Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (16 page)

I think this is something like what poet Cesar Calvo is getting at in this
mysterious passage: "He revealed to me magical songs, which some call icaros.... And he showed me something more precious: how to gather the musics that live in the air, repeat them without moving my lips, to sing in silence
`with the memory of the heart,' as he used to say."79

Just as the extraterrestrial doctors speak in computer language, and spirits speak in Inca, and shamans know the language of animals, greater power
inheres in language refined away from ordinary meanings. Many mestizo
shamans, for example, study indigenous languages and mix their wordssometimes haphazardly-into their songs.', Poet Jerome Rothenberg says
that such mysterious special languages fall into several types: purely invented sounds, distortions of ordinary words and syntax, ancient words emptied
of their long-since-forgotten meanings, and words borrowed from other languages and likewise emptied. And they may be explained as spirit language, animal language, or ancestral language;" to which we may add tribal
language, or a lenguaje especial, special language, the language of nature, or the
lengua mistica, mystical language, of the spirits, which is different from-but
somehow includes-all human languages .12

It is a mystery, this ability to understand a language you do not knowQuechua, for example, or Martian. Alonso del Rio, a musician as well as an
ayahuasquero, who apprenticed for three years with the renowned Shipibo
shaman don Benito Arevalo, explains it this way: "This is something which
an English person, or a Peruvian born in Lima, can experience just as an Amazonian person. Because you can do it without speaking in a native dialect, it
doesn't go through the mind but between one spirit and another. 1113 Anthropologist Janet Siskind reports that when she drank ayahuasca with the Sharanahua, she believed that she could understand the words of every song, even
those that were metaphorical.84

The spirits use clearly audible speech to diagnose and prescribe, as we will
see; they speak directly into the shaman's ear, telling what is wrong, what icaros to sing, where to suck out the sickness or malignant darts. Sometimes
they speak in castellano, Spanish, and sometimes they speak in idioma, tribal
languages. Speaking with the spirits is just like a conversation with a human,
says don Juan Curico, but with this difference: you understand them no matter
what language you speak yourself. 15 Thus, Bona Maria's spirits speak to her in
Inca-that is, Quechua-which is perfectly comprehensible to her, although
she herself speaks no Quechua. Both Bona Maria and don Roberto, at the start
of each healing ceremony, are attended by outer space spirits who speak in
computer language; Bona Maria says they speak like this: beep boop beep beep
boop beep beep; don Roberto says they sound like ping ping dan dan. Amazonian
mestizo shamans also know the languages of birds and animals. Don Romulo
Magin, for example, is fluent in the language of buhos, owls; their language, I
am told, sounds like this: oootutututu kakakaka hahahahaha.

Thus, icaros, the songs that are taught by these spirits of plants and animals, range from ordinary Spanish through non-Spanish but human language such as Quechua or Shipibo; purported languages of indigenous people
and unknown archaic tongues; the languages of animals, birds, and computers; pure vocables; whispered sounds; whistling; and breathy whistling. One
mestizo shaman has said that whistling is a form of communication with the
plants, an aspect of true shamanism, the power to see within with clarity, the
path of clear vision.86 And the shaman, when blowing tobacco smoke, makes
a blowing sound, an almost silent and untranscribable pshoo, which is the shaman's most refined and abstract sound, beyond even silbando, the breathy
and unintelligible whistling of the sacred songs. Soplando, blowing, which can
both kill and cure, is the most powerful song of all.

Again, there are analogies in neighboring indigenous cultures. Among the
Yaminahua, songs-sung under the influence of ayahuasca-are a shaman's
most highly prized possessions. Such songs are made up of twisted languagemetaphoric circumlocutions or unusual words for common things, held to
be in archaic speech or the language of neighboring peoples. The word for a
shaman's song is koshuiti, given an onomatopoetic etymology from the sound
kosh-kosh-kosh-the sound of blowing tobacco into the crown of the patient's
head. Similarly, witchcraft songs are called shooiti, from the sound shoo-shooshoo-the powerful, prolonged breath of the sorcerer blowing away the victim's soul.87

Shuar and Achuar anent, magical songs, similarly employ deliberate distortion-very high or low pitch, word deformation, semantic ambiguity. One researcher speaks of their "idiosyncratic creativity" and notes that even Achuar
listeners are often unable to grasp what the singer of a given anent is referring
to. The singers say that these songs are in a foreign language-the language
of the Napo Runa or the language of the Cocoma-or are in the language of
their tsentsak, magic darts, and their pasuk, spirit helpers.88 Indeed, Shuar
shamans who have learned from the well-respected Canelos Quichua often
whistle instead of sing.89 In the Venezuelan Amazon, sorcerers-naked, with
their bodies painted black, wandering at night through forests and towns,
seeking out their enemies in order to destroy them-are called both daneros,
harmers, and pitadores, whistlers.9°

While living among the Suyd of Amazonian Brazil, ethnomusicologist Anthony Seeger was frequently asked to sing "Rain, rain go away, come again
some other day" when towering dark thunderclouds threatened to interrupt
some enjoyable activity. He had, he says, some surprisingly successful performances.91 Equally important, the invocation was sung in English, a strange
and mysterious language.

THE LEAF-BUNDLE RATTLE

Two rhythmic instruments are used in shamanic performance in the Upper
Amazon-the shacapa, the leaf-bundle rattle, and the maraca, the seed-filled
gourd rattle. Whether shacapa or maraca, rattles are the shaman's most important tool-the equivalent of the shaman's drum elsewhere.92 Anthropologist Lawrence Sullivan, in his work on the history of religion in South America, calls them the paradigm of sacred sound, the epitome of the link
between sacred sound and shamanic power;93 ethnographer Alfred Metraux
describes them as the most sacred object among the tropical tribes of South
America;94 anthropologist Jean-Pierre Chaumeil says that, among the Yagua,
the rattle is the voice of the spirits.95 Among the Arawete of eastern Amazonia,
there are two emblems of shamanism-tobacco and the rattle.96

Mestizos use the shacapa exclusively. Other Amazonian peoples use leafbundle rattles as well-for example, the Aguaruna, who use a rattle of sampi
leaves; the Shuar, who shake a bunch ofshinku leaves; the Canelos Quichua,
who use a leaf bundle called shingui shingu panga; the Achuar, who use a bundle of shinki-shinki leaves; the Yagua, who use a rattle of chacapa leaves; and
the Akawaio, who in fact abandoned the seed-filled gourd maraca in the
mid-i95os in favor of "shaman's leaves."97 Quechua speakers often use the
term huairachina, wind-maker, for the leaf-bundle rattle, which creates a supai
huaira, a spirit wind.98 Hugh-Jones reproduces an illustration from a health
booklet published in Tukanoan by the Colombian government that shows Tukanos, holding crosses, lined up for the healing of tuberculosis before a shaman shaking two leaf bundles.99

The shacapa used by mestizo shamans is a bundle of leaves from the shacapa bush tied together at the stem with fibers from the chambira, fiber palm.
Mestizo shamans reportedly also make leaf-bundle rattles from carricillo, albaca or wild basil, and achiote or annatto.i°° In any case, don Roberto was very
specific about the plant he wanted for his shacapa when I would go with him
to find the leaves.

The shacapa has a unique sound-"a cross between birds flying, rattles,
and wind in the trees," says one commentator.'°' It is considered, along with
sucking and blowing, a tool for healing; as doiia Maria used to put it, in her
typical way, "My shacapa is my pistola." Thus, some songs, such as calling
in the spirit of ayahuasca at the start of a ceremony, are performed without
rhythmic accompaniment, while healings are all performed with the shacapa.
The healing effect of the shacapa is described in different ways: it is used to
ventear el mal, blow away the sickness with its breeze; it makes the body sellado,
sealed, or cerrado, closed, to resist further attacks; it brings on visions during
an ayahuasca ceremony. 102

The word has become an Amazonian Spanish verb-shacapar, heal by rattling. When don Roberto initiated dona Maria, already a plant healer, into ayahuasca shamanism, two of the key things she learned were shacapar, healing
and protecting with the leaf-bundle rattle, and soplar, healing and protecting by blowing mapacho, tobacco. Indeed, blowing, rattling, and singing are synergistic modes of sound; elsewhere in the Amazon, too, tobacco, rattle,
and song are mythologically interconnected. Among the Makiritare of the
Orinoco Valley in Venezuela, Nadeiumadi, a messenger or emanation of Wanadi, the heavenly creator, dreamed his mother into existence: "He gave birth
to her dreaming, with tobacco smoke, with the song of his maraca, singing
and nothing else. 11103

The Tukano shaman carries a rattle adorned with feathers. With this rattle,
the shaman attracts all things, the stones and splinters within the body of the
sick, and with the sound of the rattle orders them to depart.'°4 Among the Desana, the sound produced by the gourd rattle shaken by the shaman is said to
echo the sound made by the thorns and splinters that the shaman carries hidden in his forearm. The rattle is a prolongation of the shaman's arm; when he
shakes the rattle, these thorns and splinters are shaken toward the victim.'°s

There is thus a homology between the sound of the Desana rattle and the
phlegm of the mestizo shaman: both are the vehicles for the thorns and darts
with which the victim may be harmed, the medium within which the projective power of the shaman is stored. It is the same with the mestizo shaman:
the refined whispering, whistling, blowing, and rattling of the most powerful
music are the same as the air-like presence of mariri, the most refined form
of phlegm. Among the mestizo shamans, the wordless rhythmic rustle of the
shacapa-like the breathy whistle of the song or the almost silent whispered
blowing of tobacco smoke-approaches pure sound.

THE SPECTRUM OF MAGICAL SOUND

There is a continuum of sound from the concrete, verbal, and intelligible at
one end to the abstract, sonic, and unintelligible at the other. The continuum
begins with intelligible lyrics in Castellano, Spanish, and progresses through
non-Spanish but human language such as Quechua; purported languages of
indigenous people and unknown archaic tongues; the languages of animals,
birds, and computers; pure vocables; whispered sounds; whistling; breathy
whistling; the silent pshoo of the blowing of tobacco smoke; and the susurration of the shacapa. The rarefaction of sound parallels the rarefaction of the
shaman's phlegm, from gross physical flema in the chest to abstract protective air-like mariri in the throat. The more rarefied the sound, the further it
departs from the materiality of intelligible words, the closer it comes to the
state of mariri, the most rarefied phlegm in the sound-producing throat of
the shaman. Both converge in a state ofpuro sonido, pure sound, which is the
language of the plants.

MESTIZO SOUNDSCAPES

Cultural critics Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson point out that music can be
understood either as possessing or producing meanings, or as producing effects that cannot be explained in terms of meaning-that "music can affect us
in ways that are not dependent on understanding something, or manipulating verbal concepts, or being able to represent accurately those experiences
through language." Music has a metaphysical dimension; where music affects
the body, the distinction between outside-where the music comes from-and
inside-where the music is felt-is radically called into question.'06 Musicologist John Shepherd therefore describes music as a site of exchange, a shifting
boundary between the outer and the inner.'°7

Here sound differs from vision. The eye and its gaze have long been the
primary trope of European thought-what cultural theorist Luce Irigaray calls
"the predominance of the visual, and of the discrimination and individualization of form.1108 This discourse privileges the visual as the purest and most
important form of sense experience.'°9 Vision encourages projection into the
world, occupation and control of the source of experience; whereas sound
"encourages a sense of the world as received, as being revelatory rather than
incarnate.""'

But the visual is a relatively less important part of the ribereno cognitive
set. When I studied jungle survival with mestizo instructor Gerineldo Moises
Chavez, I was struck by how little emphasis he placed on animal tracking. Instead, the mestizos have a great ability to recognize and imitate the sounds of
the animals, along with an intimate knowledge of their habits and likely locations. On one level, of course, mestizos do not emphasize tracking when
they hunt because the thin jungle soil simply does not take tracks well, and
rain regularly washes away both tracks and sign in any event. But there may
be more. Two anthropologists-Peter Gow, speaking of western Amazonia,
and Alfred Gell, speaking of New Guinea-emphasize the spatial boundedness
of rain forest life. As Gow puts it,

It is hard to see Amazonia as landscape, in the sense this term has for
people from temperate climes. The land does not recede away from a
point of observation to a distant horizon, for everywhere vegetation occludes the view. In the forest, sight penetrates only a short distance into
the mass of trees. Along the big rivers, you can see further, but even here
there is no distant blue horizon. The sky starts abruptly from behind the
screen of forest.-