Burst of Breath: Indigenous Ritual Wind Instruments in Lowland South America

Dedication

We dedicate this book to our friend and colleague Maria Ignez Cruz Mello (1962–2008), whose death was a terrible loss for the community of scholars interested in the anthropology of indigenous Amazonian musical and other cultural practices. No act of commemoration or dedication can fill the void left by the death of such a creative scholar who was still in the early postdoctoral years of her career and who undoubtedly had so much more to contribute to ethnomusicology and anthropology. The pairing of Maria Ignez’s work with that of her widower, Acácio Tadeu de Piedade, is one of the greatest strengths of Burst of Breath, since it will mark the first time that anthropology will have achieved a truly cross-gendered documentation and analysis of indigenous Amazonian music—both vocal and instrumental, women’s and men’s—written by husband-and-wife fieldworker/collaborators who are (or were, sadly, in the case of Maria Ignez) also both highly accomplished musician-composers as well as recent doctorates in social anthropology. It is our sincere hope that by dedicating Burst of Breath to the memory of Maria Ignez Cruz Mello and publishing her superb essay on the complex and highly creative synergy between Wauja women’s iamurikuma singing and the men’s sacred flute music, we will have planted a seed that will inspire generations of researchers to emulate her skillful blending of musical creativity and ethnographic inquiry. ...