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

10. The Ritual of Iamurikuma and the Kawoká Flutes

10. The Ritual of Iamurikuma and the Kawoká Flutes maria ignez cruz mello The Wauja and the Xinguano System The iamurikuma ritual, practiced by the Wauja women, is understood as one side of a ritual-musical complex that allows humans to interact with apapaatai (spirits), which are considered to be both dangerous sources of disease and creative forces governing the fertility of nature (see Robin Wright’s essay, this volume ). The other side of the Wauja ritual-musical complex is the world of the kawoká flutes, which men play and which women are strictly prohibited from viewing (see Acácio Piedade’s and Ulrike Prinz’s essays, this volume). The Wauja consider music, through its formalization and the interplay of meanings and proportions, to be the central element of this ritual and to constitute the ideal medium for expressing affect. In this essay, I will discuss some of the various connections of this ritual with cosmology, gender relations, ethics, aesthetics, musicality, and politics, highlighting issues such as the need to control desire, the breaking of reciprocity , and the fundamental role of emotions in Wauja sociality. In 2002, I found that nearly three hundred Wauja Indians lived in a circular village with eighteen houses, close to Piulaga Lake in the headwater region of the Xingu River, in Mato Grosso State, Brazil. The Wauja are one of ten indigenous groups that are part of what is known in the ethnological literature as the Xinguano peoples, those who inhabit the southern region of the Xingu Indigenous Reserve in Mato Grosso State. There are currently nearly three thousand Xinguano people, living within the reserve, a region where there is great linguistic diversity: the Wauja, Mehináku, and Yawalapití speak Arawakan languages; the Kamayurá and Awetí speak Tupían languages; the Kuikúru, Kalapalo, Matipú, and Nahukuwá speak Carib languages; and the Trumaí speak an isolated language. Despite this linguistic diversity, each group member speaks only his or her own language. Portuguese is spoken by a minority and is the language used to communicate with the world of the white people. Among the Xinguanos, not speaking the language of the other seems to be a question of honor, because even if they understand what the people of another group are saying, they continue speaking their own language, in order to avoid presenting a submissive position. This aspect of monolingualism is an important feature of sociality, since the degree to which the language is spoken is one of the strong diacritical signs of the multiple ethnic identities in the region (see Franchetto 2001). Even so, a discrete polylinguism is present among Upper Xinguanos due to the close kinship ties created by marital alliances between members of different language groups. The Xinguano people maintain intertribal relations through rituals, material exchanges, and marriages. The relationship between the different groups points, in principle, to a culturally stable and apparently homogeneous region. Nevertheless, there is a logic of internal differentiation, the dynamic of which passes not only through language but also through ethnohistory and technical , musical, and iconographic specializations, articulating an intertribal system of exchanges. This logic includes solidarity and cooperation as well as disputes and conflicts. The Wauja Rituals This coexistence with difference stands out to the Xinguano researcher , particularly upon observing the intertribal rituals. It is 258 cruz mello through these rituals that various peoples of the region meet, fight, sing, and dance, and it is when they dialogue and relate. During these practices, however, a strong tension is expressed: the tension that comes from the need for a communicative acceptability within a framework that produces or accentuates difference and even divergence (Menezes Bastos 2001). During the intertribal rituals, despite the fact that one group does not speak the language of the other, the majority of the songs are sung in the ritual ’s language of origin. In this way it is legitimate to pronounce a language other than one’s own, but only in the musical-ritual context. The large intertribal rituals, such as the kwarýp, iamurikuma , and yawari, constitute the space in which the rules and standards of Pan-Xinguano communicability and sociality are placed in action, promoting the constitution of difference and conflict at the heart of coexistence and solidarity. As noted by Basso (1985: 244), there is little space in Xinguano ritual for speaking. There is a certain economy of symbolic objects; those that exist, however, are highly elaborate...