Movements in C minor: Vocal Soundscapes in Eastern Amazonia (Araweté)

Authors

Guilherme Orlandini Heurich, University College LondonFollow

Keywords

Araweté, Amazonia, Linguistic anthropology, Anthropology of music

Abstract

This article examines the capture of forest spirits through music in the Anĩ pihi speech-songs of the Araweté, a small Amerindian society in Eastern Amazonia, Brazil. The Anĩ pihi are unique in their combination of spoken and sung forms, in which spirits and divinities are voiced by a ritual specialist. I explore how particular sounds index the presence of different kinds of others (gods and spirits), and how these sounds are, in turn, related to the use of reported speech – in other words, how others talk about other others in sung form. As such, the Anĩ pihi are a useful context in which to discuss recent approaches in the anthropology of Lowland South America such as “perspectivism” (Viveiros de Castro 1998; Lima 1999) and “animism” (Descola 2014), especially where these approaches have changed the way in which we think about language and music (Cesarino 2011; Déléage 2009; Kohn 2013). This article argues that we should combine linguistic and musicological approaches in order to fully understand the “perspectival soundscape” of Amerindian songs, and that such a combined musical-linguistic approach could give us a better understanding of the ways in which humans and non-humans act as people in Amazonia.

Recommended Citation

Orlandini Heurich, Guilherme (2022). "Movements in C minor: Vocal Soundscapes in Eastern Amazonia (Araweté)", Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America: Vol. 18: Iss. 2, Article 1, 183-199.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol18/iss2/1