Ethnomusicology F
orum 22(3):
The Human and Non-human in Lowland South American Indigenous Music
Special Issue ed. by Bernd Brabec de Mori
Research on music was almost neglected during the history of the anthropology of Lowland South American indigenous societies. This may be due to their difficult accessibility and lack of infrastructure in former research, as well as due to the different focus of researchers. However, the area is now thriving, because many anthropologists and ethnomusicologists have recognised the central role music performance plays in ritual, specifically when ritual action involves non-human agency. The role of animals, plants or spirits in Lowland South American cosmologies has been studied intensely during the last decades, and laid way for the theories of perspectivism and new animism. The authors show how music is used in cosmologies where communication between humans and non-humans is paramount. Further on, they suggest that the sonic domain can help in explaining many indigenous narratives about transformations and non-human agency.
CONTENTS
SPECIAL ISSUE: The Human and Non-human in Lowland South American Indigenous Music
GUEST EDITOR: Bernd Brabec de Mori
Editorial
Trevor Wiggins, Eleni Kallimopoulou & Simone Krüger
Introduction: Considering Music, Humans, and Non-humans
Bernd Brabec de Mori & Anthony Seeger
Apùap World Hearing Revisited: Talking with ‘Animals’, ‘Spirits’ and other
Beings, and Listening to the Apparently Inaudible
Rafael José de Menezes Bastos
Flutes, Songs and Dreams: Cycles of Creation and Musical Performance
among the Wauja of the Upper Xingu (Brazil)
Acácio Tadeu de Camargo Piedade
Instruments of Power: Musicalising the Other in Lowland South America
Jonathan D. Hill
Shipibo Laughing Songs and the Transformative Faculty: Performing or
Becoming the Other
Bernd Brabec de Mori
Focusing Perspectives and Establishing Boundaries and Power: Why the Suyá/
Kïsêdjê Sing for the Whites in the Twenty-first Century
Anthony Seeger
