Full Description
The first in-depth, comparative, and interdisciplinary study of indigenous Amazonian musical cultures, Burst of Breath showcases new research on the dynamic range of ritual power and social significance of various wind instruments—including flutes, trumpets, clarinets, and whistles—played in sacred rituals and ceremonies in Lowland South America.
The editors provide a detailed overview of the historical significance, scientific classification, shamanic and cosmological associations, and changing social meanings of ritual wind instruments within Amazonian cultures. These essays present a wide perspective that goes beyond better-documented areas such as the Upper Xingu and northwest Amazon. Some of the authors explore the ways ritual wind instruments are used to introduce natural sounds into social contexts and to cross boundaries between verbal and nonverbal communication. Others look at how ritual wind instruments and their music enter into local definitions and negotiations of relations between men, women, kin, insiders, and outsiders.
Closely considering these instruments in their many roles and contexts—in curing and purification, negotiating relations, connecting mythic ancestors and humans today—this volume reveals the power and complexity of the music at the heart of collective rituals across lowland South America.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Overture
Jonathan D. Hill and Jean-Pierre Chaumeil
First Movement: Natural Sounds, Wind Instruments, and Social Communication
1. Speaking Tubes: The Sonorous Language of Yagua Flutes
Jean-Pierre Chaumeil
2. Leonardo, the Flute: On the Sexual Life of Sacred Flutes among the Xinguano Indians
Rafael José de Menezes Bastos
3. Soundscaping the World: The Cultural Poetics of Power and Meaning in Wakuénai Flute Music
Jonathan Hill
4. Hearing without Seeing: Sacred Flutes as the Medium for an Avowed Secret in Curripaco Masculine Ritual
Nicolas Journet
5. Flutes in the Warime: Musical Voices in the Piaroa World
Alexander Mansutti Rodríguez
6. Desire in Music: Soul-Speaking and the Power of Secrecy
Marcelo Fiorini
Second Movement: Musical Transpositions of Social Relations
7. Archetypal Agents of Affinity: "Sacred" Flutes in the Guianas?
Marc Brightman
8. From Flutes to Boom Boxes: Traditions of Musical Symbolism and Change among the Waiwai of Southern Guyana
Stephanie W. Alemán
9. From Musical Poetics to Deep Language: The Ritual of the Wauja Sacred Flutes
Acácio Tadeu de Camargo Piedade
10. The Ritual of Iamurikuma and the Kawoká Flutes
Maria Ignez Cruz Mello
11. Spirits, Ritual Staging, and the Transformative Power of Music in the Upper Xingu Region
Ulrike Printz
12. An "Inca" Instrument at a "Nawa" Feast: Marubo Flutes and Alterity in Amazonian Context
Javier Ruedas
13. Arawakan Flute Cults of Lowland South America: The Domestication of Predation and the Production of Agentivity
Robin Wright
Coda: Historical and Comparative Perspectives
14. Sacred Musical Instruments in Museums: Are They Sacred?
Claudia Augustat
15. Mystery Instruments
Jean-Michel Beaudet
Contributors
Index
