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

Overture

Overture jonathan d. hill and jean-pierre chaumeil This book aims to produce a broadly comparative study of ritual wind instruments (flutes, trumpets, clarinets, and bullroarers) that are subject to strict visual and tactile (but not auditory) prohibitions and that are found among indigenous peoples in many areas of Lowland South America. The type of prohibition can vary from one group to another but primarily affects certain categories of persons more than others, which is why these wind instruments are often described, however inadequately, as “sacred” or “secret” instruments. Although there have been intensive studies of this kind of instrument and their music, understood as ritual objects and voices that condense a myriad of different relations in specific contexts, there have been no attempts to bring these isolated studies together into a more global, comparative perspective that goes beyond more documented areas, such as northwestern Amazonia and the Upper Xingu region and that integrates a diversity of approaches from anthropology, ethnomusicology , ethnolinguistics, and museum studies. Here we have assembled recent and ongoing research in these fields from a variety of ethnographic contexts (northwestern Amazonian, Upper Xingu, Guianas, Orinoco, Mato Grosso, and others) where we find sacred wind instruments played in pairs or trios. The chapters are organized into two sections. Part 1, “Natural Sounds, Wind Instruments, and Social Communication,” contains 2—hill and chaumeil six essays that explore the complex ways in which ritual wind instruments are used to introduce natural sounds into human social contexts and to cross the boundary between verbal and nonverbal communication. The interplay of lexicality and musicality in the playing of sacred wind instruments is often regarded as a privileged means for human communication with, or impersonations of, mythic beings, such as the spirit-owners of forest animals, fish, birds, and plants. Part 1 explores the highly diverse ways in which indigenous South American peoples (Yagua of Peru, Kamayur á of Brazil, Wakuénai of Venezuela, Curripaco of Colombia , Piaroa of Venezuela, and Nambikwara of Brazil) have developed these interminglings of musical sound and verbal form and meaning to construct unique cultural poetics of ritual power. At the same time, the essays demonstrate how these culturally speci fic ways of integrating sounds and meanings are closely associated with animals, birds, fish, and other natural species. Flutes, trumpets, and other wind instruments are often named after natural species, and their sounds are said to be directly connected to the eating, mating, and other behaviors of animals. The general theme of “seeing” versus “hearing” cuts across the entire spectrum of naturalized, lexicalized musical sounds and is prevalent throughout Lowland South America. In many cases, women and uninitiated children are forbidden to see ritual flutes and other aerophones yet are allowed or even required to hear the music of these instruments and are in some cases even expected to “converse” with them. Keeping instruments out of women and children’s sight but not their hearing also allows male flute players to use the sounds of their instruments to disguise their voices, the sounds of which would easily allow women to identify the men who made it. The essays in part 2, “Musical Transpositions of Social Relations ,” explore some of the ways in which ritual wind instruments and their music enter into local definitions and negotiations of Overture—3 relations between men and women, kin and affine, and insiders and outsiders. Starting with case studies among the Trio, Wayana , and Waiwai of Guiana, a comparative sociological perspective emerges through three studies of ritual flute music and women ’s ritual singing among the Wauja and Mehináku in the Upper Xingu region of Brazil; the Marubo of Brazil; and four Arawakspeaking groups in widely separate regions of Brazil. The playing of aerophones in ritual and secular contexts is frequently associated with shamanic powers of curing and purification; relations between mythic ancestors and their human descendants, both living and dead; and relations between kin and affines. Although for the most part ritual flutes and other aerophones are used to evoke concepts of stability and continuity through celebrating natural and social processes of rejuvenation, the adoption of “Inca” map 1. Indigenous communities in Lowland South America covered. flutes among the Marubo serves as a foil of “otherness” that indirectly defines “true” or “authentic” Marubo cultural practices. We conclude with a short section, or “Coda: Historical and Comparative Perspectives,” consisting of two essays, a study of...