its low phythoplankton productivity and low dissolved oxygen, among other negative effects. Its recent use in basketry could be very useful from both an economic and ecological point of view. The production of water hyacinth basketry spread at the very beginning of the 2000s, in Australia and Asia, but more particularly in Cambodia. In Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia, a project is being developed to conserve biodiversity and help the population of the floating village of Prek toal and especially the handicraftswomen who process the water hyacinth to weave beautiful natural and colored basketry objects. Its processing is simpler and faster than that of the moriche palm. After harvesting it must only be washed, boiled, and dried. Every dried stem serves as a strand in the weaving. So far, however, Warao products made from hyacinth do not yet show the same variety, elegance, and degree of excellence as those made from moriche fibers. Another new kind of material is vetiver grass (Chrysopogon zizanioides) that is cultivated by some Kurripako communities in Amazonas State. It is used for making various kinds of containers, in particular amphoras of all sizes, to be sold on the market. It is important to note that in most cases women have played the leading role in the process of renewing the art of basketry. The actual work is sometimes shared among men and women. Overall, the new way of basket-weaving has led to significant social transformations by modifying the complementary roles of men and women in the Indigenous family economy.

New Iconography, Mythology, and Memory Such initiatives do not necessarily guarantee a harmonious and prosperous development in the long term. Some of the ancestral knowledge has already

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disappeared. The rites of passage have often been modified or simplified and sometimes abandoned. The myths may be present but, more often than not, will appear as an anecdotal element, devoid of its former magical force. Many young people do not care about the meaning of the drawings. In some communities, plant material has even been replaced by plastic—one may nowadays see cassava presses made from plastic next to traditional itiriti presses. Basketry mostly has assumed a commercial function that helps to improve communities’ economic situation. Can the new baskets be considered “living beings,” “embodiments of the mythical beings,” and “as powerful a weapon as any ever contained in a shaman’s pouch, and the symbols woven into them as sure a means to the supernatural,” as stated by Guss (1989: 102). Some Panare, Ye’kwana, Warao, and Hiwi communities have renewed their basketry tradition by introducing iconographic elements utterly foreign to their culture, by using different techniques, materials, and styles. But have they really broken the link with their history, their memory, and their mythology? Or are they situated in a continuous cultural flow that absorbs changes from elsewhere in such a way that some new elements have become part of their heritage and even entered their mythical world? Such was the case with the glass beads introduced by the first colonizers. Nonetheless most weavers strive to follow the ritual rules of ancestral times in their collection of raw materials. To them the new basketry continues to represent their Indigenous identity. In her PhD dissertation “Continuity and Change in the Indigenous Art in Venezuela” (2014: 403), Alessandra Caputo notes that one of the best Ye’kwana weavers, Aurora, from Boca del Nichare (Caura River) includes in Warishidi’s bag the new basket designs, even to those baskets intended for sale outside. The mythical origin of baskets and designs are preserved. Interestingly, the Ye’kwana mythology collected by Marc de Civrieux includes many historical events and anecdotes that date back to the time of the colonizers. Those who still weave today do not necessarily know very well the myths but, like Aurora, all refer to them in order to establish a cultural reason for their new basketry and thus to valorize it. Some conservative and purist critics consider the new basketry as poor because of its hybrid nature, disrespectful of traditional iconography, and soulless because sometimes it lacks a link to mythology. Still, I would accord to it great artistic value. The weaver’s role has changed, because he or she now claims the right to choose and to modify while striving to keep the myths alive. Today it is difficult to predict the future of Venezuela’s Indigenous basketry that some forty years ago looked so promising. With a renewed iconography, certain Amerindian peoples have succeeded in creating a visual language of their own, based on a symbiosis between the icons of the past and those of the present. They always refer to their myths in order to preserve this intimate and necessary link with their imaginary world, their tradition, their past, their history in order to con-

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solidate their cultural identity. The new elements in terms of techniques, raw materials, diversity of forms and figures, and iconography have stimulated the creativity and boosted the skill of craftsmen/-women weavers. Unfortunately, this artistic impulse has been restrained and to a certain degree eliminated by the rapid deterioration of the country’s economy. Indigenous women have replaced men in their privileged socioeconomic position as weavers, but presently they face numerous obstacles that impede not only the production of baskets but also the marketing of their products—rampant inflation, lack of transport, lack of gas, shortage of electricity, among other things. The art of basketry is struggling for survival. Still, I agree with Guss when he states, “Hence, as a paradigm for the process of cultural creation, the basket remains, like culture itself a work of art created in all its parts” (1989: 161).

Acknowledgments My heartfelt thanks to my colleague Gabriele Herzog-Schröder for agreeing to read and revise my text and offering fresh perspectives.

Marie Claude Mattéi Muller has worked for forty years with Indigenous peoples of Venezuela—E´ñepa (Panare), Mapoyo, Yabarana, Yanomamï, and Hodï—on their language and culture. She holds a PhD in Ethnolinguistics from the Sorbonne in Paris where she also worked as an associate for Latin and Romance Languages. For twenty-five years she was a professor of Linguistics and Indigenous Languages of Venezuela at the Central University of Venezuela, Caracas. She was a research assistant in a Yanomami Project at the Lab of Human Ethology at the Max Planck Institute (Andechs, Germany) from 1987 to 2001 and a UNESCO consultant for Indigenous projects (1996, 2005, 2006), and an adviser to the Institute of National Statistics of Venezuela for the Indigenous Census (2001–17). Presently she is an adviser to the Directorate of Indigenous People at the Ministry of Education of Venezuela, where she produces books on Indigenous languages and cultures for intercultural and bilingual programs. Her publications include two illustrated bilingual dictionaries (Panare-Spanish, Yanomami-Spanish), books on Panare and Yanomami mythology and the basketry of the Amerindian cultures of Venezuela, as well as several articles on Amerindian languages and cultures of Venezuela. Presently she is engaged in a project on Yawarana language and culture funded by the National Science Foundation and the University of Oregon and is preparing a bilingual book on Yanomami texts and a Yawarana-Spanish dictionary.

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Notes 1. The term basketry refers to the manufacture of any object from vegetable fibers. 2. I do not cover all Indigenous cultures of Venezuela but focus on those that have demonstrated extraordinary creativity and incorporated numerous innovative elements in the traditional art of basketry. 3. In the electronic version (ebook) the black and white photos are color photos. Access five more illustrations under the following link [xxx]. 4. The Panare call themselves E’ñepa, but they are better known under the name Panare in the anthropological and linguistic literature. 5. This herbaceous plant (Marantaceae) is generally called itiriti in the English anthropological literature. 6. In my book Yoroko, Confidencias de un Chamán Panare (1992) I clarify this aspect of Panare mythology. In Jean Paul Dumont’s study Under the Rainbow: Nature and Supernature among the Panare Indians (1976), Amana tachi, the rainbow, is described as a principle of life, but this interpretation is erroneous. Amana tachi, which literally means Amana’s breath, is a principle of death like in many other Amazonian mythologies. 7. “Puso un montón de mapires en la curiara. Los botó en el agua. Botó uno, se cambió en culebra de agua; otro, un caimán; otro, una baba; otro, un caribe; otro, una raya. La laguna se llenó de alimañas y de [los demonios] Mawari. Maha´noma tejía, tejía, botaba sus mapires” (Civrieux 1970: 208). 8. “Llegaron los días de la llegada de Nápiruli . . . la gente estaba con gran alegría y se oían toda clase de instrumentos que existían en el mundo provenientes del cielo y de la tropa de Nápiruli . . . la tropa traía instrumentos y Nápiruli traía muchos ‘kabána kuali’ (petroglifos) donde estaban los dibujos de la forma de construir casas, las cestas, la artesanía, diseños de curiara, bancos, los ‘imakuánasi’ o apellidos de la gente” (González 1980: 118). 9. The Spanish word mamure derives from mamuri, a term of the Lokono-Arawak language that refers to two vines of the Cyclanthaceae species (Davy 2007: 325). 10. Thothoriyoma literally means “female-spirit vine” (yoma = female, suffix -ri = spirit, thotho = generic term for any species of vine). 11. Roth calls the kind of basketry tessellate or tesserae basketry, referring to its mosaic pattern. 12. Words in bold print are underlined in the original. 13. Words in bold print are underlined in the original. 14. Words in bold print are underlined in the original. 15. In the Ye’kwana language waja means a flat round tray. It corresponds to the Panare word wapa. The Ye’kwana language has no /p/ in its consonantal system. 16. “Brotó la noche . . . así vino lo oscuro en nuestro mundo, por culpa de Yarákaru . . . El se quedó como ciego. Ya no podía ver ni Cielo ni Tierra. Se asustó, corrió en la tiniebla, no como hombre, sino como mono blanco” (Civrieux 1992: 45). 17. “Wanadi estaba sentado sobre su banco de huhai con forma de tigre, pensando, pensando. Estaba triste, tenía su corona de plumas, su maraka, su cigarro y su petaca pintada con varias ranitas. Sobre la petaca, él puso la maraka. Ahora soñó con una de las ranas pintadas en la petaca: ‘Rana, rana, mujer eres viva, eres mujer,’ así cantaba fumando. Así nació una mujer, Wanadi Hiñamohühü, nació como mujer de Wanadi, era la misma rana pintada en la petaca” (Civrieux 1992: 59–60). 18. Guss uses the word Kungwa, a variant of Kanwa. 19. “Se cambió en cucaracha. A ella [su mujer Kaweshawa] la cambió en otra cucaracha. Así, como espíritus . . . treparon al poste maestro en el centro de la casa. Treparon. Cuando llegaron arriba, como dos espíritus, Wanadi se transformó en pájaro carpintero, ella en rana

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20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

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. . . voló muy lejos con la rana, su mujer, colgada de su pico, bajando, subiendo. Llegaron a un árbol alto, llamado faru hidi. Era el cielo. Cuando llegaron allí, el pájaro trepó por el palo; se cambiaron en hombre y en mujer, como eran de verdad” (Civrieux 1992: 64–67). Ïra is a generic term in Yanomami for any feline species but refers more specifically to the jaguar. “Se hace para mostrar el tirite, para que quede claro a la gente que el tirite tiene su hoja, porque esta planta nos la mandó Nápiruli” (Díaz Peña 1993: 135). See Herzog-Schröder (2002). A surprising thing happened twenty years after the Wapa book’s (Mattei Muller and Henley 1978) publication. During a visit to the Ye’kwana of Caura in the community of Boca del Nichare I met an excellent weaver. He had seen the Wapa book and asked me if I knew it because he wanted to copy the Panare drawings, which he considered beautiful. Obviously, he didn’t know that I was one of the authors. The Arrabidaea chica (Bignoniaceae) is a plant that grows across tropical America, especially in the Amazon Basin. The plant’s leaves have been traditionally used by Amerindians as a body paint for both ritual and practical purposes, to protect the skin against sunlight and insect bites. Ye’kwana women use it to dye the mamure vine.

References Caputo Jaffe, Alessandra. 2014. “Continuidad y Cambio en el Arte Indígena en Venezuela. Entre la Estetización de lo Sagrado y la Desacralización del mundo Amerindio.” PhD diss., Universitat Fabra Barcelona. Civrieux, Marc de. 1970. Watunna: Mitología Makiritare. Caracas: Monte Avila Editores. ———. 1992. Watunna, un ciclo de creación en el Orinoco. Caracas: Monte Avila Editores. Davy, Damien. 2007. “Vannerie et Vanniers. Approche ethnologique d’une activité artisanale en Guyane française.” PhD diss., Université d´Orléans. Díaz Peña, Natalia. 1993. “Aproximación a la estética primitiva en la etnia Warekena.” Bachelor’s thesis, Universidad Central de Venezuela. Dumont, Jean Paul. 1976. Under the Rainbow: Nature and Supernature among the Panare Indians. Austin: University of Texas Press. Frikel, Protásio. 1973. Os Tiriyó, seu sistema adaptativo. Hannover: Münstermann. González Ñanez, Omar. 1980. Mitología Guarequena. Caracas: Monte Avila Editores. Guss, David. 1989. To Weave and to Sing: Art, Symbol and Narrative in the South American Rain Forest. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hames, Raymond, and Ilene L. Hames. 1976. “Ye’kuana Basketry: Its Cultural Context.” Antropológica 44: 3–58. Herzog-Schröder, Gabriele. 2002. “The Exchange of Women and the Value of Baskets: The Yanomami of Southern Venezuela.” In Artifacts and Society in Amazonia, ed. Thomas P. Myers and Maria Susana Cipolletti, 11–26. BAS Vol. 36. Bonn: Verlag Anton Saurwein. Koch-Grünberg, Theodor. (1924) 1982. Del Roraima al Orinoco, Vol. III. Caracas : Banco Central de Venezuela. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1964. Mythologiques. Le Cru et Le Cuit. Paris: Librairie Plon. ———. 1967. Mythologiques. Du Miel aux Cendres. Paris : Librairie Plon. Mason, Otis. 1904. “Aboriginal American Basketry: Studies in a Textile Art without Machinery.” In Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution 1902, ed. Smithsonian Institution, 171– 548. Washington DC: Government Printing Office.

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Mattéi Muller, Marie-Claude. 1992. Yoroko, Confidencias de un Chamán Panare. Caracas: Armitano Editores. ———. 2009. El Alma de las Manos. Caracas: Fundación Bancoex. Editorial Arte. Mattéti Muller, Marie-Claude, and Paul Henley. 1978. Wapa. La Comercialización de la Artesanía Indígena y su Innovación Artística: el Caso de la Cestería Panare. Caracas: Litografía Tecnocolor. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. 1985. “Basketry as Metaphor: Arts and Crafts of the Desana Indians of the Northwest Amazon.” Occasional Papers of the Museum of Cultural History, University of California. Los Angeles Series No. 5. Ribeiro, Berta G. 1985. A arte do trançado dos indios do Brasil: um estudo taxonômico. Belem, Rio de Janeiro: Museu Paraense E. Goeldi, Funarte. Roth, Walter Edmund. (1924) 1970. “An Introductory Study of the Arts, Crafts, and Customs of the Guiana Indians.” Thirty-Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1916–1917, 25–720. Schmidt, Max. 1942. Estudos de Etnologia Brasileira. Peripécias de uma viagem entre 1900 e 1901. Sao Paulo: Companhia Editorial Nacional. Severi, Carlo. 2009. “L’Univers des Arts de la Mémoire. Anthropologie d’un Artefact Mental.” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 64(2): 463–49. ———. 2011. “L’espace Chimérique. Perception et Projection dans les Actes de Regard.” Gradhiva 13: 8–47. ———. 2012. “The Arts of Memory.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2(2): 451–85. ———. 2014. “Transmuting Beings: A Proposal for an Anthropology of Thought.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(2): 41–71. Taylor, Anne Christine. 2008. “Arte y Mito en las Culturas Amazónicas.” Paper presented at Jornadas de Arte y Mito, Centro Investigador en Arte Primitivo y Primitivismo, Barcelona, Universidad Pompeu Fabra, 10 March 2008. Van Velthem Hussak, Lucia. 1998. A Pele de Tuluperé. Uma Etnografia dos Trançados Wayana. Belem-Pará : Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi. ———. 2005. “Les Mains, les Yeux, le Mouvement : Les Tressages Indiens du Brésil.” In Brésil Indien, 214–40. Paris : Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux. Wilbert, Johannes. 1975. Warao Basketry: Form and Function. Occasional Papers of the Museum of Cultural History 3. Berkeley: University of California Press.

CHAPTER 9

Yuruparí’s Disappearance Women’s Laughter and Organology without Musical Instruments in Vaupés JUAN CARLOS CASTRILLÓN VALLEJO

  

Literature about yuruparí instruments has revealed in detail—even graphically—its mythical origins, shamanic functions, symbolism, and formal characteristics across Tukanoan Indigenous communities of the Northwestern Amazon. By writing about these instruments from an ocular-witness position, scholars have reproduced male-oriented politics of labor and gender in the region taking them as fixed constituents of Indigenous social life. On the one hand, these analyses have not discussed the proactive attitudes that women have toward the yuruparí beyond the musical expertise, especially because nowadays women are not allowed to see, touch, or handle these instruments. On the other hand, sound recordings and any other sensorial rendition of these instruments have rarely been taken into account as the primary sources for inquiry and interpretation, thus, categorizing the most fundamental component of Tukanoan instrumentality within an exclusive male and visual domain. In Vaupés everyday life, forms of aggression between members of different Tukanoan language groups have migrated from backtalk and sorcery to other less “symbolic” threats, such as sexual assault, job discrimination, and shame about being “less Indigenous.” These latter threats, often deprived of symbolic and magical sophistication, continue the establishment of differentiations and notions of alterity and show how their efficacious force has been displaced into other figures of social interaction. The multiple displacements of Tukanoan traditional themes made a deep imprint on my fieldwork between 2016 and 2018 and prompted me to theorize Tukanoan expressivity through a sort of ethnography that presents yuruparí instruments otherwise, thus, fostering ways in which Indigenous creativity and their modes of constant transformation remain open to possible futures. Given the strong connection that Tukanoan women establish between yuruparí’s powerful sounds and a set of instruments they are not allowed to see, this chapter elaborates on what John Tresch and Emily I. Dolan (2013:

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284) call a “new organological taxonomy.” This organological approach studies the ethical work that instruments help humans to accomplish, and the situations in which instruments are assembled, recasting thereby instances where nonhuman agency can be understood. In this sense, my analysis directly echoes Rafaél José de Menezes Bastos’s influential work on instruments in Lowland South America as it deals with “the broader ethnological concerns about power relations, sociocultural constructions of the senses, and of world constitution in general” (Menezes Bastos 2011: 76). His works on the sexual life of the Kamayurá ritual flutes pioneered the awareness of an alternative organology similar to my study of sonic features of yuruparí instruments, and the powerful effects they have upon the constitution of listeners’ enfleshments. I suggest that a perspectival shift of classifying instruments beyond “musical” properties can contribute to an analysis of the relation between listening and creativity, understood as intentional praxes densely grounded in communicative ideologies. In these ideologies, the co-constitution of listeners’ flesh and the possibility to make sense of sounds are treads of a same skein. Yuruparí instruments are powerful actants that provide a context of signification for humans, especially when appearing in Tukanoan villages during initiation rituals, often linked to harvesting seasons. Even though their appearance is sonically established, not all residents of Tukanoan villages participate equally in it. Being exposed to yuruparí’s sonic motions and the aural skills to make sense of it reveal how the Tukanoan sensorium is part and parcel of a moral economy that differentiates listeners and produces sensorial positionalities every time the instruments are heard. I refer to these sensorial positionalities as “enfleshments,” a notion introduced by Elizabeth Povinelli to highlight the uneven constitution of the flesh: The flesh may be an effect of these discourses but it is not reducible to them. To make sense is to shape, etch, and engenre discourse as much as it is to direct and frame physicalities, fabricate habitudes, habituate vision, and leave behind new material habitats that will be called on to replicate, justify, defy, and interfere with given sense-making and with the distribution of life and death, wealth and poverty, that this sense-making makes possible. (Povinelli 2006: 7)

This alternative organology, then, highlights that a close analysis of the sensorial and ethical work of yuruparí’s sounds provide a groundbreaking position for studying the constant attempt of Tukanoan women to reclaim primordial ownership over yuruparí instruments. The shift to a female attunement for perceiving yuruparí instruments reveals how Tukanoan women are reappropriating them through creative processes in which their well-being is at stake, and where the gap between myth and everyday life becomes intentionally ambiguous.

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Map 9.1. Mitú and adjacent communities along the river Vaupés and Cuduyarí. Drawing by ~Miariki Enrique Llanos, 2012. Picture by Juan Carlos Castrillón Vallejo.

A Women Listening to Yuruparí Ancestors in Mitú In a small city in Southern Colombia, an adult Indigenous woman is excited to finally have the chance to watch a documentary film about musical instruments of her region. Sitting in her office in the city of Mitú, Nadiezda Novoa

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turns on her laptop and waits with curiosity and joy to watch the contents of the USB file. She activates the full screen and after seeing the logo of the Colombian Ministry of Culture and the State of Vaupés, her excitement suddenly turns into anger, especially when a trigger warning prohibits her from watching the film. The trigger warning is voiced by an Indigenous elder who appears on screen wearing a feather crown and loincloth accompanied by the Spanish caption of his speech. By speaking through the laptop, he warns female and children viewers of getting ill if they watch the documentary. Nadiezda Novoa is a journalist and radio broadcaster who lives in Mitú, a city of 15,000 inhabitants located in the Northwestern Amazon in Southern Colombia. Nadiezda works for the National Health Organization and is the daughter of two schoolteachers: her mother is a Pamiva-Pedikwa woman, and her father a mestizo from Villavicencio who lived and traveled extensively across the Pamiva communities of the Cuduyarí River. Nadiezda is a fluent Spanish speaker and has spent most of her life living in Vaupés closer to her mother’s cousins than her father’s relatives in Villavicencio. Even though she invests all her efforts supporting her mother’s relatives, she barely communicates in Pamie with them due to the fact that as a Tukanoan woman she is expected to prioritize speaking her father’s language. Among Tukanoan families, children learn to speak their father’s language, or patrilecto, as they socialize in small communities near their father’s extended families, at a distance from their mother’s relatives. In Nadiezda’s case, her Tukanoan identification goes beyond a linguistic ability to communicate with her cousins. She intervenes on a daily basis as a journalist in all sorts of advocacy activities with the aim of promoting better living conditions among their relatives. I was interviewing Nadiezda in 2017 when she wanted to share the video she decided not to watch. Right after we saw the trigger warning she shouted: Juan that’s so rude! As if we were not having enough violence against women in Mitú and Vaupés. What should we expect from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and its mission to reinvigorate the life of our people? As you can see, this is another example by which I feel so diminished on my selfdetermination to do or not to things on a public sphere. Could you imagine what else is happening within our Indigenous communities in Vaupés if this documentary film was accepted at the level of central government in Bogotá?1

Nadiezda’s discomfort with the explicit prohibition of watching a video intended for a public audience funded by the Ministry of Culture of Colombia also resulted from the fact that Javier Suarez produced this video. Suarez, a well-established engineer of Caribbean origin, arrived in Mitú in the 1970s. According to the Ministry of Culture (2009), Javier Suarez was recognized as “the most prominent living musical figure of the Vaupés.” Since 1990, Suarez

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Figure 9.1. Nadiezda Novoa. Photo by Juan Carlos Castrillón Vallejo.

has conducted projects about traditional Indigenous music through his NGO called ETNOSELVA, supported by the Financial Fund for Development Projects FONADE. Apart from these activities as local researcher, he has been the only coffin seller of the city and the main composer of the local state. Suarez’s most renowned compositions included the anthems of three districts and three municipalities. In 2013, I Interviewed Suarez and he bragged about his approach to Tukanoan traditional music and the work of his NGO: Our [recording] collection is original; there is nothing that resembles it. We have everything clear and we always go directly to the origin of things. We haven’t read books by other authors because they are wrong. We haven’t made any publications or outreach materials for the general public. We aren’t interested in bragging about unfinished projects. We want to do something purer and more pristine. We know that this is not healthy neither for research interests nor for the National System of Public Libraries. We haven’t had any problem with people saying that there were unauthorized songs or pictures going around. We aborted projects after knowing that Indigenous communities were fusioning music. We are interested in roots, artists’ identities, and their biographies. We trust pretty much our own work. Now there is an audiovisual component coming with transcripts on Indigenous languages. The collection is so important. It is like honey.2

In addition to the discomfort that Nadiezda felt about Suarez’s opportunistic nature that characterizes his projects, and my own reserves regarding his folkloristic approach to Tukanoan expressivity, I wonder what else informed Nadiezda’s avoidance to watch the video. Even if I acknowledge her ambiguous

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ethnic identification given the fact that she could be a local and a foreign observant of the yuruparí tradition, I wondered why Nadiezda was so determined to not watch the film even though it was mediated by her laptop. I argue that the media infrastructure in which the trigger warning operates sets the scenario for decision-making. In a nutshell, Nadiezda’s encounter with her laptop is less a technological mediation through which the prohibition is enunciated; rather, it opens a scenario in which gender appears as the outcome of a sensorial positionality.

Toward an Alternative Approach to Tukanoan Instrumentality My approach to the Tukanoan yuruparí does not focus as much on the set of rules and prohibitions that regulate men’s and women’s behavior, nor the intrinsic meanings of the instrument. Rather, this approach lays on what John Tresch and Emily I. Dolan call “the ethics of instruments” (2013: 282). According to them, instruments are subjects of agency, quality, and intention, and are not resonators of human volition nor inhuman mechanisms. In this sense, their organological approach shifted the regular emphasis on given objects, their function and meaning, towards the ethical work they help accomplish, and the world of situations and mediations in which they are assembled. Therefore, my approach analyzes the ethical work accomplished by yuruparí instruments, and the activities through which instruments get constituted, in which “they seem to be still in transition” (Augustat 2011: 368). These activities include the occasions when yuruparí ancestors are heard and noticed by my Tukanoan interlocutors, whether or not they are attached to a musical or ritual performance. Consequently, my take on this new taxonomy introduces sound recordings and other inscriptions of sonicity among the map of mediations by which yuruparí instruments are in process of becoming.3 As is well known in Amazonian ethnology (Koch-Grünberg 1909; Goldman 1979; Hugh-Jones 1979; Århem 1981; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1996; Hill and Chaumeil 2011; Århem et al. 2004; Goldman 2004; Karadimas 2008), yuruparí ancestors appear as a set of powerful instruments featured during male initiation rituals at longhouses. During these rituals, women listen from a distance while men are accompanied and guided by initiated shamans who provide different substances to be ingested and redistributed among participants. The spatial displacement from longhouses reinforces the aural proximity of women with yuruparí ancestors. After yuruparí ancestors leave ceremonial places accompanied by men, the entire community gathers together, and the celebration goes on until the following day. Most Tukanoan groups from Northwestern Amazon tell in their mythical narratives that women were

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yuruparí’s owners in primordial times until men stole the instruments (Hill and Chaumeil 2011). Later on, men made an agreement among themselves to prevent women from taking back and looking at the instruments. They warned women with all sorts of prohibitions that it would compromise their mental, gynecological, and pregnancy health if they ever look at them. As I hope to make clear, there are two differences between the approach I am introducing and the scholarly work on the Tukanoan yuruparí more recently developed by Juan Camilo González Galvis and Natalia Lozada Mendieta (2012), Luis Cayón (2013), Gláucia Burrato Rodriguez de Mello (2013), Janet Chernela (2015), Edson Tosta Matarezio Filho (2015), and Stephen Hugh-Jones (2017). On the one hand, my approach is concerned with how a Tukanoan audience that cannot see these instruments makes sense of them, and less in how Tukanoan men perform on them or what do these instruments signify within male-regulated systems of shamanistic orientation. I do not elaborate on male-regulated systems here because, by definition, they prevent yuruparí instruments from being in contact with the primordial qualities these instruments have under female domain. And on the other hand, my analysis relies on media and other ethnographic artifacts in which sounds associated with yuruparí instruments are digitally and mechanically reproducible, while the aforementioned anthropologists have based their analysis mostly on written reports about the instruments. The aforementioned anthropologists have extensively elaborated on the secrecy aspect of yuruparí instruments, highlighting their shamanic power and meaning among Tukanoan groups. Despite the mediation introduced by their printed scholarship, which in some cases included some diagrams and pictures, it challenges the secrecy aspect of the instruments they have studied. Tensions around this secrecy aspect are intensified in two separate and complementary dimensions of anthropological research. On the one hand, these tensions arise during fieldwork when scholars interact on an everyday basis with a set of names and words for sites and objects that especially women cannot know, name, use, or even listen to. These names and words have been called “the deceiving women register” by Alexandra Aikhenvald (2019: 96). This linguistic register, however, does not restrain women from having an aural and haptic relation with the vibrant and material presence that qualify yuruparí instruments. On the other hand, tensions around secrecy and its interpretation arise on a more analytical dimension. Scholars and the aprioristic orientation of their research often disclose and bring forward everything they study, thus, disappointing and mistranslating the propositional analytics of Indigenous lifeworlds.4 In particular, my alternative approach to Tukanoan instrumentality calls on scholars to transfigure the ways through which they have seen and studied yuruparí instruments, to develop methods to amplify the sonic presence

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of these instruments, in order to analyze the yuruparí without diminishing its secrecy, safeguarding Tukanoan analytics otherwise.5 This alternative approach to Tukanoan organology can be described as “processes for magnifying dense materiality, even if the number of properties and scale get reduced in the process” (Allen 2016: 416). In an analogous reading of Catherine Allen’s theorization of how camelids become tiny stones in highland Andean communities, this alternative approach provides instances in which yuruparí instruments can be noticed in the magnified density of their properties, therefore, revealing the varied scopes in which listeners interact with these powerful instruments in differential registers. These aural and sonic registers might not equate to yuruparí instruments in their given materiality as perceived by men and shamans. However, these registers are two significant realms where yuruparí’s instrumentality acquires presence, agency, and dimension in Tukanoan lifeworlds, in which “sound is more important than the object in itself, and [where] sound is the real materialization of the invisible” (Augustat 2011: 368). Accordingly, my approach does not suggest that ritual performance and mechanical reproduction of sounds is the same, or that the analysis of recorded music replaces in-depth fieldwork renditions of performances. My approach is aware of the potential effect that recorded sounds may have on the study of musical practices in Amerindian societies, especially when scholars use sound recordings to define what Indigenous music is all about (Seeger 2015: 267). However, to avoid theorizing Tukanoans’ relation with media technology on a deep level could convene to an erroneous opinion that represents Amerindians as passive users of technological devices. Summarizing, this alternative approach fosters the ethical work of Tukanoan instruments highlighting the creative mediations widespread around the Amazon region between Indigenous and non-Indigenous technics (Gow 1995; Wilson and Stewart 2008; Augustat 2011; Bessire 2012) and exemplified here when Nadiezda refuses to look at her laptop. The analysis of these creative mediations of Tukanoan “musicking” (Small 1998)6 is especially relevant as it is through the assemblage of sounded and heard sound that sensory embodiments of gender and relations of alterity are noticed and expressed (Menezes Bastos 2011: 82; Hill and Castrillón 2017: 25). The approach proposed here is deeply informed by my encounters with yuruparí instruments and those of my female interlocutors during fieldwork conducted between 2012 and 2018. Indeed, this assemblage happens in various occasions when yuruparí instruments are noticed inside and outside of ceremonial longhouses, when they are about to be shown on a video, when they are heard at a distance through the cold air at midnight, or through the humid atmosphere of a sunny day. Due to the fact that these instances do not make direct allusions to musical performance, I am proposing an organology without musical instruments as the way

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to inquire about sonic processes of becoming, where senses, instruments, and notions of difference are set in motion in other possible ways.7 In this type of study, similar to what Hill and Castrillón called a sound-centered approach to notions of alterity (2017: 25), the emphasis is given to processes where objects, affects, relations, actants, and situations are sonically co-constituted, inscribed, disassembled, or transfigured.

A Man Trying to Record a Serious Ceremony For more than fifty years, Manuel Elorza, a Catholic missionary, did not have the chance to record the Tukanoan ceremonies he witnessed in Vaupés. It was only in 1982 that Elorza recorded excerpts of a male initiation ritual in a Barasano community near the Caño Colorado River in the Middle Vaupés region. Elorza’s recording constitutes the only available audio recording made during this period associated with yuruparí instruments.8 The recording I analyze in this section, titled Fiesta de Yuruparí (Yuruparí Party), was stored at the Ethnographic Museum Miguel Ángel Builes in Medellin with three other tapes for a total of three hours of sonic documents produced in Vaupés during the last six decades of Elorza’s work in the region. The following is a transcription of two conversations, and an exchange of laughter between Barasano women extracted from a twenty-six–minute audio sample that featured excerpts of a male initiation ritual recorded by Elorza. The recording can be accessed online.9 17:06–20:27s. Yuruparí sounds are back. They appear combined with ~kiraiñia long flutes’ sounds. The distortion of Yuruparí sounds increases. Involuntary movements of the recorder are noticed. Rooster crowing. 20:28–25:11s. Yuruparí sounds and ~kiraiñia long flutes sounding together. A dog begins to bark continuously and Elorza apparently leaves the longhouse and asks what is going on. A man answers, but it is not clear what he says. Then, girls and women begin to talk and laugh profusely. There is a moment in which Elorza also laughs briefly. The conversation among women goes on and louder volume is noticed: Juaquinanare va cuasujo yi coarūgumū yū juama va coacomo ado june gajerama nyacoabū. ( Juaquina is gone, I am telling you while thinking, others are saying that she is here and has not left.) Rigia Vadío . . . ja ja ja ja vama uga. (Ligia Vadío [women’s laughter] wear the feather crown and tuck it!) Vama uga yibeja tame ja yūcayairo. (There is a way to put on the feathers, but there are some people with such a head that the crown doesn’t fit well.)

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Eroyaju ja ja ja. (Mister Ero, try it [women’s laughter].) Tuya tuya bibecoaña budicoaña dakera. (Close the door, close it! Children, get out!) Ni ne dakeramare vari ba masīnyuju. (Yes, close the door so that kids won’t take a look. They may get sick.)10

The low-fi quality of Elorza’s recording device was constantly overloaded by low frequencies and louder sounds of yuruparí instruments in such a way that opened a sonic space for women’s laughter, usually masked during ethnographic descriptions of male initiation rituals. As a result, this sonic rendition shows how the recording process inscribes and records not only sounds but also the points of listening over certain events, as they set the possibilities for audibility and later evaluation.11 The sound recorder device operated by Elorza constituted a nonhuman agent that refused to silence women in front of the loud, sacred, and prominent presence of yuruparí instruments. In this sense, Elorza’s sonic rendition of the ritual constitutes an unprecedented and disturbing (although highly insightful) contribution to Tukanoan ethnology as it reverses the male perspective over the ritual, unmasking women’s behavior and featuring yuruparí sounds and women’s laughter happening simultaneously. Listening to such simultaneity, I wonder, what does women’s laughter do to the yuruparí’s sounds in Elorza’s recording? This analysis of Elorza’s recording brings to the front the fertile space created among points of listening, in which communicative ideologies are densely grounded, and where creative interventions shift contexts of signification. Anthropologist Stephen Hugh-Jones described women’s behavior in a description of male initiation rituals in which yuruparí instruments are featured guests: “During the rite, all unnecessary noise and especially laughter is forbidden; only the sacred sounds of chanting and of He [yuruparí instruments], the sound of the He people or first ancestors, is allowed” (1979: 89). The only mention Hugh-Jones made about other unnecessary noises was men’s ritualized joking shouts expressing their approval and happiness. My interest in establishing continuity between Hugh-Jones’s ethnographic description and Elorza’s recording is to show that Tukanoan women do not stay close-mouthed and solemnly silent during these events. Women’s behavior seems to frustrate the expectations of Tukanoan and non-Tukanoan males concerned with the seriousness and sacred dimension of a ceremony in which their masculine enfleshment is felt, enhanced, and fabricated. In the context that Hugh Jones and Elorza documented, both embodied this enfleshment not because their gendered body changed irreversibly into a sort of “Tukanoan male body” after the ritual, but because they silenced women

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and marked their behavior negatively, just as Tukanoan men often do. In other words, both of them were affine to Tukanoan men through an enfleshment characterized by a listening standpoint equipped with gendered difference.12

Gripping Laughter Elorza’s recording exposes our ears to unheard women’s behavior as it covers the voice of yuruparí instruments through laughter. This laughter does not seem to upset the ritual, as laughter continues until a fragment of Vallenato music suddenly interrupts the recording. This laughter folds and triggers the voice of yuruparí instruments in three paths of anticipated thought and action. First, this laughter signals women evaluating the performance of men and strengthening their own power and desire. Second, it mobilizes anticipated forms of women’s hope and joy inherent to manioc beer’s preparation. Third, this laughter enhances women’s own willingness to be positively valued by the community, that is, hoping everyone will ingest all the manioc beer and eats all the cooked food they prepared previous to the ritual, when men were busy in their intimacy with yuruparí ancestors in the deep forest, near to fruit trees, or underwater. In a more general sense, laughter happening during this serious event let women witness the contradictory genesis of the historical time of Tukanoan men, looped by the male initiation ritual every time it occurs. This foundational contradiction can be presented in two parts. On the one hand, men instantiate and renew an order where they grant ownership over yuruparí instruments. This ownership allows them to keep in place a modality of sexual difference that, according to men, will maintain the reproduction of the cosmic sociality, thus, keeping the world safe, cured, and healthy of any primordial danger. On the other hand, the contradiction marked through laughter characterizes the women’s decision to enact the arbitrariness of not watching something that used to be theirs, as when Nadiezda refused to watch the documentary film on her laptop. By way of laughter, then, the Tukanoan women featured in Elorza’s recording appear to be simultaneously experiencing pain and pleasure, sourness and sweetness. Such is the tenor of Tukanoan women’s affect, especially noticeable when they are called to enter longhouses to dance, eat, and drink right after yuruparí ancestors are gone. Hence, laughter underscores layers of sense that are less concerned with a specific meaning. To ask for only the meaning of laughter basically mutes the enormous dissonance it provokes, or transposes it into a referential ground in which it could mean something but not make any sense. The layers of sense opened by this gripping laughter, rather, capacitate the active forces of Tu-

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kanoan women to perform their primordial tenure upon instruments. These forces allow them to expel no myth but powerful laughter through their mouths, reacting and replying to a world and a language they do not want to belong to. World, refers here to the patrilocal sphere where Tukanoan men want to live, independent from women’s worlds; and language, refers to the set of interpretations given by male specialists about what used to be women’s business.

Ethical Work of Yuruparí Instruments and the Paradox of Women’s Laughter or Vice Versa Scholars have attempted to describe the rituals featuring yuruparí instruments from a more dialectic dimension, indicating a more balanced idea over what is still called a male initiation ritual. Leonor Herrera in an early work titled “Yuruparí and Women” suggested that the prohibition of seeing the instruments resolves ritually the structural tension between men and women (Herrera 1975: 430). Stephen Hugh-Jones has argued that among Tukanoan communities, male and female “create a unity of a higher order than the creative elements . . . a heterosexual community who eats the meal in the center of the house” (Hugh-Jones 1979: 203). Luis Cayón also strived to reconcile sexual difference by establishing a similarity of powers although organized in separated domains. He mentioned that “in the human world yuruparí flutes are to men what menstruation is to women” (Cayón 2013: 215). This similarity, in my opinion, still portrays the ethical work of these instruments bouncing between dialectics of sameness and equilibrium within Tukanoan lifeworlds. However, Jean Jackson’s analysis of the ontological and sexual asymmetry featured by yuruparí rituals differs from Hugh-Jones’s and Cayón’s descriptions. Jackson argued that yuruparí instruments “unmistakably symbolize—to Tukanoans as well as ethnographers—male dominance and superiority. But in addition to rejecting women (both actually and symbolically) and demonstrating the dangers of female sexuality, they are also an expropriation of female power, an excellent example of flattery, envy, and non-rejection” ( Jackson 1983: 191). Jackson’s analysis turned the yuruparí rituals upside down , similarly to Luce Irigaray when she refracted the concave mirror of Plato exposing the eye to non-self-referential images (Irigaray 1985: 149), doing an uncovering similar to the one enacted by Elorza’s recording. In a resonating gesture, Janet Chernela argued that what ritual mockers do in front of a serious audience does not target “the truth of the predicate but the purposeful misrepresentation of speaker’s relationship with the information conveyed” (Chernela 2011: 205) attempting

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to destabilize and twist forms of knowing. My analysis, in synthesis, shares with Jackson’s and Chernela’s the interest in developing more radical positions towards the study of Tukanoan communicative ideologies interested in showing how sonic and verbal art, speech genres, and other creative and expressive praxes diffuse fixed cosmological orders, unfolding plural enfleshments and the unequal dynamics of Tukanoan forms of knowledge and communication.

Differential Listening in Tukanoan Lifeworlds In this fourth section, I introduce the expression “differential listening” to refer the aural register in which differential interactions among participants of sonic events are set in motion. This aural register is part and parcel of communication ideologies, in which human, nonhumans and others-than-Tukanoans constantly interact through the fertile overlap of music, voice, sound, speech, and instrumentality across the Vaupés basin. The varied modes of sensory exchange with yuruparí ancestors produce differential modes of engagement. On the one hand, these modes of engagement go beyond forms of communication based on fixed meanings, expanding into alternative ways to evaluate, notice, and listen to them. On the other hand, the evaluation of the engagement with yuruparí ancestors happens in “inter individual territories” (Vološinov 1973: 12), in which instruments and listeners breathe the atmosphere of their lifeworlds together. From a Tukanoan standpoint, this atmosphere was set as the first possible conjugation between any subject of sound and the proto-Tukanoan descendants, often enfleshed by yuruparí instruments. By subjects of sound, I refer to any human or nonhuman existence that is able to hear. It is reported in mythical narratives that Tukanoan permanent sites of residence were the spots in which different subjects of sound, and not yet humans, were able to listen to the call of yuruparí ancestors (Goldman 2004: 50). The skill to make sense of this call, I argue, opens the possibility for a Tukanoan to become the subject of a third cluster of grammatical solidarities and linguistic laws of what Chernela called “alterlecto” (Chernela 2013: 226)—another language different from the mother-tongue and the father-tongue among Tukanoan language groups. In other words, yuruparí ancestors are the privileged speakers who set in motion the enunciation force of a nonhuman tongue. The moment in which any Tukanoan person is deeply touched by the motion of this nonhuman tongue, two fundamental processes regarding the Tukanoan language as a system (langue) have been established among the female audience. On the one hand, she has learned to listen and speak the language

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of her mother during childhood (matrilecto), and she has learned to replace it during her youth by adopting her father language (patrilecto), among other communicative ideologies and prerogatives. Even though all members of Tukanoan communities have something to do with the unusual, loud, and propitious visit of yuruparí ancestors during rituals, not all members make equal sense of everything these ancestors might have to communicate. For instance, to ears of Tukanoan male shamans, yuruparí sounds are signifiers whereby their knowledge and protohistory are inscribed, heard, and seen (Århem et al. 2004; Goldman 2004). From their perspective, there is not mere sound heard from these instruments, but geosocial continuous pre-existence being uttered by living entities through the interlocking and cyclic power of musicalized action (Hill 2015: 185; Cayón 2013: 411). Therefore, the nonhuman tongue that yuruparí instruments deploys in order to communicate, transforms every person attending the rituals into listeners, regardless of the language they speak. Most of these listeners, especially young and adult males, can also be viewers. Only a few male elders can be understanders (yavíva, kumú, or payé shamans). Women and children, mainly women, can be only listeners but never viewers or even understanders. In contexts where yuruparí instruments are present, male elders often use their authorized voices (parole) transforming what appears as unintelligible (sounds or speech) for the audience within longhouses. In a nutshell, they are the main operators of the alterlecto’s signaling, through which Tukanoan geosocial pre-existence is witnessed, retold, reinscribed, and remembered. Differently from what might happen with male elders, the encounter of any Tukanoan speaker with the sonic motion of this nonhuman tongue generates high amounts of ambiguity. All of a sudden, listeners are fostered to evaluate the eccentric sounds of these instruments and make sense of them in their own semiotic skills. Such an ambiguity is twice for women within the register of Tukanoan differential listening. Hence, for a female-type listener who must listen in order to laugh, to notice and evaluate are attitudes towards worlds in constant and possible disconnections from any essential and fixed characterizations. The emerging assemblages of the relations between semiotic and listening acts are for Tukanoan women creative, powerful, and ambiguous reenactments. This attitude differs from Tukanoan men’s unity of thought, in which everything is always already seen as alive, animated, and connected beyond any understanding that women could have about the meaningful and fundamental concerns of Tukanoan shamanism. For their ocular standpoint over yuruparí instruments, women’s evaluations may appear as ambiguous and merely deceptive misrepresentations. It is in this ambiguity, however, in which women can continue doing what they did after men stole the primordial ownership over these powerful instruments: to take back the yuruparí.

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The Labor of Taking Back Yuruparí Instruments “Nady’s Yuruparí in Stereo” is a forthcoming ethnographic film that I started in 2016, about a Tukanoan woman who listens to yuruparí instruments in sites where they are said to be stored. The film features Nadiezda’s daily routine, her advocacy for cultural recovery, and active role in Mitú’s grassroots radio station Yuruparí Estereo 104.3 FM, in which she speaks without being seen. The narrative thread of the film presents Nadiezda stubbornly trying to connect and listen to mythical ancestors underwater and calling scholars to return the audio recordings of traditional music they made in the region decades ago. The opening scene of the film shows Nadiezda being submerged in a river after being surrounded by the sounds of an aircraft and by the exclamations and shouts of men participating in a yuruparí ritual. During the sequence, Nadiezda appears underwater listening to yuruparí sounds. She floats immobile, and her body is dragged along the river as if she were dead. She does not breathe. Loud yuruparí sounds are prominent over the sounds of water, as the iridescent colors of the bubbles appear in sharp contrast with the dark reddish-brown color that characterizes the moldy rivers of the Vaupés region. At the end of the sequence, Nadiezda suddenly comes out of the river to catch her breath, and, completely drenched, she turns on her bike and leaves the scene.13 In its audiovisual form, the film renders the sensorial engagements of Tukanoan women with yuruparí instruments, highlighting their primordial proximity across the entire film. Additionally, it exposes the spectators to the sensorial engagements that Tukanoan women have with yuruparí ancestors, enabling them to listen to and wonder about sounds with no visual confirmation of any of their evaluations. The intended purpose of showing a woman performing acts of deep listening surrounded by sound and water explicitly presents one enfleshment through which yuruparí instruments are noticed. Enfleshments, more than instruments themselves, are the middle ground in which relations of alterity are constantly contested and defied, rather than fixed or defined. It is in this middle ground that the gap between myth and everyday life, or between fact and metaphor, becomes intentionally ambiguous, and where enfleshments capacitate people to make—or dispute—the sense of their sociality. This dispute is always present and particularly at stake when adult women mention in front of men that they are going to take back yuruparí instruments. In Vaupés, women keep taking back these instruments from men, piece-bypiece, causing episodes in which gender appears as if shifted, especially when men blame women for having a qualified job. After pursuing post-secondary education, Novoa and other Indigenous women from Vaupés have been achieving prominent roles that matter for keeping Tukanoan Indigenous analytics moving. Many other women, like Marina Galvez and Diana Guzmán, share

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Nadiezda’s situation as they occupy high positions within Mitu’s institutional life. Marina Galvez is a business manager who has directed the district archive and Vaupés library for the last ten years. Diana Guzmán is a schoolteacher, and since 2013 has coordinated a research exchange among German scholars (Guzmán and Maha-piria Orlando Villegas 2018), Tukanoan elders of Wanano origin, and teacher trainees from Mitu’s oldest boarding school. Guzmán also serves as a keeper at the ethnographic museum that holds her father’s name. During fieldwork between 2016 and 2018, these women told me that their everyday lives are often threatened by men who think they are misplaced in society because of the prominent positions they occupy in Mitu’s institutional sector. In 2016, anthropologist Maria Rossi quoted Diana Guzmán saying, “I told my dad, we women are going to take back the yuruparí, and he laughed, and then he answered that I had the heart of a man” (Diana Guzman on Rossi 2016: 145; emphasis added). Rossi elaborates on this “theft” as: A possibility for a symbolic equilibrium between the ritual elements and the myth without excluding that women’s current interpretations could accumulate the power coming from men’s yuruparí. This possibility for stealing the flutes, also as a statement, denounces such disequilibrium and establishes a position against it. (Rossi 2016: 146; emphasis added)

I do not consider this a “theft.” Rather, it is an enfleshment that enables Tukanoan women to have a primordial well living through which they rely upon themselves, satisfying their joy, and carrying what is fundamental for their everyday lives, with or without men’s approval. This enfleshment that causes such gender and labor shifting, then, is crucial for understanding the ethical work that yuruparí instruments help accomplish by ear. It highlights the labor struggle that speaks to women’s perennial happiness, erotic life, and sexual power. This primordial and joyful well-living, I argue, terrifies men and Tukanoan men, especially during their sexual maturation, a period of organic life that Irving Goldman called “dialectic of eros, growth and death” (Goldman 2004: 213). Indeed, I hardly think of contemporary Tukanoan men as allowing a form of dependency towards women similar to primordial eras, in which they were doing the hard work that was supposed to be women’s business. In Goldman’s monograph about Cubeo people, he presented a reference to a Tukanoan moral economy that illuminates this discussion about gender, labor, sensory engagements, and media: Kwai decided to leave us our legacy of labor. He left instructions for making chicha [manioc beer]. He told people they would learn to wear clothing, that the white man would come and give them all the things he alone knew how

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to make such as machetes, guns, steel axes, airplanes, factories, and tape recorders. Kwai himself created summer so that people would have their right season for burning over chagra [gardens]. Having said this, Kwai went away and never returned. (Goldman 2004: 137; emphasis added)

Goldman reports that when God-Kwai was living in the Vaupés he taught people how to keep gardens with no pain or fatigue. But due to recurrent excessive happiness and disobedience of women, and the incapability of men to regulate women’s behavior, they were left alone with the exhausting work in the chagra and the technological dependence on whites. Yet, I do think that Cubeo and other Tukanoan men are slowly being forced to become chagra workers, or farmers, as they were when women controlled yuruparí instruments. During the last two decades, Colombian central and local governments in conjunction with NGOs have been implementing environmental policies and expanding regulated market economies in Tukanoan communities around the Vaupés river basin. In 2018, Wilson Silva, one of my adult collaborators from the Cubeo Bahukiwa clan expressed his frustration to me by saying “we don’t know how to make the government understand that we are not campesinos (farmers).”14 As I have shown, these processes are transversally harming men’s modality of sexual difference and moral economy, tenets of their sensory engagements with Tukanoan mythical instruments. These processes do not reverse their historical present into a mythical era; rather, they made indistinct, in some cases, any dividing line between the recent present and the mythical everyday of their ancestral territory. As I have presented through the last sections, this harm is double for Tukanoan women.

Final Remarks As a result, the ethical work of yuruparí instruments defined by the myth, as men tell, is accomplished only if the aforementioned “legacy of labor” remains blind to the current transformation of Tukanoan women’s labor; thus, spreading a sort of astigmatism that hardly sees women’s enfleshments of powerful instruments. Under this perspective, any creative encounters that Tukanoans might have with other experimental resources and collaborations are seen as nonoriginal, unacceptable, and impure, as exemplified by the curatorial attitude of Javier Suarez. The colonial imagination, for which Indigenous expressive repertoires are “like honey,” forecloses Tukanoans within a nostalgic archive full of mirrors where everything appears fixed, folklorized, and legible for the public consumption of a multicultural perspective ( Jackson 2019: 79). Under this perspective, Indigenous expressive repertoires are presented in a way in which

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current Tukanoans cannot recognize themselves through their own differential registers. The labor of taking back yuruparí instruments, in conclusion, is a modality of permanent becoming by which Tukanoan women readjust relations of alterity for their benefit, providing new understandings of Tukanoan aural worlds, and their creative transformations. Tukanoan attitudes towards yuruparí instruments are shifting contexts of signification and evaluation, and the types of ownership over these instruments are acquiring new roles among gender and labor scenarios at the Vaupés region, contrary to other ethnographic contexts in which yuruparí cults have been described as acculturated or reduced in their cultural significance for other communities (Aikhenvald 2019; Chernela 2015). The salient idea I obtained from closely studying these new roles is to keep these instruments hidden in their secrecy (Olivier and Neurath 2017) but outspoken in their generative and creative resonance. Additionally, I have learned from conducting fieldwork in the Vaupés region that to put on “an ear of a Tukanoan woman” means to try to make sense of powerful sounds, accepting not to see anything other than a stubborn commitment to take care of what is fundamental. Finally, a sonic-oriented approach to Tukanoan instruments calls scholars to rethink their own organological perspectives in order to identify how musical and other instruments are helping other social worlds to accomplish a multitude of ethical and creative works, where interpretants, audience, events, enfleshments, and listening registers get entangled in the everyday life.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to the editors of this volume, Ernst Halbmayer and Anne Goletz, for their insightful comments and invitation to participate in this project. I also want to acknowledge Jonathan Hill’s advice on integrating ethnomusicology, linguistic anthropology, and multimodal fieldwork methods within this work. It has been enriching to put into conversation these disciplines with the careful review of the editors and to deliver a chapter that combines fieldwork experience with creative work.

Juan Carlos Castrillón Vallejo is an anthropologist, filmmaker, and the Gilbert Seldes Multimodal Postdoctoral Fellow at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. His regional expertise is the Northwest Amazon in Colombia and Turkey. His media-based work is a performative response to contemporary debates in the humanities about

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decoloniality, visual and sound cultures, and Indigenous analytics of time and technology. His publications include “Spatial Transformation of Music Practice in Istanbul: Repositioning of Subjectivities” (2014), “Training Kamish: Acoustic Ethnographies of Islam and Challenges of Sound in the Construction of Subjectivities” (2012) and “Narrativity in Sound: A Sound-Centered Approach to Indigenous Amazonian Ways of Managing Relations of Alterity” (coauthored with Jonathan D. Hill, 2017). His films are shown in film festivals widely and can be seen permanently at the website of the Society for Cultural Anthropology (SCA).

Notes 1. Nadiezda Novoa, interview with the author, Mitú, 12 March 2017. 2. Javier Suarez, interview with the author, Mitú, 18 October 2013. 3. For a recent study of instruments already constituted and their formal and visible characteristics among Tukanoan language groups of Northwest Amazonia see Hugh-Jones (2017). 4. Luis Cayón explicitly mentioned these conflicts between anthropologists and communities derived from printed scholarship on yuruparí related subjects and other matters associated to healing procedures (Cayón 2013: 218). 5. For recent discussions on how ritual and artistic practices develop diverse perspectival shifting strategies see Pitrou (2012), Olivier and Neurath (2017), and Lagrou (2007). 6. Musicking is a concept introduced by Christopher Small (1998) to draw attention to the dynamic character of music as a practice. Small’s usage of the gerund form of the word “music” introduced a productive critique in Musicology as it promotes a less nominal approach to a phenomenon characterized by its constant transformation. 7. For a more extended discussion on the proactive collaboration between anthropology of the otherwise and the introduction of practices of experimental methodologies in ethnomusicological in order to study lifeworlds ontologically open see Povinelli (2011: 7) and Moisala et al. (2014: 88). 8. Another contemporary audio work featuring Tukanoan expressive practices produced around the time Elorza worked in the Vaupés region was a release produced by British Institute of Recorded Sound in 1972. This release came out of the Anglo-Colombian Recording Expedition that visited the Pirá-Paraná drainage region in 1960–61. This release did not include any sonic register of yuruparí instruments, but it did include Tukanoan panpipe dances, male choirs, duct flutes, and a melancholic regret written by Donald Tayler and Brian Moser in liner notes of the recording about their misfortune of not having the chance to capture those “mysterious sounds highly repudiated by missionaries” (Tayler and Moser 1972: 10). 9. The audio recording can be accessed at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jqaPmNsZz CWA5-EWO6z7AXvrqPejB0uj/view?usp=sharing. Elorza granted me written permission to analyze his set of recordings after I interviewed him in 2014, four years before he passed away. 10. Translation from Barasano language to Spanish by Etelvina Gómez. English translation by the author.

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11. As I have mentioned elsewhere, these points of listening or “mic-positionalities” refer to the mediation produced by recording technology and scholars during ethnographic settings, in which “sound recording and playback devices are bridging modes of relationality” (Hill and Castrillón 2017: 10). The notion emerged as a critical reflection to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s perspectivism (Viveiros de Castro 1996) suggesting that phonographic technologies instantiate shared perspectival encounters not often theorized. 12. For Hehenewa speakers (aka Cubeo) these enfleshments could be analogously closer to what they call “kahe” (Rodriguez 2000). This kahe can be the shell, a dress, or a mask of a three “takahe,” of tobacco “buchikahe,” or yajé “mihikahe.” To put this “kahe on” refers, then, to submerge or to cover one’s existence with it. 13. The opening sequence of the film may be accessed at this link: https://vimeo.com/54 4413707. 14. Wilson Silva, interview with the author, Mitú, 12 March 2016.

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González Galvis, Juan Camilo, and Natalia Lozada Mendieta. 2012. “The Illusion of the Brother: Expedition to the Anthropological and Literary Mythographies of Yurupary.” Antipoda 15: 245–68. Gow, Peter. 1995. “Cinema da Floresta Filme, Alucinação e Sonho na Amazônia Peruana.” Revista de Antropologia 38(2): 37–54. Guzmán, Mirigõ-Diana, and Maha-piria Orlando Villegas. 2018. “La Perspectiva Desde Mitú, Colombia: Museos, Objetos y Narrativas.” In Objetos Como Testigos del Contacto Cultural: Perspectivas Interculturales de la Historia y del Presente de las Poblaciones Indígenas del Alto Río Negro (Brasil/Colombia), ed. Michael Kraus, Ernst Halbmayer, and Ingrid Kummels, 49–52. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut. Herrera Angel, Leonor. 1975. “Yuruparí y las Mujeres.” Revista Colombiana de Antropología 18: 417–34. Hill, Jonathan D. 2015. “Discurso Ritual, Musicalidad e Ideologías Comunicativas en la Amazonía.” In Sudamérica y sus Mundos Audibles Cosmologías y Prácticas Sonoras de los Pueblos Indígenas, ed. Bernd Brabec de Mori, Matthias Lewy, and Miguel A. García, 181–93. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag. Hill, Jonathan D., and Juan C. Castrillón. 2017. “Narrativity in Sound: A Sound-Centered Approach to Indigenous Amazonian Ways of Managing Relations of Alterity.” El Oído Pensante 5(2). Retrieved 07 October 2021 from http://revistascientificas.filo.uba.ar/index .php/oidopensante/issue/view/581. Hill, Jonathan D., and Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, eds. 2011. Burst of Breath: Indigenous Ritual Wind Instruments in Lowland South America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Hugh-Jones, Stephen. 1979. The Palm and the Pleiades: Initiation and Cosmology in Northwest Amazonia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2017. “Body Tubes and Synaesthesia.” Mundo Amazónico 8: 27–78. Irigaray, Luce. 1985. Speculum of the Other Woman. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jackson, Jean E. 1983. The Fish People: Linguistic Exogamy and Tukanoan Identity in Northwest Amazonia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2019. Managing Multiculturalism: Indigeneity and the Struggle for Rights in Colombia. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Karadimas, Dimitri. 2008. “La Métamorphose de Yurupari: Flûtes, Trompes et Reproduction Rituelle dans le Nord-Ouest Amazonien.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 94(1): 127–69. Koch-Grünberg, Theodor. 1909. Zwei Jahre Unter den Indianern: Reisen in Nordwest-Brasilien 1903/1905. Berlin: E. Wasmuth. Lagrou, Els. 2007. A Fluidez da Forma. Arte, Alteridade e Agência em uma Sociedade amazônica (Kaxinawa, Acre). Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks. Matarezio Filho, Edson Tosta. 2015. “Trompetas Ticuna de la Fiesta de la Moça Nova.” In Sudamérica y sus Mundos Audibles Cosmologías y Prácticas Sonoras de los Pueblos Indígenas, ed. Bernd Brabec de Mori, Matthias Lewy, and Miguel A. García, 121–36. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag. Menezes Bastos, Rafael José de. 2011. “Leonardo, the Flute: On the Sexual Life of Sacred Flutes among the Xinguano Indians.” In Burst of Breath: Indigenous Ritual Wind Instruments in Lowland South America, ed. Jonathan Hill and Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, 69–91. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia. 2009. “Javier Francisco Suarez.” Retrieved 05 November 2016 from https://www.mincultura.gov.co/prensa/noticias/Paginas/2009-06-26_24094 .aspx.

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Moisala, Pirkko, Taru Leppänen, Milla Tiainen, and Hanna Väätäinen. 2014. “Noticing Musical Becomings: Deleuzian and Guattarian Approaches to Ethnographic Studies of Musicking.” Current Musicology 98: 71–93. Olivier, Guilhem, and Johannes Neurath. 2017. Mostrar y Ocultar en el Arte y en los Rituales: Perspectivas Comparativas. Ciudad de México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Pitrou, Perig. 2012. “Figuration des Processus Vitaux et Co-Activité Dans la Sierra Mixe de Oaxaca (Mexique).” L’Homme 202: 77–111. Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2006. The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ———. 2011. “Routes/Worlds.” E-flux 27: 1–12. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. 1996. Yuruparí: Studies of an Amazonian Foundation Myth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rodriguez, Orlando. 2000. “Conocimiento de los Cubeo para Curar Enfermedades.” Bachelor’s thesis, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Rossi, Maria. 2016. “Identidade Sem Pertencimento? Dimensões Íntimas da Etnicidade Feminina no Vaupés.” PhD diss., Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro. Seeger, Anthony. 2015. Por que Cantam os Kisêdjê: Uma Antropologia Musical de um Povo Amazônico. São Paulo: Cosac. Small, Christopher. 1998. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Hanover: University Press of New England. Tayler, Donald, and Brian Moser. 1972. The Music of Some Indian Tribes of Colombia: AngloColombian Recording Expedition 1960–61. London: British Institute of Recorded Sound. Tresch, John, and Emily I. Dolan. 2013. “Toward a New Organology: Instruments of Music and Science.” Osiris 28: 278–98. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1996. “Os Pronomes Cosmológicos e o Perspectivismo Ameríndio.” Mana 2: 115–44. Vološinov, Valentin N. 1973. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. New York: Seminar Press. Wilson, Pamela, and Michelle Stewart. 2008. Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics, and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

CONCLUSION

Creation, Creativity, and the Genres of Transmutation and Transhuman Communication ERNST HALBMAYER AND ANNE GOLETZ

  

In conclusion we argue that the volume’s chapters show specific Indigenous Lowland South American forms of creativity and summarize their central characteristics in terms of five dimensions: first, the continuity from the creative potentials of mythical times to the present, or between first- and second-order creativity; second, their relational quality and the crucial role played by otherthan-human beings as creative agents; third, their generative quality that is based on ideas and the need to reconstruct relationships; fourth, their processual quality that becomes manifest in the importance of transmutation, or intersemiotic translation, between different creative genres, nonlinear forms of temporality, and specific contextual resignifications; and fifth, a specific relationship between the forms of creativity described in myths and those of contemporary creative practices.

First- and Second-Order Creativity Maybe most important, creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America is not “conceptualized as somebody’s ability to transform or combine inspiration into an artful output” (Brabec, Chapter 4). Not humans but nonhuman-entities are the main creators in Lowland Amerindian cosmologies (Brabec, Chapter 4; Halbmayer, Chapter 1). Their creations are reproduced, coproduced, transmitted, or appropriated. Consequently, a distinction between first-layer creativity expressed in speaking, performing, singing, dancing and the like, by ritual specialists and lay people, and a second-layer creativity localized in mythical space-time and sustained by other-than-human entities emerges (Brabec, Chapter 4). A number of contributions focus especially on the relationship between these two layers.

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Whereas second-layer creativity is most forcefully expressed in myth and the activities of original beings and the conception of the world at the time of origin, first-layer creativity encompasses human speech acts, musical and ritual performances, and finds its expression in material culture like basketry (Mattéi Muller, Chapter 8) and cultivated plants like maize (Goletz, Chapter 2). Second-layer creativity speaks of cosmogony, the time of origin and the coming into being of the contemporary world, of humans, animals, things, songs, and practices. First-layer creativity involves the (unavoidable) necessity to relate with nonhuman actors and original deified beings by means of transhuman communication. This necessity is phrased in terms of ritual coactivity of human and nonhuman actors (Goletz, Chapter 2), the temporal-spatial coordination and synchronization of distinct timescapes (Lewy, Chapter 7), or a hierarchical symbiosis and forms of nourishment between humans and spiritual beings (Goletz, Chapter 2; Halbmayer, Chapter 1; Saturno, Chapter 3). Of special importance in several contributions (Brabec, Chapter 4; Castrillón Vallejo, Chapter 9; Hill, Chapter 6; Lewy, Chapter 7; Mattéi Muller, Chapter 8; Otaegui, Chapter 5) are practices of transmutation between different verbal and nonverbal sign systems (e.g., mythology, iconography, music, basketry) and the shifting of their context of signification (e.g., from ritual to economy and gender politics). Beyond the activities of nonhuman actors told in myth and the present-day activities to establish relations with these primordial actors, the contributions of Otaegui, Mattéi Muller, and Castrillón Vallejo stress additional, nontranscendent levels of creativity—levels that are “immersed in this everyday life” and “made up of casual conversations” (Otaegui, Chapter 5). They establish “a recursive creation of poetic normativity” (Otaegui, Chapter 5) between verbal art and social life based on relations among humans rather than with nonhuman others, and thereby shift the level of signification of either yuruparí instruments and sounds (Castrillón Vallejo, Chapter 9) or basketry (Mattéi Muller, Chapter 8).

Relational Creativity: Human and Transhuman Communication Relational creativity as a second central dimension implies, as mentioned in the introduction, a change of focus from creative human minds to multi-agentive human and other-than-human relational dynamics. In the context of Lowland South American, this means first of all relations between first-layer and secondlayer creativity, but also relations between humans of different layers of exteriority and alterity. By expanding the common notions about relational creativity, the book’s contributions show that nonhuman actors not only actively take part

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in these relations, but mostly are the main creators. Creativity is thus neither a specifically human capacity nor merely an emerging quality inherent in the material world. Several contributions deal with relational creativity by focusing on different genres of music, singing, and verbal expressions, such as myths (Halbmayer, Chapter 1; Hill, Chapter 6; Lewy, Chapter 7; Otaegui, Chapter 5), songs (Brabec, Chapter 4; Hill, Chapter 6; Saturno, Chapter 3), ritualistic and everyday practices (Goletz, Chapter 2, Saturno, Chapter 3) and spells (Lewy, Chapter 7; Otaegui, Chapter 5), the changing role of baskets (Mattéi Muller, Chapter 8) or those of musical instruments as powerful agents (Castrillón Vallejo, Chapter 9). Relational creativity is subject to communicative relations between different human and other-than-human actors, which, as Brabec argues, imply the transmission of “knowledge and creative faculties from a ‘Real World’ that is located beyond sensual perception into sensually perceivable items in the ‘human world.’” This transhuman communication and transmission of knowledge may depend on different strategies, such as sonic (Brabec, Chapter 4; Hill, Chapter 6; Lewy, Chapter 7) and aural techniques (Castrillón Vallejo, Chapter 9), liminal experiences through dreaming, singing, and illness (Saturno, Chapter 3), rituals (Halbmayer, Chapter 1; Hill, Chapter 6; Saturno, Chapter 3) and the creation of temporary transactive timescapes (Lewy, Chapter 7), forms of ritual coactivity (Goletz, Chapter 2), or the (hierarchical) exchange of offerings conceptualized as mutual nourishment and feeding (Goletz, Chapter 2; Halbmayer, Chapter 1; Saturno, Chapter 3). Such creative formations of realities are obviously not just based on predatory appropriation as has been argued for the Amazonian exchange and transformation mode of creativity, but may rely on controlled sonic or ritual transformation or on nontransformative logics like approximation, harmonization, or synchronization. Moreover, they are not always subject to affinal, but also to filial relationships marked by hierarchy. In different ways, a double distinction seems to be at work in the creative methods and techniques applied to establish these transhuman and interspecies relations. The first distinction concerns controlled versus uncontrolled transformation (Brabec, Chapter 4). “Uncontrolled transformation of the human into the chaotic reminds of dissociation, of psychosis, and death, while on the other hand, controlled transformation from chaos to order under the auspices of human form effects well-being, beauty, and health” (Brabec, Chapter 4). The second distinction concerns the distinct uses of controlled transformation. It may be applied either from an ego- or group-centric specific-purpose ethic or a cosmo-centric general-purpose ethic. In terms of the first logic, it “is understood as the prototypical means for healing and other forms of purposeful manipulations, like for hunting preparations, weather summons, warfare, or sorcery” (Brabec, Chapter 4). Thus, controlled transformation may also be used

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in ways that can be dangerous and harmful for others, as in the case of witchcraft or the use of spells (Lewy, Chapter 7; Otaegui, Chapter 5). Controlled transformation requires knowledge and is therefore often carried out by experienced people. These knowledgeable people “are not only perceived as creative, they can also be destructive, as is the case of Pume singers who practice sorcery to inflict damage upon others” (Saturno, Chapter 3). In logics based on transcreation (Halbmayer, Chapter 1) rather than on transformation or creation ex nihilo, continuous relations with supportive deified beings become important. These go hand in hand with priestly vertical shamanism and cosmo-centric general-purpose ethics and the resulting moral behavior. Humans must provide nourishment in the form of offerings, food, or songs to spiritual beings, like the maize deity Unano among the Sokorpa Yukpa (Goletz, Chapter 2) or the trickster Icˆiai among the Pume (Saturno, Chapter 3), both of whom may punish humans if they do not sing, dance, or conduct rituals. Specific forms of problematic behavior and the non-establishment of contact with deified beings may lead to sickness (Saturno, Chapter 3), poor harvest and drought (Goletz, Chapter 2), or even cataclysms (Halbmayer, Chapter 1). Thus, there are also transcreative contexts—especially in the Isthmo-Colombian region—that, in contrast to the classical Amazonian capacity for controlled transformation, are nontransformative, but rather rely on approximation, harmonization, and synchronization (Halbmayer 2013 and Chapter 1), or ritual coactivity (Goletz, Chapter 2) as a functional equivalent to metamorphosis. Even evidence for the commonly claimed bodily transformation (metamorphosis) in perspectivistic or animic Amazonian societies (Descola 2013; Viveiros de Castro 2004) is “outside mythological narratives, dreams, and drug-induced altered perception . . . rare, if not absent,” as Brabec argues. Consequently, Brabec shifts the focus “from the physical to the auditory” to explain ritual transformation. “When ritual transformation occurs, the [singer’s] voice changes, very often into a high-pitched falsetto, but also into other voice masks.” Thus, the transformation takes place first and foremost in the sonic domain and becomes perceptible through the voice change which is correlated “with a physical transformation of the singing specialist.” Such a shift in focus complements former critiques and attempts to complement visually centered perspectivism (Lewy 2012, 2017; Brabec de Mori 2012; Brabec de Mori and Seeger 2013). From the perspective of ethnomusicology, the use of sonic techniques that release creativity is in the center “of communicating with, or transforming into, nonhuman beings” (Brabec, Chapter 4). Similarly, from the perspective of linguistic anthropology, the “agency of the word” begets creativity (Otaegui, Chapter 5). However, creativity is not just set free by doing things with words

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or by singing but by transposing events into verbal art, as Otaegui’s “name stories” and “love songs” show. The agency of words, however, is not just verbal. Interspecific intelligibility is achieved when speech is enhanced “with formalized prosody, rhythmicity, or a certain degree of melodization results” that “attract the attention of nonhuman beings, in a way spoken language does not. Therefore, these items of enhancement seem to carry an ‘inter-specifically intelligible quality’” (Brabec, Chapter 4). For this reason, the Shipibo avoid singing outside “the secure framework of festivities” and their villages, and they use voice masking to prevent unintended interactions (Brabec, Chapter 4), just as the Pemón shamans mask or disguise song lines to protect the listener (Lewy, Chapter 7). For Lewy—as in a similar sense for Hill (Chapter 6)—“it is not the semantic meaning of the sung words but rather the formalization of the sound” (Lewy, Chapter 7) that allows for transhuman communication and the establishment of transactive timescapes. Musical sequences develop “a chain of indexes or other signs (which can be iconic or symbolic) pointing to a series of beings related to these indexes” that “point to places (e.g., the underwater world), sets of entities (like water spirits), interactions (attraction, seduction, battle, betrayal), and effects (healing, dispatching, cleaning, and so on)” (Brabec, Chapter 4). Uttering such signs in the “correct” singing styles sets “in motion the creativity of the entities in the nonhuman realms . . . the performer “sings along with.” In this sense, music and rituals establish a “third space” (Lewy 2012, 2015) beyond physicality and interiority and beyond Descola’s ontological categories (animism, naturalism, totemism, analogism) that rely on such a distinction (Brabec, Chapter 4). Lewy frames this temporally interactive third space with reference to Halbmayer’s (2004) notion of timescapes as “transactive timescapes.” They are an expression of the transcendence of the timescapes of the ordinary world by means of “transspecific communication in ritual performances, myths, songs, and magic formulas” (Lewy, Chapter 7) that is intrinsically creative. Lewy distinguishes between restricted and unrestricted versions of such transactive timescapes. Whereas restricted ones are “constituted by an intonation of formalized sounds” and participants “are all aware of interacting inside a ritually enacted transactive timescape,” in unrestricted ones that are constituted by the performance of magic formulas (tarén) “the target entities and noninvolved humans are exposed to this transactive timescape without conscious awareness or intention and without possibility to step out of it.” Thus, while Otaegui states that “for the Ayoreo, uttering sarode [spells] amounts to doing things with words, in the sense of Austin (1962),” Lewy shows that among the Pemón the spells refer to myths that explain their creation and functioning and imply a change in the timescape without contacting the spirits directly. Castrillón Vallejo’s contribution on yuruparí flutes among Tukanoan language groups highlights the listening standpoint of women. Not being allowed

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to see the yuruparí flutes and to participate in the male initiation rituals in which men play the instruments in the longhouses, “the spatial displacement from longhouses reinforces the aural proximity of women with yuruparí ancestors” (Castrillón Vallejo, Chapter 9). The men’s visual and ritual sounding and the women’s listening relations with the instruments produce different sensorial positionalities or, following Povinelli (2006), “enfleshments” through the “ethical and creative work” of the yuruparí ancestors that speak through the flutes. For the men, their sounding-bounded enfleshment renews their claim of ownership over the yuruparí flutes, whereas for the women their listening-bounded enfleshment reminds them that they were the original owners of the flutes. Moreover, it triggers their will to “reappropriat[e] them through creative processes in which their well-being is at stake,” namely, through laughter during the initiation ritual so serious for men or through taking high professional positions in society. Silvana Saturno’s analysis of the tõhe, a central Pume ritual practice, shows that singers acquire “knowledge through the experiences of dreaming, being sick, and singing,” a “temporary secession of their human condition,” and a regular relationship with Icˆiai—the trickster-creator. The relationship does not rely on the ideation of mental images, as singers are “‘not thinking’ . . . , such knowledge is implicit, embodied, habituated.” Ideation results from experience and old, knowledgeable singers have “clear memories of what they have seen while singing.” They are able—in an act of transmutation (see below)—to “engrave their rattles with images of the creator gods and spiritual beings.” Knowledge therefore is acquired through “close relationships with the mythical beings, the creators.” A general ambiguity characterizes these relations as “Icˆiai causes suffering to men but interacting with him seems to be the only way to reproduce socially.” People relate to Icˆiai and thereby “create to find and share aesthetic pleasure,” since among the Pume “creativity, like knowledge, must bring pleasure. Interestingly the relationship between Icˆiai and singers is “always explained in terms of debt and payment.” Icˆiai may punish a singer who did not “pay him with his song” and appear in dreams and start haunting the singer. As Saturno states, “singing is very much like sharing food. Like food, songs not only nurture people but also social relations . . . During the tõhe, not only songs are shared [with mythical beings] but also tobacco and manioc beer.” Thereby a transhuman commensality is established, which also has a healing effect, since among the Pume “to provide manioc beer, tobacco and booze when available is also a prerequisite of healing.” Thus, beside the capacity for transformation, material, physical, and sonic relations (Saturno, Chapter 3), offerings (Halbmayer, Chapter 1) that assume

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the character of (mutual) feeding, as well as oneiric relations (Goletz, Chapter 2; Saturno, Chapter 3) are important in transhuman relations. These capacities may also rely on harmonization (Halbmayer, Chapter 1) that enables communication and transmission (Brabec, Chapter 4; Goletz, Chapter 2; Halbmayer, Chapter 1; Lewy, Chapter 7) of creativity in the forms of knowledge, life force, and vitality. Such relationships take, especially in the Isthmo-Colombian Area, also the form of a hierarchical symbiosis between humans and deified ancestor-like beings (Halbmayer, Chapter 1; Goletz Chapter 2). Beside curative shamanic intervention and healing, preventive cognitive-physical harmonization as a form of transcreation prevails. Here relations with deified ancestor-like original beings, linked with humans through filial continuities, become much more important than affinal relations with theriomorphic beings or cannibal gods. Shamanism in the area is less transformative than in large parts of the Indigenous Amazon, but it relies on the control of helping spirits and priesthood mediates hierarchical symbiotic relation between humans and spiritual people. These symbiotic relations “operate between terms set in a hierarchy” (Descola 2013: 321) and are therefore different from exchange, gift, and predation that operate between subjects of equal status. In the case of Chibchan groups, this hierarchical relation secures cosmological reproduction, in which humans are perceived as cultivated plants or seeds, cared for and protected by the gods (Halbmayer 2020; Niño Vargas 2020). At the same time the planted crops/ children nourish their cultivators/gods. Goletz gives an example for this notion when stating that the Yukpa “nourish Unano, Unano makes the maize plants grow on which people feed and people sow and harvest the maize. People depend on Unano to make maize reproduce and grow, but Unano also depends on people to sow and harvest maize and to nourish him.” She focuses on the joint activities of humans and Unano, also called Osema, a mythical figure who introduced agriculture and maize to ensure the “recreation of an already existing vital form (maize).” Thereby she identifies three creative processes and potentials: “nourishing Unano and encouraging his reproductive potential, dancing for Unano and activating his rewarding potential, and transmitting knowledge to maize specialists and thus stimulating Unano’s and the latter’s instructive potentials” (Goletz, Chapter 2). These creative processes build on mimetic coactivity (Pitrou 2016) and are “coordinated and synchronized not only by human ritual action but also by Unano himself who plays a crucial role in generating mimetic coactivity” through his oneiric transmissions. These are strategies to create similarity between different entities that “allows for transmission of knowledge, substances, and capacities” (Goletz, Chapter 2).

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Generative Creativity: Ideation and the Necessity of Re-creating Relations While the idea of generative creativity depicted in the introduction, seems attractive as the third central dimension, it only partly covers Lowland South American Indigenous conceptions. Saturno, for example, refers to Peter Gow (2001), who stresses ideation as a crucial part of the elaboration of painted designs among the Piro. Elaboration follows a process that “goes from ideation of a new design to imagining it materialized in an object to its actual elaboration.” Such an ideation or “materialization of thought,” as phrased by Halbmayer (chapter 1), in creative processes stands in contrast to Ingold’s notion of improvisation and the “creativity of undergoing” (2014), as improvisations are actually not the outcome of intention or mental representations, but rather of making, growing, undergoing, and self-making relations. However, in Indigenous Lowland South America creation and creativity also rely to a substantial degree on ideation, or creation by thought. In some cultures, at least, things, the world, and the like first existed in thought (as among the Kogi) and creation involved thinking spiritual beings and deities, who materialized or fabricated their thoughts (Halbmayer, Chapter 1). In a similar way weaving can be considered an act of inscription. Mattéi Muller summarizes the knowledge on Guianese Amerindian basketry as follows: The itiriti basketry designs are not improvised because they contain coded elements, anchored in multiple configurations which generate graphic representations of a mnemonic nature whose meanings are intimately linked to a corpus of mythical entities and narratives, inherent to each people. Many of these designs are found in the basketry of peoples belonging to very different cultures. This graphic heritage common to this Amazonian area is easily explained by the use of the same raw material . . . , flat strips, quite rigid, of natural coloration combined with red or black coloration and the same plaiting and twilling techniques. All these factors make it possible to generate a set of geometric drawings that each people transmits from generation to generation as markers of a cultural identity. (Chapter 8)

Creation is to a large extent the re-creation of relations, the conscious and purposeful perpetuation of life-giving and life-sustaining processes and a way of continuing vital processes that were originally established by mythical or deified beings. In this sense, first-layer creativity is not the invention of something new but serves to sustain cultural processes that often originated through second-layer creativity and the relations it entails. Such forms of creativity are not about innovation but about recreation and, in a sense, repetition, imitation, and copying. Such a creative reproduction and maintenance is neither a con-

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tingent invention nor an emergent process of the propulsion of life. It is rather a conscious and at most, controlled form of transformation and transcreation that aims, for example, to heal, to produce vitality, or to reproduce vital relations. This form of creativity is at the same time knowledgeable of the fact that the disturbance and nonrepetition of the creative processes would have dangerous and degrading effects, including punishment by nonhuman actors. Thus, it is necessary to reproduce vitality-producing and life-giving creativity and pleasurable sociality in order to avoid the unintended unleashing of dangerous forms of uncontrolled creativity that may cause death and, at a cosmological level, cataclysm. Such vitality-reproducing creativity is not an automatic effect of “undergoing” but rather an intentional agency to be activated. It relies on and produces knowledge and ideation, is associated with power and expressed through different verbal, sonic, iconographic, bodily, and behavioral sign systems. Examples are Brabec’s description of the charging of a voice with power or ritualized activities that serve to recreate an already existing vital form, such as cultivated maize, as shown by Goletz. Last but not least, among some groups such recreative creativity apparently becomes associated with morality, moral judgment, and possible punishment—such is the case among the Pume (Saturno, Chapter 3), the Yukpa (Goletz, Chapter 2), and groups of the Isthmo-Colombian Area (Halbmayer, Chapter 1). Among the Pume, Icˆiai punishes the nonreproduction of the songs that were transmitted by him with sickness; among the Yukpa, Unano punishes the nonperformance of the songs and dances taught by him with poor harvest and drought (Goletz, Chapter 2), and in some Isthmo-Colombian groups the failing to reconnect with the original spiritual entities is punished by cataclysms (Halbmayer, Chapter 1). Ayoreo name-stories and songs also involve moral and aesthetic judgments, as described by Otaegui. In Ayoreo wailing songs, “the same tropes to compose these songs” are used and generate “expectations about the lyrics of new compositions [and] about the stories narrated” (Otaegui, Chapter 5). These poetic regularities relate to a “normalization process” and “values associated with conviviality.” Here “creativity does not equate with originality”; the compositions rather must meet “expectations regarding performance and lyrics.” In this case, creativity lies in an interpretation that attributes the causes of known-by-all events to the narration of a myth, which “circulates from conversation to conversation,” producing “repetition with variations in each rendering of the interpretation.” Moreover, the process of producing name-stories or love songs does not involve the invention of a story but “the registering of slightly curious behavior or utterances intensely charged with sentiments, which will be the subject of the name-story or the song.” All in all, Otaegui identifies a “constant

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pursuit of transforming the events of everyday life into pieces of songs or stories.” Thus, “we are not dealing with creation as much as we are dealing with repetitions and variations” that “go through different linguistic registers.” The necessity of relations with second-order creativity are also to be found in basketry. Mattéi Muller states that “in the mythologies . . . the basketry material is always conceived as the property of supernatural masters and human beings have only the usufruct along with numerous constraints.” These constraints become obvious concerning the necessity of the weaver to ask the masters of the material for permission and besides, because the weaver is not “entirely free to choose the form of the baskets nor their designs and colors but has to observe the rules of his culture’s weaving tradition.” Ancestral basket-making therefore was “a guarantor of history, of a knowledge woven into the body of the artifacts.”

Processual Creativity: Transmutation, Temporalities, and Contextual Resignification The fourth dimension of processual creativity shifts the focus from innovative products to creative processes. It thus blurs long-standing dichotomies of change—innovation and tradition—repetition, but so far without taking into consideration notions of time beyond linear progression. The volume’s contributions point to other forms of processual creativity, which are identified by their intersemiotic translational, or transmutational character and the temporal perspective specific for Lowland South American creative processes. Several contributions (Brabec, Chapter 4; Hill, Chapter 6; Lewy, Chapter 7; Otaegui, Chapter 5) refer to (intersemiotic) translation (see Hanks and Severi 2014 and especially Carlo Severi’s 2014 essay on transmutation). Building on Roman Jakobson (1959), Severi distinguishes interlingual translation or translation proper (interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language) from intralinguistic interpretation (interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language), and transmutation (intersemiotic translation of verbal signs by means of nonverbal sign systems). He adds transmutation proper (intersemiotic translation between nonverbal sign systems) to the list. In analysis, the transmutation of narratives (myths) into nonverbal signs like visual art in basketry or music takes center stage. For Severi, “the object of translation (transmutation) . . . is always the intuitive relation, previously established, between groups of sounds, images, and words” (Severi 2014: 60). The analysis of this relation is a “progressive construction of a four-term analogy (Saussure [1913] 2006) between relationships previously established in each semiotic code involved.” At the lowest level, relationships within each semiotic (verbal, visual, musical) code are represented and at the second level

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the relationship between these groups of relationships is established, forming “a logical link between groups of analogies.” “When a higher-level relationship is established between groups of relationships, a transmutation is generated” that “overcomes . . . the heterogeneity of semiotic codes.” Transmutation is, as the examples from the book show, not just an analytical procedure but a powerful creative practice for driving and steering creative processes, an ability related to power, knowledge, and a specific handling of signs to produce effects, to redirect perception, and to make the nonperceptible perceptible. Such partial encoding of information triggers perception and intersemiotic interpretation, that is, locally applied processes of meaning-making based on the logic of transmutation or intersemiotic triangulation. Transmutation, however, is also an analytical “way to establish an order in the assemblage of these heterogeneous codes,” as Severi notes (2014: 60, emphasis in the original). However, one sign system (e.g., myth) cannot simply be understood as the “caption” of another one (e.g., iconography), “A complementary relation exists . . . between myths, ritual chants, and the drawings, picture-writings, or body-decorations . . . The different sign-systems are understood as ‘variations’ of the same ‘conceptual imagination’” (Severi 2014: 45–46) and each of them depicts a selective and noncongruent version of it. What Otaegui calls “incomplete renditions of the original event” in Ayoreo songs and name-stories may be considered an expression of such transmutations. It is as “if these songs and name-stories were intended as memory triggers,” as signs that have to be understood in relation to other signs or sign-systems. There are visual, acoustic, or verbal signs or series of signs that acquire their full meaning only in relation to the same conceptual imagination or story expressed through another sign system. The verbal, acoustic, or visual images may therefore render the story or conceptual imagination more or less complete, which can be understood through an intersemiotic interpretation that relies to a significant degree on experience, knowledge, and expertise, which may be gained through contact with second-level creative beings and techniques to establish contact, like fasting. The manifestation within another sign-system must not necessarily be perceptible at the same moment. For an intersemiotic interpretation it is sufficient to know about these other manifestations and the meaning they convey. This is what Brabec calls an “indirect perception” of otherwise invisible realities: While people hear and listen, the mentioned processes enable perceptions and create certainties about creative events occurring in the “Real World,” which is usually removed from sensory experience. By transmutating these events into sonic occurrences, the singer makes them hearable, perceivable, and consequently real. (Chapter 4)

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Graphic, sonic, or verbal units induce, encode, enact, express, and recall such conceptual imaginations, events, or “stories.” They are the partial expressions of such events or concepts that are also enacted, encoded, and expressed, in other sign systems. A myth, a dance, or a melody may be such a partial enactment within different sign-systems between which nonarbitrary relations exist. Hill links his theoretical concepts of musicalization and lexicalization to the semiotic concept of transmutation and calls the translation of verbal codes into musical codes “musicalization.” Musicalization is used to “construct a poetics of ritual power that connects human and nonhuman beings” through a “musical energizing of language into a transformational force that iconically embodies transitions in the human life cycle as well as the transformations between different categories of beings.” It is a “wellspring of cultural creativity that energizes, brings to life, sets in motion, and transforms narratively constructed visual imagery and verbal processes. The transformational creativity of musicalization, however, must be complemented by “the stabilizing process of lexicalization, or the translation of musical into verbal codes,” which is a way of “constraining the hyperanimate power of musicality in order to ensure the accurate transmission of mythic and other verbal arts across generations of human beings.” While musicalization is “an Indigenous form of creating, exploring, and opening up all sense modalities to find new ways of interpreting, understanding, and imagining the world . . . , lexicalization is an Indigenous form of focusing, ordering, classifying, specifying, and shutting out all sensual stimuli in order to attach consciousness to a single place within the world” (Hill, Chapter 6). Lewy argues that transmutation “serves for an understanding of how visual and auditory code systems interact and how this interaction is related to the process of constituting transactive timescapes.” For transmutation, it is not the semantic meaning of the word that matters but “the formalization of the sound that makes transmutations (intersemiotic translations) possible” (Chapter 7). In Castrillón Vallejo’s contribution, the focus is not on intersemiotic translations but on different sensorial positionalities or “enfleshments” as a result of different listening (open to everybody), viewing (restricted to young and adult men), and understanding (restricted to a few male elders) perspectives on the yuruparí instrument. However, male elders may also translate the yuruparí sound that is unintelligible for the majority of the male listeners into human language, a translation “through which Tukanoan geo-social preexistence is witnessed, retold, reinscribed, and remembered.” Castrillón Vallejo also points to another layer of intersemiotic translations, namely, sound and video recordings through which “yuruparí instruments are digitally and mechanically reproducible” (Chapter 9).

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While Severi’s (2014) view is highly appreciated by several authors of this volume, Mattéi Muller is critical of Severi’s interpretation of graphic patterns in Yekuana iconography that are based on David Guss (1989). Mattéi Muller doubts that “all the designs present in Ye’kwana basketry are ‘mere derivations’ of a single basic form” and instead emphasizes the variety of geometric and figurative designs. As the contributions show, transmutation is a creative process that is not conditioned by the progress of time but by the translation of signs through different semiotic registers. It thus opens up the possibility of other forms of temporality. A “diversity of temporalities” becomes manifest. While some songs, like love songs, tell the story of current events, others, like war songs and shamans’ dream songs, hail from more distant times (Otaegui, Chapter 5). Lewy builds on the concept of timescapes, that relies on a notion of time that is not clearly separated from spatial dimensions. The idea of timescapes is based on a “continuous discontinuity,” an overarching discontinuity whose reproduction produces continuity not primarily as a continuous antagonism of discontinuous units, but rather “in the continuous coexistence of different, and therefore spatial-temporally discontinuous, units and their change” (Halbmayer 2004: 127). It is the creation of temporal transactive timescapes that Lewy focuses on, which overcome such discontinuities and enable communication and interaction across timescapes among the Pemón, like pia daktai (the beginning-and-end) and serewarö (here-and-now). Focusing on differences of creation myths in Amazonia and the Isthmo-Colombian Area, Halbmayer likewise argues that these myths “express different forms and notions of temporality,” and that there are notions of time in-between a flat Amazonian time and the cyclical conceptions of time in the Andean and Mesoamerican areas. Among many Chibchan groups it is, for example, a moral imperative to continuously reconnect to the original but still present times and reinvigorate ancestral powers through ritual enactments. These activities are part of ongoing and relational material world-making processes. Therefore, creativity not merely re-creates but also reconnects and relates to original second-layer creativity and to nonhuman beings, namely, spiritual fathers and mothers and spiritual beings that do not belong to a past time of origin, but are coexisting with contemporary humans and become (temporarily) present. Invoking the dichotomy of tradition and innovation, Mattéi Muller looks at the changes Venezuelan basketry has undergone in recent decades. Changes concern, on the one hand, the development of a new iconographic repertoire that includes trucks, planes, and helicopters “that obviously served a commercial purpose unconnected to the mythological references and traditional patterns.” In this new repertoire, she argues, myths may still be present “but more

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often than not appear as an anecdotal element, devoid of its former magical force.” On the other hand, changes concern the stagnation of these innovative processes in the 1990s due to the economic crisis in Venezuela and thus, the threat of extinction of the new iconographic repertoire. Mattéi Muller describes an ambivalent situation where “those who still weave today do not necessarily know very well the myths but . . . all refer to them in order to establish a cultural reason for their new basketry and thus to valorize it.” Despite the changes, Mattéi Muller accords to basketry a “great artistic value,” while “the weaver’s role has changed, because he or she now claims the right to choose and to modify while striving to keep the myths alive.” Thus, what we are witnessing is not a shift from tradition to innovation, but a change in creativity itself. The originally close, fundamental relation between first- and second-order creativity in basketry became loose, as the transmutation between myth and basketry became less important and was replaced by an increased artistic variation in terms of styles, motives, and materials, based on socioeconomic considerations. While basketry became more artistically innovative and creative in the Western sense of producing something new, its creativity of expressing and recreating a relationship with spiritual beings and myths declined. Today “the art of basketry is struggling for survival” in face of an economic crisis that impedes the production and marketing of baskets that had turned into products. Another example of change and the resignification of creative processes is provided by Castrillón Vallejo’s contribution on Tukanoan women’s (re)connections with the yuruparí ancestors and the empowering potential arising from it. Castrillón Vallejo makes reference to the mythical narratives that tell of the former possession of the yuruparí flutes by the women and their stealing and present possession by the men. These ownership relations are reproduced in ritual and everyday practice. Men hold on to their ownership and keep the women from looking at the flutes, warning them of dangers to their “mental, gynecological and pregnancy health if they ever look at them.” Women are ambiguous concerning the men’s claim to ownership, sensing “pain and pleasure, sourness and sweetness.” On the one hand, they accept the prohibition to watch the instruments in initiation rituals and on video recordings. On the other hand, they constantly regain the yuruparí flutes by means of connecting to the yuruparí ancestors through laughter during the initiation ritual, by holding high offices and highly skilled jobs, and possibly also by collaborating with the anthropologist Juan Castrillón Vallejo in the film project “Nady’s Yuruparí in Stereo.” Thus, rather than loosening the relation with second-layer creativity and co-present mythical time, Tukanoan women gain creative energy from the yuruparí ancestors that supports their empowerment under current conditions.

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Myths and Modes of Second-Layer Creativity As shown above, the connections between first- and second-layer creativity play a central role for Indigenous Lowland South American forms of creativity, their other-than-human-focused relationality, their ideation- and activationdependent generativity, and their transmutation-generated processuality. At the same time, nonhuman entities stand out as the main creators and sources of creativity in Indigenous cosmologies. Their original creations and creative acts are told in stories and encoded in myths. Not surprisingly, myths also play an important role in several of this book’s contributions. When looking at these contributions, it becomes clear that the role of myths and their relation to creative practices differ from one Amerindian group to the next, that the role of myths should be considered in terms of intersemiotic translations and, finally, that there may be a specific relationship between the forms of creativity these myths describe and specific contemporary creative practices. With regard to the different roles of myths, the contributions open up a broad spectrum. For the Pume, who are characterized, as Saturno writes, by a “lack of knowledge of mythical narratives” and of “a consistent account of the mythical past.” Knowledge of the mythical beings is not primarily encoded in narratives but gained through a close relationship with the mythical beings, which is achieved by praying and performing rituals. The mythical beings are consequently “not part of a past” but rather, “very much present.” Mythical space-time is, in other words, copresent and knowledge about it can be gained and accessed in different ways. Myth is just one of them. For the Ayoreo, myths are “largely stories from the past.” The specific creativity of myth that Otaegui describes lies neither in the narrated events and the capacities of the mythical actors nor in the art of telling and performing a myth “but in attributing consequences to its narration” which “may influence today’s events.” By “interpreting myths as a way of explaining everyday events,” a relationship between the narration of myth and perceptible events is created and the cause of the perceptible events becomes grounded in and attributed to the narration of a myth. Therefore, “myth can also help to understand . . . concrete and down to earth events that matter to the Ayoreo, such as a series of infidelities.” Despite the lack of an active connection to mythical beings, songs as products of everyday creativity “fulfill a certain desire of transcendence, given that compositions last, they survive people” as songs “don’t die,” as one of Otaegui’s interlocutors said. Among the Yukpa, Goletz notes, myth is “no way of interacting with ‘mythical’ beings, but of reporting on past happenings and their protagonists.” Thus, in contrast to the Pume, myth is a highly important way to encode and transmit knowledge, but it is not a way of interacting with spiritual beings. In con-

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trast to the Pume and other Amazonian groups (cf. Halbmayer, Chapter 1), the Yukpa and many groups of the Isthmo-Colombian Area have highly elaborated cosmogonic myths. Yukpa and Ayoreo myths come close to what Hill calls lexicalization or mythification, which he describes is, in contradistinction to musicalization, the “ordering, classifying, specifying, and shutting out all sensual stimuli.” However, there are also other kinds of songs, as Hill himself notes, which as demonstrated by Ayoreo songs, are not used to perform a powerful opening of the senses. Among the Pemón, Lewy notes, myths go hand in hand with songs and spells. “A Pemón myth never stands alone as a spoken story: every myth (tauron panton) is related to a magic formula (tarén) and a song (eremuk), and every song refers to a magic formula and to a myth.” For this reason, it is even possible to detect the working transcreative timescapes and the protective measures of sonic and verbal disguising or masking taken by the narrators in myths recorded more than one hundred years ago by Theodor Koch-Grünberg. Lewy understands myths “as a performance of metacommunication,” and as “manuals,” “explaining how myths reveal the semiotic systems of songs and magic formulas and how myths are used as a translator between them.” Along the same lines, Goletz attempts to read and interpret verbal mythical statements as manuals for detecting different forms of creative potentials of the maize bringer Unano and of human activities that seek to reactivate these potentials and thus secure the reproduction of maize. However, whereas among the Pemón, myths as spoken language are “difficult to understand for the mawariton, though not incomprehensible,” among the Yukpa the telling of myths does not establish a communicative relationship with mythical beings. Myth is “an important source of information, not only because it talks about past encounters between the Yukpa and Unano, but also because it depicts Unano’s continuing creative potentials and formulates concrete instructions on how to stimulate them.” Regarding the relationship between first- and second-order creativity, Goletz and Halbmayer identify myth as an expression of secondorder creativity. Goletz does so by looking at the specific myth of the origin of maize and agriculture among the Yukpa and by demonstrating how the mythical narrative is in part a verbal instruction/manual for ritual activities and behavior that sustains the relation to Unano. Halbmayer focuses on differences between myths about the time of origin among Carib- and Chibchan-speaking groups. He shows the importance of cosmogonic myths and of acts of creation beyond affinity and appropriative transformation among Chibcha-speaking groups, whereas many, although by far not all, Amazonian Indigenous groups lack elaborated cosmogonies. He thus offers additional evidence for the broad range of Lowland South American sociocosmologies and forms of creativity that unified theories of Amazonian

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sociality and appropriative creativity fail to cover. One underlying difference concerns the fact that the Other in the Isthmo-Colombian Area is not theriomorphic, but the relationship of humanity to divinity takes center stage. Halbmayer identifies four central processes in Chibchan origin stories, which are at the same time the base for contemporary forms of creativity. Among many Chibchan groups there is the need to continuously connect to the original time (of darkness) and to reinvigorate ancestral powers through ritual enactments as part of a continuous relational and material world-making process. The latter consists in the materialization of thought, the adjustment and modification of the world, the shift from sterility to fertility and procreation, and finally, moral misconduct and transgression that counteract the fertility-producing relations between deified beings and humans and cause the deterioration of the world and possible cataclysms. Among the Chibchan groups of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta we even find creation ex nihilo in association with filiation, whereas here the otherwise constitutional mythical complex of the twins’ revenge on the jaguars that had killed their mother is absent. Forms of completeness expressed in notions of quadrinity and its multiples take precedence over a radical dualism. Cosmogony plays, as Halbmayer shows, a central role in this context. Its logics are not subordinate to overarching logics of symbolic affinity, appropriation/predation, antagonistic twins, or cannibal gods. Alterity becomes diversified, filiation and ancestry gain in importance, and in the focus of creativity are continuing relations with spiritual parent-like beings that protect, care for, and cultivate humans and are, in turn, nourished by their human children. Once established through transcreational processes, the core of creativity relies on the maintenance and persistent fertilization of relations between deified ancestor-like beings and today’s humanity. It is the activities of the deified original beings that provide the blueprint for creativity and have established the techniques and processes that have transcreated the world. Human creativity evolves in terms of life-sustaining and fertilizing activities as well as in its potential for destruction and is morally judged in the face of the gods’ primordial transcreations and the human responsibility for the perpetuation of an ordered and livable world. If to create is to own and control, as Brightman (2010) argues concerning Guianese village formation, then in the Isthmo-Colombian Area deified beings created and cultivated this world, fertile black earth, and humans as told in elaborate cosmogonic narratives. Thus, they are the ultimate owners of plants, places, and humans and support humans as long as they themselves are cared for, supported, and fed by them. Finally, an intersemiotic understanding shows that myths do not just think themselves in relation to each other (Levi-Strauss 1969: 12), but they relate to other specific sign systems in transmutational logics. It was Levi-Strauss

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(1969) who stressed the interconnection between music and myth, as Hill reminds us. Other studies, nowadays considered classical (e.g., van Velthem 1998, 2003; Guss 1989), as Mattéi Muller notes, pioneered the analysis of the transmutations between iconography, weaving, and braiding which led to various reflections on Lowland South American graphism, iconography, myth, and ontology (e.g. Lagrou 2007; Severi and Lagrou 2013; Taylor 2010). Transmutation places such an intersemiotic analysis of myth into the center of interest and suggests that what some groups encode by means of myths, others encode by dancing, singing, or weaving or by writing history into the landscape (Santos-Granero 1998). The role of myth and its relation to other sign systems may thus differ from one society to another. Moreover, besides mythical explanations for the origin of basketry and graphic patterns, ritual performances, music, instruments (Castrillón Vallejo, Chapter 9), or spells, myths also tell how humans and animals came into being. “The performance of myths includes and explains both sound practices and their capacity to transform the multiverse,” Lewy notes. “Thus, our conception of myth must expand beyond the idea of a story . . . that describes the interaction of the entities of the multiverse. It must be understood as a performance that interacts as a mode of existence itself, making the world to be transformed and establishing a continuity between discontinuous timescapes.” We must therefore continue to rethink myth, music, iconography, weaving, bodily signs, and landscape in intersemiotic terms and with regard to such transmutational continuities in order to understand the different forms of Indigenous Lowland South American creativity and the relations between humans and nonhumans that they rely upon, as well as the forms of knowledge, power, and sociality they imply.

Ernst Halbmayer is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Institute for Social Anthropology and the Study of Religions, University of Marburg, Germany. His research focuses on Carib-speaking groups, especially the Yukpa of Venezuela and Colombia and the Isthmo-Colombian Area. Among his recent books are Objetos como testigos del contacto cultural: Perspectivas interculturales de la historia y del presente de las poblaciones indígenas del Alto Río Negro (Brasil/Colombia) (coedited with Michael Kraus and Ingrid Kummels, 2018), Indigenous Modernities in South America (2018), and Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo-Colombian Area (2020). His research interests include Amerindian and Afro-Cuban sociocosmologies, environmental relations and conceptions beyond “nature,” and the anthropology of conflict.

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Anne Goletz is doctoral student and research associate at the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Marburg. Currently she is part of a German-Polish research project about Indigenous graphic communication systems between Mexico and the Andes, funded by the German Research Council (DFG). Her doctoral research project focuses on communication between people in the Yukpa territory of Sokorpa in the Serranía de Perijá in northern Colombia and various other-than-human communicators. References Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brabec de Mori, Bernd. 2012. “About Magical Singing, Sonic Perspectives, Ambient Multinatures, and the Conscious Experience.” Indiana 29: 73–101. Brabec de Mori, Bernd, and Anthony Seeger 2013. “Introduction: Considering Music, Humans, and Non-humans.” Ethnomusicological Forum 22 (3): 269–86. Brightman, Marc. 2010. “Creativity and Control: Property in Guianese Amazonia.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 96(1): 135–67. Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gow, Peter. 2001. An Amazonian Myth and Its History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Guss, David M. 1989. To Weave and Sing: Art, Symbol, and Narrative in the South American Rain Forest. Berkeley: University of California Press. Halbmayer, Ernst. 2004. “Timescapes and the Meaning of Landscape: Examples from the Yukpa of Northwestern Venezuela.” In Kultur, Raum, Landschaft: Zur Bedeutung des Raumes in Zeiten der Globalität, ed. Ernst Halbmayer and Elke Mader, 136–54. Atención 6. Frankfurt am Main: Brandes & Apsel. ———. 2013. “Securing a Life for the Dead among the Yukpa: The Exhumation Ritual as a Temporary Synchronization of Worlds.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 99(1): 105–40. ———, ed. 2020. Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo-Colombian Area. London: Routledge. Hanks, William, and Carlo Severi. 2014. “Translating Worlds: The Epistemological Space of Translation.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(2): 1–16. Ingold, Tim. 2014. “The Creativity of Undergoing.” Pragmatics & Cognition 22(1): 124–39. Jakobson, Roman. 1959. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” On Translation 3: 232–39. Lagrou, Els. 2007. A fluidez da forma: Arte, alteridade e agência em uma sociedade amazônica (Kaxinawa, Acre). Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1969. The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology, Vol. 1. New York: Harper and Row. Lewy, Matthias. 2012. “Different ‘Seeing’ – Similar ‘Hearing’: Ritual and Sound among the Pemón (Gran Sabana/Venezuela).” Indiana 29: 53–72. ———. 2015. “Más allá del ‘punto de vista’: sonorismo amerindio y entidades de sonido antropomorfas y no-antropomorfas.” In Mundos audibles de América. Cosmologías y prácticas sonoras de los pueblos indígenas, ed. Bernd Brabec de Mori, Matthias Lewy, and Miguel García, 83–98. Estudios Indiana 8. Berlin: Mann.

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———. 2017. “About Indigenous Perspectivism, Indigenous Sonorism and the Audible Stance. Approach to a Symmetrical Auditory Anthropology.” El Oído Pensante 5(2): 1–22. Niño Vargas, Juan Camilo. 2020. “An Amerindian Humanism: Order and Transformation in Chibchan Universes.” In Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies Between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, ed. Ernst Halbmayer, 37–60. London: Routledge. Pitrou, Perig, 2016. “Co-activity in Mesoamerica and in the Andes.” Journal of Anthropological Research 72(4): 465–82. Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2006. The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Santos-Granero, Fernando. 1998. “Writing History into the Landscape: Space, Myth, and Ritual in Contemporary Amazonia.” American Ethnologist 25(2): 128–48. Saussure, Ferdinand de. (1913) 2006. Course in General Linguistics. Chicago: Open Court. Severi, Carlo. 2014. “Transmutating Beings: A Proposal for an Anthropology of Thought.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(2): 41–71. Severi, Carlo, and Els Lagrou, eds. 2013. Quimeras em diálogo. Grafismo e figuração na arte indígena. Rio de Janeiro: Viveiros de Castro Editora Ltda, 7 letras. Taylor, Anne-Christine. 2010. “Voir comme un autre: figurations amazoniennes de l’âme et des corps.” In La fabrique des images. Visions du monde et forms de la representation, ed. Philippe Descola, 41–51. Paris: Somogy Éd. d’Art. van Velthem, Lucia Hussak. 1998. A pele de Tuluperê. Uma Etnografia dos Trançados Wayana. Belém, Pará: PR/MCT/CNPq, Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi. ———. 2003. O Belo é a fera. A estética da produção e da predação entre os Wayana. Lisboa: Museu Nacional de Etnologia, Assírio & Alvim. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo B. 2004. “Exchanging Perspectives. The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies.” Common Knowledge 10(3): 463–84.

Index   

adjustment of world Chibchan groups, 34–36 as original deity task, 34 in transcreation, 10, 32, 34–36 affinal transformational creativity, 25–27 agricultural logics of care, 10, 30 agricultural and rain dancing rituals, 50, 60, 62–63, 68 Aikhenvald, Alexandra, 237 alterity, 5, 10, 25, 29, 40, 231, 269 relations of, 238, 245, 248 symbolic economy of, 2, 3, 135 Amana spirit, of Panare, 202–3, 207 Amazonia, 15 absence of creation ex nihilo in, 2, 25 antagonistic twins, 25–27 creation ex nihilo in, 24, 40 transformational creativity in, 25–27, 68 transformative and transcreational processes in, 23–41 Amazonian sociality, 5, 24, 25, 40, 89, 135 familiarizing predation in, 4, 25 moral economy of intimacy, 2, 4, 135 symbolic economy of alterity, 2, 135 ancestral beings, 5, 14, 28–30, 33–34, 202–3, 207–8 ancestry, 5, 40, 269 Andean, agricultural and rain dancing rituals in, 50, 60, 62–63, 68 animism, 102, 117, 257 Aponto creator god, Unano maize bringer association with, 54, 58, 59, 61, 68 appropriation, 4, 5, 10, 25, 32, 38, 40, 255, 269 creativity and, 5, 10, 24, 32, 38, 40, 255, 268–69 predatory, 255 transformative, 25 Arawak-speaking groups, 5, 24 Piro, 75–76, 260 Wakuénai of Venezuela Upper Rio Negro, 12, 155–56, 158–63 Warekena, 13, 202–4, 215–16, 217–18, 228n5

Wayuu, 23, 29, 31, 60, 61, 217 Yanesha, 24–25 de Armellada, Cesáreo, 175, 176, 178 art-focused understanding of creativity, 8 articulate speech Lévi-Strauss on, 153–54 mythic narratives and, 153, 154, 155 artifacts, 26 basketry, 158, 201–2, 206, 217, 262 Santos-Graneros on, 4, 36 aural registers, 237–38, 243 ayawaska hallucinogenic, 107–8, 114 Ayoreo, 10, 147n5, 148n17 AM radio myth, 125, 137–42, 149n28 brief history of, 127–29 Christianization, 124 shamans retirement in, 128, 136 Zamuco language of, 127, 147n8 See also Jesudi community; verbal art, of Ayoreo Barceló Sifontes Abreu, Lyll, 175–76 Barí, 24, 28, 33, 35 basketry artifacts and, 158, 201–2, 206, 262 figurative basketry drawings, 211–16, 228n5 iconography and mythology, 206–25 mythical bestiary on, 13, 206–9 mythology and, 13, 201–27 rites of passage and, 217–18 shamanism initiation and, 216–17 beings ancestral, 5, 14, 28–30, 33–34, 202–3, 207–8 deified, 5, 10, 29–31, 35, 40–41, 50, 254, 256, 259–60, 269 Great Mother as original, 27–28, 37–38, 42n14 Icˆiai spiritual, 74, 79–86, 88, 90–91, 92n8, 258 nonhuman, 12, 99–100, 104, 110–11, 113–18, 120n12, 120n15, 138, 154, 156, 159, 162, 166, 173–74, 177, 180, 182,

274 185, 187–88, 192–93, 194n10, 194n13, 240, 243–44, 253–57, 261, 264–65, 267, 270 original, 10, 27–28, 32–37, 39–41, 254, 259, 261, 269 other-than-human, 6–8, 14, 49–50, 62–63, 66–67, 168n2, 253–55, 271 Bello, Hipólito, 86 Berger, Marcos Guevara, 23, 38 Bloch, Maurice, 6, 7, 9 Borofsky, Robert, 76–77 Brabec, Bernd, 11–12, 195n15, 253, 255–57, 261, 263 Bribri, 29, 30, 31, 35, 36, 37, 39–40, 42n11 Brightman, Marc, 4–5, 44, 269 Buglé, 31 Canelos Quechua, 75, 165 Caputo, Alessandra, 226 Carib-speaking groups, 10, 23, 24–33, 42n12, 50, 173 basketry, 204, 207, 210, 213, 214 creative principles, 24 mythology of, 23, 26–27, 42n11, 268–69 Panare as, 202 Pemón as, 26, 174 time of origin and cosmogony of, 26–27, 33 Wayana as, 213 Yekwana as, 203 Yukpa as, 23, 42n8, 50 Castrillón Vallejo, Juan Carlos, 13–14, 254, 257–58, 264, 266 Cayón, Luis, 237, 242, 249n4 chanting during initiation rituals, 161, 166 lexicalization in, 160–63 musicalization in, 160–63 spirit-naming and, 160, 163–66, 168n3 chant owner (malikái limínali), 160, 166 counterwitchcraft song, 162, 163 Chernela, Janet, 24, 237, 242–43 Chibchan groups, 15n1, 23, 27–40, 50 agricultural logics, 10, 29 Barí as, 24, 28, 33, 35 Bribri as, 29, 30, 31, 35, 36, 37, 39–40, 42n11 Buglé as, 31 creation ex nihilo and, 5, 10, 27 dehumanizing amorality, 10, 39–40 Dorasques as, 38–39

Index

Ette as, 23, 28, 30, 42n11, 60, 70n10 Guatusos as, 38–39 Guna as, 31–32, 38, 41n4 hierarchical relations, 10, 30 homologic continuities among, 10, 27–28 Ika as, 23, 27–28, 33–35, 38 Kogi as, 28, 33–37, 60 materialization of thought, 10, 33–34 mythology of, 10, 23, 24, 28 Ngäbe as, 28 original state and beings and, 33, 37 Pech (Paya) as, 38, 41n5 reproduction, 36–39 time of origin and cosmogony of, 24–32, 33, 37, 40 transcreation of, 10, 32–33 U’wa as, 28, 30, 38 Wiwa as, 23, 27, 28, 35 Christianity Christianization, 61, 92n3, 124, 136 concepts and notions, 1–4, 61, 138–39, 178 Gods and spirits, 125, 148n12, 179, 186–87, 193 conviviality, 3, 12, 107, 125, 133–34, 145, 261 cosmogony absence of, 24–25 Chibchan groups among, 25–32, 40, 269 creation as production, 2, 3 as repetition, 8, 12, 142–45, 261, 262 Western creation/production/invention, 3 creation ex nihilo absence of in Amazonia, 2, 25 affinal appropriation/transformation compared to, 5 in Amazonia, 4, 40 Chibchan groups and, 5, 10, 27 of Guarani, 27 of Selknam or Tehuelche, 27 in Tukano-speaking groups, 27 of Witoto, 27 creationism, in Judeo-Christian tradition, 4 creativity art-focused understanding of, 8 from contingent to generative creativity, 8–9 economy-focused understanding of, 8 everyday human practice for, 1 from exceptional individual creators to relational creativity, 6–7

Index

first- and second-order, 253–54, 260 generative, 8–9, 49, 260–62 as improvisation, 7–8, 75, 90, 260 from innovative creative products to processual creativity, 7–8 musical creativity, 163–66 processual, 7–8, 262–67 relational, 6–7, 49–50, 254–59 as repetition, 8, 12, 142–45, 261, 262 storytelling and, 51, 76–77 transformational, 25–27, 40, 68, 161, 264 vitality-producing, 33–34, 259, 261 cultural translation, 150n43, 157–60, 167 Decelis, Lucencia, 176–77, 187 deified beings, 5, 10, 29, 30, 31, 35, 40, 50, 254, 256, 259, 269 Descola, Philippe, 2, 24, 30, 102, 103, 147n2, 173, 257, 259 dieting, 12, 108–9, 112, 113–14, 120n10 disease from dreaming of Icˆiai spiritual being, 74, 82–83 Pumé pumetho and, 85–86, 88, 90–91 tõhe ritual male singers dreaming and, 84–87 Dolan, Emily, 12, 231–32, 236 domestic life, verbal art relationship with, 12 Dorasques, 38–39 dreaming and being sick, 74, 84–87 drunk, getting ayawaska hallucinogenic and, 107–8, 114 charging of voice and, 107–8 Shipibo-Konibo vocal techniques, 119n8 singing rituals need for, 107 earthquake manifestation, of Unano maize bringer, 53, 54, 59–60, 61, 68 economy-focused understanding of creativity, 8 Elorza, Manuel, 239–41, 242, 249n8 enfleshments, 232, 240–41, 245, 246, 258 ethnomusicology, 155, 159, 256 Ette, 23, 28, 30, 42n11, 60, 70n10 everyday life Brazil Caboclos creation narratives on, 24 creative processes in, 124 creativity of, 1 in Jesudi community, 125–27, 143 Pumé ritual connection to, 77–78

275

fabrication, 2, 4, 26, 36, 40 familiarizing predation, 4–5, 25, 29 Fausto, Carlos, 4, 25 figurative basketry drawings of Arawak Itiriti design of Warekena basketry, 215–16, 228n5 Kwekwe frog or toad, 205, 212–13 Wanadi Tonoro, Wanadi’s Bird crimson woodpecker, 213 Warishidi spider monkey, 212 of Yanomami iconography, 214–15 Yarakaru capuchin monkey basketry, 211 first-order/layer creativity, 100, 116–17, 253–54, 260 Friedman, Jonathan, 76–77 Galvez, Marina, 245–46 generative creativity, 8–9, 49, 260–62 generosity value, of Ayoreo, 133 Goletz, Anne, 10–11, 259, 261, 267–68 González Galvis, Juan Camilo, 237 González Ñanez, Omar, 218 Gow, Peter, 75, 260 Gragson, Ted L., 83, 92n8 Great Mother internal differentiation of, 28 as other being, 27 radical dualism and, 29–32 singing to, 38 Grossa, Dino J., 82 Grotti, Vanessa, 4 Guarani, creation ex nihilo and, 27 Guatusos, 38–39 Guianas shield, 9–10 times of origin and cosmogony in, 24 twin myth of, 31 Guianas Indian basketry iconography of, 204, 260 Kutto, Kikwe basket, 205 nonfigurative drawings of, 206 nutmeg tree, 205 supernatural, mythical owner of, 206 Guna, 31–32, 38, 41n4 Guss, David, 205, 210, 211, 214 Guzmán, Diana, 245–47 Halbmayer, Ernst, 5, 10, 13, 15n3, 57, 65–66, 173–74, 176, 257, 260, 265, 268–69 Hallam, Elizabeth, 6, 7–8, 75

276

Index

Hanks, William, 12, 144 Hernández, Florinda, 187 Herrera, Leonor, 242 hierarchical symbiosis, relation of, 10, 30, 50, 57, 60, 68, 254, 259 Hill, Jonathan, 12–13, 68, 84, 90, 180, 239, 257, 264, 268, 270 homologic continuities, 10, 27–28 Hugh-Jones, Stephen, 4, 27, 29, 240–42 Icˆiai spiritual being, 258 cattle ranchers depiction of, 83–84 characteristics of, 80 disease from dreaming of, 74, 82–83 jaguar image of, 81–83 Kumañi and, 81, 92n8 lack of singing punishment by, 79, 86 pumetho and, 85–86, 88, 90–91 tõhe Pumé singers interaction with, 11, 80–84 Ika, 23, 27–28, 33–35, 38 improvisation creativity as, 7–8, 75, 90 Ingold and Hallam on, 7–8, 75, 90, 260 in singing and music, 75–76, 77 Ingold, Tim, 6, 7–9, 49–50, 74–75, 90, 260 initiation ritual chanting during, 161, 166 of Wakuénai of Venezuela Upper Rio Negro, 12 yuruparí instruments for male, 236–37 instruments, 232 Tresch and Dolan on ethical work of, 14, 236 See also yurupari instruments interiority. See physicality and interiority intersemiotic translation. See transmutation intralingual and interlinguistic translation, 144–45, 157, 179, 262 cultural translation and transmutation and, 157–60 Isthmo-Colombian Area Amazonia vs., 24–36, 256, 265, 267–68, 269 deified beings, 29–30, 35, 40–41, 259–60, 269 filiation and ancestry in, 5 hierarchical symbiosis, 10, 30, 50, 57, 60, 68, 254, 259 Mesoamerica and, 30

twin myth, 30–31, 32 See also Chibchan groups Itiriti design of Warekena basketry, 215–16, 228n5 Jackson, Jean, 242–43 jaguar basketry of Ye’kwana, 209 Icˆiai spiritual being image of, 81–83 Panare ëwey’ basket of skin of, 216 twins, 40–41 Jakobson, Roman, 11, 12, 101, 144, 150n43, 157, 164, 167, 168n1, 179, 262 Jesudi community, 124, 147n7, 148n10 AM radio conversations among, 125, 136–39, 142 everyday life in, 125–27, 143 kasijmákasin rite of passage, Warekena basketry, 217, 218 knowledge and creativity, 75–78 knowledge transmission, 11, 50, 63, 64–69 Koch-Grünberg, Theodor, 112–13, 118, 175–76, 181–82, 189 Kogi, 28, 33–37, 60 Kumañi, 80, 92n8 Kutto frog or toad basketry, 205, 212–13, 219 Lambos, Balbina, 189, 195n23 laments, of Ayoreo, 130–32, 135, 146 Leach, James, 5–7, 9 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1, 23, 25–26, 153–54, 202, 209, 269–70 Lewy, Matthias, 13, 51, 102, 103, 257, 264, 265, 268, 270 lexicalization, 12–13, 155, 157–63, 264 listening differential, 243–44 enchanted, 103, 115, 117 indexical, 103, 105 of nonhuman beings, 111, 113, 117–18 Shipibo-Konibo singing and, 115 structural, 103, 104, 105 women’s listening to yuruparí ancestors, 14, 233–36 Lohmann, Roger, 7 magic formulas (tarén), 13, 173, 174, 179, 182–83, 257, 268 pia entity and, 188–90, 192

Index

unrestricted transactive timescape of, 188–91 Mahua, Pascual, 112, 118 maize beer, 58–59, 70n10 relational creativity and, 49–50 Yukpa most valued food crop, 50, 69n1 maize bringer. See Unano maize bringer Malagasy creativity, in Madagascar, 7, 9 malikái limínali. See chant owner Martínez, Enrique García, 51–53 masking, 114, 115, 120n13, 182, 257, 268 Matarezio, Filho, Edson Tosta, 237 materialization of thought of Ika and Kogi, 33 in transcreation, 10, 32, 33–34 Mattéi Muller, Marie Claude, 13, 254, 260, 262, 265, 266, 270 Mendieta, Natalia Lozada, 237 de Menezes Bastos, Rafaél José, 232, 238 Mesoamerica agricultural and rainmaking rituals, 50, 60, 62–63, 68 Isthmo-Colombian Area and, 30 metacommunication, 157–60, 167, 168n1 of myths, 180–82 Miller, Theresa, 56 mimetic co-activity Pitrou on, 62–63, 66, 68 for Unano and Sokorpa people, 11, 50, 54, 62–63, 66–68 morality and dehumanizing amorality, in transcreation, 10, 32, 39–40 Mori, Roberto, 118 musical creativity, 163–66 musicalization, 12–13, 155–56, 264 chanted speeches and spirit-naming, 160 in chanting, 160–63 chant owner creativity through, 166 lexicalization interrelations with, 157–60 shamanic, 162 in shamanic curing songs, 162 musical language Lévi-Strauss on, 153–54 mythic narratives and, 153 mythical being, 8, 11, 12, 51, 77, 102, 226, 258, 267, 268 mythical-bestiary, on baskets, 13, 206–8 mythical complex (myths, songs and magic formulas), 174, 175, 190

277

mythical times and past, 14, 24, 26, 28, 77, 100, 214, 266 mythology, 24, 25 basketry and, 13, 201–27, 262 creation and, 2–3, 25, 31, 32 Lévi-Strauss on, 153, 202, 209 of Ye’kwana, 211, 226 of Yukpa groups, 23, 42n11 myths Ayoreo myth, 125, 136–39, 142, 149n28 contemporary practices, 38, 174, 254 creation, creativity and creative processes and, 2, 124, 146 everyday life and, 232, 245 Pemón, 174–82, 191 Pumé, 11, 74–91 of second-order creativity, 253, 254, 267–70 Tukanoan, 27, 236–37, 243, 246, 247 name-stories, of Ayoreo, 12, 125, 139–42, 145, 261 Nápiruli spirit, of Warekena, 203 Ngäbe, 28 Niño Vargas, Juan Camilo, 32, 70n10 nonhuman beings, 12, 99–100, 104, 110–11, 113–18, 120n12, 120n15, 138, 154, 156, 159, 162, 166, 173–74, 177, 180, 182, 185, 187–88, 192–93, 194n10, 194n13, 240, 243–44, 253–57, 261, 264–65, 267, 270 Novoa, Nadiezda, 233–36 orekotón rituals, 13, 176–77, 194n3 shaman songs and, 174, 183–88, 191–92 original being, 10, 27–28, 32–37, 39–41, 254, 259, 261, 269 original state Carib-speakers on sky and sun, 33 Chibchan groups on darkness and underworld of, 33 Orobitg, Gemma, 78, 82, 85, 92n9 Oronóz, Ramón, 177, 187 Otaegui, Alfonso, 10, 12, 254, 257, 261, 263, 267 Other deified (ancestor-like) beings, 5, 10, 29–31, 35, 40–41, 50, 254, 256, 259–60, 269 theriomorphic, 25, 29, 259, 269 other-than-human beings, 6–8, 14, 49–50, 62–63, 66–67, 168n2, 253–55, 271

278

Index

Overing (Kaplan), Joanna, 3, 89, 107, 125, 145, 173, 178 Panare, 10 Amana spirit of, 202–3, 207 basketry for murankïnëto rite of passage, 217 basketry of, 13, 202, 209, 216 new basket-making iconographic repertoire, 220–22 spirits from myths of, 202–4 Pano speaking groups Shipibo-Konibo, 105 Yaminahua, 78, 165–66 paradise. See wakü pata Pech (Paya), 38, 41n5 Pemón cosmology of, 173, 175–77 magic formulas (tarén), 13, 173, 174, 179, 182–83, 257, 268 myth performance of, 174 orekotón ritual, 13, 174, 176–77, 183–88, 191–92, 194n3 pia daktai (beginning-and-end), 175, 178–79, 191 serewarö (here-and-now), 175, 178–79, 191 transactive timescapes among, 13, 174, 182, 183–93 transmutation as method, 179–80 wakü pata (paradise), 175, 178–79, 191 Pérez, Raimundo, 183–86 perspectivism, 102, 104, 110, 112, 113, 164, 169n9 Petrullo, Vicenzo, 81 physicality and interiority, 28, 102, 104, 173, 183, 257 pia daktai (beginning-and-end) timescape, 78, 175, 178–79, 180, 191, 265 pia entity, 195n23 magic formulas and, 188–90, 192, 194n12 Pitrou, Perig, 50, 62–63, 66, 68 pottery, 75, 165 Povinelli, Elizabeth, 14, 232, 249n7, 258 predation Descola on, 147n2 familiarizing, 4, 25, 29 war songs and ethics of, 125 predatory appropriation, 5, 255 processual creativity, 7–8, 262–67 Pumé creation ex nihilo and, 27

knowledge and creativity of, 75–78 pumetho and, 85–86, 88, 90–91 ritual and creativity among, 74–91 ritual connection to everyday life for, 77–78 sociability recreation through singing by male, 11, 74, 88–89 supernatural beings relationship of, 77, 88 See also Icˆiai spiritual being rain dancing Andean and Mesoamerican rituals of, 50, 60, 62–63, 68 moral connotation of, 61 ritual participants activation through song lyrics, 63 Sokorpa Yukpa, 58–59, 62–63 Real Language (janakon), of Shipibo-Konibo, 106, 113 Real Person (jonikon), of Shipibo-Konibo, 106, 116 relational creativity, 254–59 Hallam and Ingold on, 6 maize continuous existence and, 49–50 shift from exceptional individual creators to, 6–7 restricted transactive timescape, 193, 257 in shaman and orekotón songs, 174, 183–88 Ribeiro, Berta, 223 rites of passage, basketry and Panare murankïnëto rite, 217 Warekena basketry for kasijmáka initiation, 217–18 Ye’kwana basketry for initiation of, 219 rituals basketry artifacts of shaman, 217 creative and life-giving forces of, 2 initiation, 12, 161, 166, 236–37 musical and auditory dimensions of, 156–57 orekotón, 13, 174, 176–77, 183–88, 191– 92, 194n3 Pumé everyday life connection to, 77–78 rain dancing/in Andean Region and Mesoamerica, 50, 60, 62, 68 raindancing/rainmaking in Sokorpa, 62–63, 64, 68 transformation during, 113 Wakuénai shamanic healing, 12 See also tõhe ritual, of Pumé people Rivière, Peter, 3

Index

Rodriguez de Mello, Gláucia Burrato, 237 Romero, Dregelio, 87, 91 sacred flutes, 160–61, 166, 168nn4–5 See also yurupari instruments Salazar, Guitérrez, 178 Salazar, Mariano, 175, 176, 178 Sánchez, Armando, 107–8 Santos-Granero, Fernando, 4, 5, 36 Saturno, Silvana, 11, 256, 258, 260, 267 second-order/layer creativity, 12, 100, 116–17, 253–54, 260, 262, 265, 266, 267–70 myths and modes of, 254, 267–70 Seeger, Anthony, 83, 89, 101, 110, 238 sehoro a bahanarotu basket for Warao itiriti shaman, 216–17, 228n5 serewarö (here-and-now) timescape, 175, 178–79, 180, 189, 191, 265 Severi, Carlo on Amerindian basketry, 201, 210–11 on intersemiotic translation/transmutation, 13, 157–60, 168n1 on translation, 144, 150n43 on transmutation, 12, 102, 116, 150n43, 159, 164, 167, 191 shamanic healing ritual, of Wakuénai of Venezuela Upper Rio Negro, 12, 162 shamanic initiations basketry Panare ëwey’ basket of jaguar skin, 216 ritual basketry artifacts of shaman, 217 Warao sehoro a bahanarotu for itiriti shaman, 216–17, 228n5 shamanic power dissociation, psychosis episodes and, 119n2 Shipibo-Konibo and, 106 shamanism, 259 basketry for initiation of, 216–17 basketry relation to mythology and, 13, 201–27 vertical or transversal, 29, 256 shamans Ayoreo retirement of, 128, 136 Christian missionary interaction with, 186 Koch-Grünberg on voice of, 181–82 tõhe ritual male singers for knowledge from, 78 shaman songs, 13, 134 for curing, 162 orekotón ritual performances and, 174, 183–88, 191–92

279

of Pérez, 183–86 twisted language in, 165 Shipibo-Konibo, 10 description of, 105 Pano language, 105 Real Language of, 106, 113 Real Person of, 106, 116 See also vocal techniques, of Shipibo-Konibo Sibö, of Bribri, 35, 37 Simoneau, Karin, 80 singing dreaming, disease/being sick and, 11, 74, 76, 80, 84, 85, 87, 88, 91 as first-layer creativity, 100, 116, 117 Icˆiai punishment for lack of, 79, 86 improvisation in, 75–76, 79, 90 Pumé sociability recreation through, 11, 74, 88–89 for rain, 58–59, 60 as Shipibo-Konibo vocal technique, 12, 109–12, 114 in tõhe ritual, 82, 84, 86, 87, 88–90 as transactive timescape, 13 See also songs sociability Pumé men singing and recreation of, 11, 74, 88–89 Shipibo-Konibo getting drunk and, 107 Sokorpa people, in Yukpa territory, 10, 47 location of, 50 rain dancing rituals of, 60 storytelling in, 51 See also maize; Unano maize bringer songs, 2, 173 Ayoreo of, 131–32, 148n21 Ayoreo wailing, 12, 124, 129–35, 142, 145, 146 Ayoreo war, 13–15, 125, 145, 265 curing, 107, 162, 163 love, 12, 116, 117, 134, 135, 141, 142, 144, 145, 146, 257, 261, 265 as part of mythical complex, 190 shaman, 13, 134, 162, 165, 174, 183–88, 191–93, 265 sonic environment, 119n6 nonhuman beings sharing of, 104, 114–15 sonic registers, for yuruparí instruments, 237–38 sorcery practice, of Pumé singers, 76 spells, 43, 138, 255, 256, 257, 268

280 healing spells, of Ayoreo, 138, 146, 149n32 See also magic formulas spirit-naming, chanting and, 160, 163–66, 168n3 sterility to fertility and reproduction Bribri Sibö and, 37 of Ika Chibchan group, 38 Kogi on nine layered worlds and human gestation period, 37 in transcreation, 10, 32, 36–39 storytelling Borofsky on creativity and, 76 Friedman on creativity and, 77 Martínez on Unano maize continuous existence, 51–53 in Sokorpa and Yukpa territories, 51 Suarez, Javier, 234–35, 247 sun, 33, 42n11 Svašek, Maruška, 7 symbolic economy of alterity, 2, 135 tarén. See magic formulas Taylor, Anne Christine, 210 Tehuelche, creation ex nihilo and, 27 tessellate basketry, 204, 228n11 theriomorphic, Others, 25, 29, 259, 269 Thomas, David, 176, 194n10 timescape, 34, 173–75, 254, 265 restricted, 13, 174, 183–88, 193, 257 transactive, 13, 177–92, 255, 257, 264, 265 unrestricted, 174, 188–91, 193, 257 times of origin, 23, 25–32 tõhe ritual, of Pumé people, 74, 258 disease and singing by, 84, 87 dreaming and being sick and, 84–87 experienced singers and, 79–80, 92n6 Icˆiai trickster interaction with, 11, 80–84 for physical healing and singer reanimation, 79 ritual described, 78–80 Romero on disease and, 87, 91 Townsley, Graham, 78, 165, 168 transactive timescapes magic formulas, 173 metacommunication of myths, 180–82 among Pemón of Venezuela, Guyana and Brazil, 13, 173–93 pia daktai (beginning-and-end), 175, 178–79, 191 restricted, 174, 183–88, 193

Index

serewarö (here-and-now), 175, 178–79, 191 shaman songs and orekotón ritual performances, 174, 183–88, 191–92 transmutation as method in, 179–80 unrestricted, 174, 188–91, 193 wakü pata (paradise), 175, 178–79, 191 transcreation, 40, 42n9, 256 adjustment of world and, 10, 32, 34–36 in Chibchan mythology, 10, 32 contemporary creativity and, 32–40 materialization of thought and, 10, 32, 33–34 from morality to amorality, 10, 32, 39–40 from sterility to fertility and reproduction, 10, 32, 36–39 transformation, 10 across Amazonia time and areas, 25 bodily, 256 controlled, 255 Indigenous types of, 100 Koch-Grünberg on, 112–13 Pumé breath use for, 90 during ritual, 113 through Shipibo-Konibo diet level, 113 as Shipibo-Konibo vocal technique, 112–14, 115 uncontrolled, 100, 119n2, 255–56 transformational creativity, 68 affinal, 25–27, 40, 68 of musicalization, 161, 264 transformative appropriation, 25 translation cultural, 157–60 interlinguistic, 144, 157, 179, 262 intralingual, 12, 144, 145, 157–60 See also transmutation transmutation, 11–13, 101–2, 116, 157–60, 162–63, 164–65, 166–67, 168n1, 168n5, 175, 179–80, 182, 183, 191–92, 252–53, 258, 262–66, 269–70 metacommunication and, 158 as transactive timescape method, 179–80 transspecific communication, 13, 178, 182–85, 191–93 Tresch, John, 14, 231–32, 236 Tukano-speaking groups, 10, 231–51 creation ex nihilo in, 27 See also yurupari instruments twin myth, 25–26, 28, 30–32, 40–41

Index

Umaña, Constenla, 24 uñacai. See wailing songs Unano maize bringer, 259 creative potentials, 49–69 creator god Aponto association with, 54, 58, 61, 68 dancing for, 11, 50, 53, 58–62, 68 earthquake manifestation of, 53, 54, 59–60, 61, 68 mimetic co-activity and, 11, 50, 54, 62–63, 66–68 storytelling on origin of maize, 51–54, 69n2 unrestricted transactive timescape, 174, 193, 257 magic formulas and, 188–91 utterances, 12, 99, 105, 108, 141, 142, 261 musical, sound and non-lexical, 101, 102, 103, 117, 118, 119 U’wa, 28, 30, 38 Vega, H. Augustin, 92n3 verbal art, of Ayoreo, 2 creation as repetition with variations, 142–45 healing spells, 146, 149n32 myth narration and unusual happenings, 12, 125 name-stories and, 12, 125, 139–42, 145, 261 wailing songs, 12, 124, 129–35, 145, 146 war songs, 125, 134–35, 146 vertical or transversal shamanism, 29, 256 Vilaca, Aparecida, 24 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo, 2, 103, 113, 169n9, 189 vocal techniques, of Shipibo-Konibo, 99, 118 dieting, 108–9, 114, 120n10 getting drunk, 107–8, 119n8 nonhuman beings and, 12, 116–17, 120n12 nonmagical song performance, 116–17 singing, 12, 109–12 speaking, 105–6 transformation, 112–14, 115 of well-trained singers transforming, 12, 116 yoiti and, 105, 106 voice charging with power, 12, 100, 105, 115, 117, 118 Koch-Grünberg on changing, 181–82, 186 yurupari voices, 14, 241–42

281

wailing songs (uñacai), among Ayoreo, 12, 124, 129–35, 145, 146 Wakuénai of Venezuela Upper Rio Negro initiation ritual of, 12 lexicalization of, 12, 156, 157, 160–63, 164, 166, 167, 264, 268 musicalization of, 166 poetics of ritual power of, 155 ritual singing and chanting in, 158–59 shamanic healing ritual of, 12 wakü pata (paradise) timescape, 175, 179, 191 contact in orekotón ritual, 178 Warao, 10, 13, 204, 216, 223–25, 226 Warekena, 13 basketry for kasijmákasi initiation, 217–18 Itiriti basketry design of, 215–16, 228n5 Nápiruli spirit of, 203 spirits from myths of, 202–4 Wari, 24 war songs, of Ayoreo, 125, 134–35, 146 Wayuu, 23, 29, 31, 60, 61, 217 Webster, Anthony, 169n9 Western Amazon, vocal creations and, 99–118 Whitten, Dorothea and Norman, 15n2, 75, 165 Wilbert, Johannes, 23, 80 Witoto, 27 Wiwa, 23, 27, 28, 35 world tree, Chibchan groups and, 35–36 Wright, Robin, 24 Yaminahua, 78, 165, 166 Yanesha, 24–25 Yanomami, 13 basket-making changes of, 220 figurative basketry drawings, 214–15 Pokorayoma and Thothoriyoma spirits of, 203 spirits from myths of, 202–4 Wathapërariwë snake basketry, 208 Ye’kwana, 13 Awidi, Wiyu, and Mawari basketry, 207, 208 basket weaving excellence of, 222–23 Edodicha spirit of, 203 jaguar basketry, 209 Kutto Shidiyu basket, 219 single basic form of basketry, 211 spirits from myths of, 202–4 Yarakaru capuchin monkey basketry, 211 Yukpa, 10 Amoricha adjustment of world, 34

282

Index

Amoricha creation of forms of life, 34 as Carib-speaking group, 23, 50 creation ex nihilo absence in, 5 deified creator figures of, 5 maize as most valued food crop for, 50, 69n1 mythologies of, 23, 42n11 twin myth of, 31 See also Unano maize bringer yurupari instruments alternative approach to instrumentality, 236–39 aural and sonic registers for, 237–38

differential listening in, 243–44 Elorza recording, 239–41, 242, 249n8 ethical work of, 242–43 labor of taking back, 245–47, 248 male initiation rites and, 236–37 secrecy aspect of, 237 Tukanoan women and, 13, 48, 231–35, 257–58 voice covering through laughter, 241–42 Zamuco language, of Ayoreo, 127, 147n8