Opening the Portals of Heaven: Brazilian Ayahuasca Music, and: Música brasileira de ayahuasca (review)

This small book, recently published in both Portuguese (Mercado de Letras) and English (Lit Verlag; translation by Matthew Meyer), is a seminal work in the budding field of ayahuasca music studies. Ayahuasca is a potent psychoactive tea made from the combination of certain Amazonian plants. ¹ While the ritual and medicinal use of this tea by indigenous South Americans dates back to Pre-Columbian times, the early to mid-twentieth century witnessed the emergence of three distinct spiritual traditions combining the use of the tea with a mix of popular Catholicism, Amazonian shamanism, and spiritualisms of African and European origin. In dealing directly with the music of these newer "Ayahuasca Religions," a category that Labate had a hand in coining (Labate and Araújo 2004; Labate, Rose, and Santos 2008), the authors provide a foundational text for studying music in the Santo Daime and the União do Vegetal (UDV). Unfortunately, the absence of a consideration of the Barquinha ayahuasca religion, whose musical salmos (psalms) are a central characteristic of its eclectic ceremonies, renders this project somewhat incomplete. However, in light of the ongoing creation of new factions continually branching off from the original three, the confinement of this initial survey to the Santo Daime and UDV is a practical focus on the only two ayahuasca religions that have expanded outside of South America.

The authors proceed to situate their analysis relative to the extensive corpus on the cultural context of ayahuasca use that has amassed over the past four decades. But, while many anthropologists have commented on relations between ayahuasca consumption and music in indigenous cultures (dating back to Dobkin de Rios and Kats 1975), the music of the new ayahuasca religions has yet to garner suitable attention. This study is based upon periodic ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the Santo Daime between 1991 and 2009 and with the UDV between 1996 and 2009. A methodological statement detailing this fieldwork precedes the core body of the text; a crucial matter since both groups, the UDV in particular, require scholarly strangers to earn the trust of members before gaining intimate access. Also, while the lyrics and recordings of Santo Daime songs (hinos) are freely available on the Internet, it is impossible to understand the experiential significance of these songs without actually attending the ceremonies, termed "works" (trabalhos), and conversing with members (fardados). Furthermore, it is challenging to secure recurrent admission to UDV rituals (called "sessions") without becoming a member, and their songs or "calls" (chamadas) are subject to a system of hierarchical confidentiality. The discussion of methodology therefore serves as a valuable guide to future researchers by outlining the intricate procedures of conducting fieldwork with these ayahuasca religions.

The first section of the main text deals with the Santo Daime. The story of the origins of this organization in the 1920s and 1930s, revolving around the biography of the founder, Raimundo Irineu Serra (known as Mestre Irineu), is interspersed with transcriptions of recorded interviews with Santo Daime elders. These range from a short narrative about how Mestre Irineu incorporated the first hinos he "received" from the astral Otherworld into Santo Daime rituals, to a practical account about why the CEFLURIS ² branch of the Santo Daime began to bind their hymn books in the distinctive design that is still in use today. This is followed by an extensive catalogue of interrelated musical traits of the Santo Daime, including types of ritual dances, instruments, and the structure of rhythm and melody.

The next section focuses on the UDV, which was founded by José Gabriel da Costa (known as Mestre Gabriel) in 1961. As with the preceding section, the general framework of rituals is summarized alongside specific peculiarities relating to music. Unlike in the Santo Daime, the UDV chamadas are memorized without written aids...