Volver a la Maloca

The Ancestral Knowledge of the Americas as a Basis for Contemporary Music Creation

Thesis Advisor: Mg. Ana María Llamazares

MA Candidate: Andrés Arias López

Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero Master Degree in Musical Creation, New Technologies and Traditional

Arts

April 2015

Translated from Spanish by Melina Santa Cruz

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INDEX

Introduction 3

Volver a la Maloka 5

The Musical Creation Seen from a Latin American Perspective 8

The Making of Things by the Use of Knowledge 9

The Tale of the Orality. The Transmitting Medium of knowledge 11

The Legacy of the Ancestors Enclosed in the Word and in the Arts 15

The Vegetal Realm Becoming Closer to the Music 23

The Tobacco and the Coca, Elements of Power 23

Drinking Remedy, Drinking Yagé 30

The Sonoric Praxis in Rituality 36

Esferas Andinas and Esferas Americanas 39

The Four Spheres of the Work- Spherical Movements- 43

Poem Wiñay 46

The Influence of Knowledge for the Creation of Esferas Andinas 47

The Center as the Axis of the Individual and the External Space 48

The Heaven, the Earth and the Path of Men 52

Conclusions 54

Essential Knowledge at the Service of All 55

Acknowledgements 56

Bibliography 57

Appendixes 59

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Introduction

This thesis is called Volver a la Maloka 1 because its purpose is to invite people to

return to the essence of the Americas, by retracing their steps of the paths that haven´t

led them to the satisfaction of their ontological needs. In this way, we would recognize

ourselves as individuals and as collective people. This thesis is a search to integrate

music to ancestral knowledge (especially Andean-Amazon), bodywork and

technological resources.

Through the observation of the visible connection between different fields of human

activity, I have started to recognize and to investigate some converging factors that

make certain tasks (musical, corporal, everyday activities, et al.) interdependent. In

this thesis, I will bring together the different facets that makes me an artist. By making

use of the written word I will argue rational ideologies with corporal and spiritual sights

and I will present them just as an outline of the proposal.

The intention of investigating the ancestral wisdom of Latin America and mixing it with

musical manifestations was inspired by ritual experiences and by meetings with the

Kamsá community from Alto and Bajo Putumayo. The lessons that were learnt in the

Master of Musical Creation, New Technologies and Traditional Arts between 2010 and

2011 and the creative experience that was carried out under its guidance, between

2011 and 2013, were a bedrock for the merging of the different elements that I will

present in this thesis.

Through several journeys to the Andean-Amazon area, located in South of Colombia,

I established ties with grandfathers regarded as “knowers,”2 who have been the major

source of information for this investigation (previous to the investigation they led me

into a cathartic process experience).These grandfathers have shared their wisdom

orally and in a humbly way. I highlight Taita 3 Alfredo Juajibioy´ s support and company.

1 Translator´s note : this expression can be translated into English as `Return to the Maloka´ 2 This word is similar to the word `Shaman´―the ones who know `knowers´ are locally known as Taitas or traditional healers. 3 In this paper, I will use terms such as `traditional healer´ or `Taita´ .The latter is the name that some indigenous communities from South Colombia use to refer to their priests, healers or wizards. I use these terms in order to avoid using the term `shaman´, which was a term coined by the first Western researchers, and to reinvindicate the appropriate terms when talking about the cosmovisions of Latin America.

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He will be quoted throughout the text, as well as Mamita 4 Clementina Chicunque and

the young traditional healer Miguel Mavisoy. All of them belong to the Kamsá

community.

“Volver a la Maloka” is a musical and artistic project with ancestral connotations. It

represents a personal process related to the orality, the understanding of the action as

a manifestation of knowledge and the acknowledgement of the ancestral thought as a

vital resource for the creation of new paradigms. One of the most significant results of

this process was the recognition of my own half-blood essence, which has been

essential to redefine my own personal and cultural identity. Paralelly, I feel that this is

a collective process that ratifies the consolidation of a new Latin American man.

I will deepen enthusiastically about the influence of music in rituals and its relationship

with medicinal plants, which are leading elements and a likely method for musical

composition. Finally, I will explain the process of creation, the internal geometry and

the combination of elements that structure the work Esferas Andinas 5

When talking about traditional knowledge I think it is impossible to paraphrase the

writing, transcription of oral discourse, etc. in order to make it “fit” in the academic

writing style. For that reason, this text is partially written in a poetic way, aiming to

encourage Academics to let themselves go through shapes and structures that are

part of human experience and proposing the reader to link academic knowledge with

traditional knowledge.

This text is also a narrative of events and experiences lived during the trips in the

Andean-Amazon region, the rituality, and the process of musical creation. Just like

Juan Álvaro Echeverri states in the introduction of his book Cool Tobacco, Sweet

Coca: Teachings of an Indian Sage of the Colombian Amazon : “This basket (the

written word) is not part of the indigenous world […]This basket is something new, it

is like the iron axes which the ancestors of these races obtained from white traders.”

(Chandre & Echeverri 1996:9)

4 Term of endearment used by Andean cultures to address grandmothers and elderly women. 5 Translator´s note: The name of the work can be translated as `Andean Spheres´

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Volver a la Maloka

The term Maloka or Maloca refers to the indigenous community’s homes located in the

Colombian Amazonia and in the bordering areas with Brazil and Venezuela. It also

represents a fundamental space ruled by a cosmic order which holds the cosmovision

and the traditional symbolism of the communities.

It is understood that in a vertical position, the Maloka is divided in three parts: the

Heaven― a cosmological space that is inhabited by the ancestors; The World of the

Middle, world of men and matter; And the Underworld, associated with warmth and

femininity. In a horizontal position, the Maloka is divided in a masculine and ceremonial

half and a domestic and feminine half (Fiori & Monsalve, 1995).The center of the

Maloka is considered “the center of the world.” It is the place where the owner of the

Maloka, the grandfather or knower “have a sit” to advise the community in case of

conflicts. It is also a “central” space to have access to “the fundamental word” in relation

to the community and the individuality.

The expression “Volver a la Maloka” is a manifest from the Coordinator of Indigenous

Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA) that appears in the article Agenda

Indígena Amazónica: Volviendo a la Maloka (2005)

Motivated by the internal need of returning to the ontological roots of the ancestral

knowledge, I decided to put in practice the idea of the expression “Volver a la Maloka”,

returning to my inner space where there are many underlying realities as a Latin

American person. I sense that by giving importance to the inherited traditions, relatively

practical methods that are capable of leading to the encounter with the essence of

these geographies can be found. And at the same time, they can be a suitable method

for the development of the being, not only from the point of view of Western precepts,

but also from the point of view of the cultural canon of the “New World”6

6 “New World” was the name that Historians gave to the Americas.

6

Taita Miguel Mavisoy ´s hexagonal Maloka

(Vereda Tamabioy, Valle del Sibundoy, Putumayo)

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Interior of Taita Domingo Cutindioy´s Maloka

(San Andrés, Valle del Sibundoy, Putumayo)

To return to the root is a way of becoming engrained in something that it is ours, but

simultaneously, we do not know and helps us to project ourselves into the external

world. The return to the root works as an element that makes the process of musical

creation easier, but before anything else, it makes personal development easier. I want

to point out that this experience of becoming engrained in the roots (which primarily is

a corporal experience) was mainly motivated and leaded by the MA courses related

to bodywork such as ―Geoculture of the Creative Gesture, Zen Archery and Corporal

Architecture. Subsequently, I related the expression Volver a la Maloka to the idea of

a reencounter with what we are but don’t really know we are.

The Maloka might be used as a referent of a meeting space with the individual and the

collective, different from the idea of social pyramid, which predominates in the actual

world. The circularity of the Maloka hold us and make us follow a system of integration

of the different sides of the Cosmos.

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In the other hand, the femininity and masculinity coexist in the same space or Maloka,

as well as in the representation of our body structure, which is divided in two halves

traditionally7 known as a feminine half and a masculine half.

Following the previous concept of the Maloka, Carlos Martínez Sarasola makes

allusion to how the Western culture is awakening a need to reencounter with its roots,

which has created bonds with other traditions. This author states:

From the point of view of the indigenous, this path seems to be expressed as an

open door into their cosmovision, whereas from the point of view of the West it is

manifested as the recovery of their own values, which were lost at some point in

their history, and the fact of actually going to the encounter with indigenous

concepts in a space where different kinds of knowledge converge. 8

(Llamazares & Martínez Sarasola 2004: 55)

The Musical Creation Seen from a Latin American Perspective

At the starting point of this search, I examined with a lot of interest different Eastern

traditions in order to satisfy my spiritual uneasiness. As I did not find any suitable

answer for my Latin American reality, the ontological needs that were rising in me drove

all my attention to the wisdom of Latin America; and I got to the conclusion that this

was going to be the appropriate sphere of research for the subsequent discovery of

the Latin American man that inhabits in of me.

My involvement with the ancestral knowledge through rituals, cosmogonic stories and

habits from Colombian lands; awakened a sense of belonging towards the Andean

culture, which despite the strong influence of the Spanish culture, it undoubtedly has

its roots that underlie and has slight manifestations in Colombian habits. These

experiences pushed my interest to investigate the hidden and forgotten sounds that

Latin America have in its geographies and in the people who inhabits it. I do not want

7 Many ancestral traditions associate the right side of a person with the masculine part and the left side with the feminine part. 8 Translator´s note: All the extracts from these authors were translated from Spanish for this work.

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to leave out the musical knowledge I acquired in the Conservatory, but to explore a

mixture of sounds strongly based on the knowledge of our ancestors.

Thus, through the musical creation named Esferas Andinas, I have hoped to get into

and rediscover the “geometry” of knowledge (such geometry is understood as the

relationship between multiple forms, proportions and areas related to the ancestral

knowledge) which is available to us as a manifestation of the internal and external

sounds that cloth us as the people of Latin America.

The Making of Things by the Use of Knowledge

In the contemporary world, most arts have started to play the role of entertainment,

avoiding or even forgetting to go deeper in the essence of intangible elements, which

are hidden in the abyss of the artistic expression and waits for brave people, who can

dare to go into the depths of themselves. Ken Wilber, when making reference to

Wassily Kandinsky´s ideas, provide us an approach to modern arts nowadays:

Art, then becomes not just a technical skill, not just observation and execution, not

even just creativity, but a method of spiritual growth and development on the part of

the artists themselves. True art, according to Kandinsky, must involve the cultivation

of soul and spirit. (Wilber 1990:206)

Latin America has started to transcend the universal categorizations that were set in

colonial times, which strongly outshined the already existent traditions and reshaped

the habits of the dominated cultures. The aesthetics that was established by the

invader campaign - that predominated for centuries- and was fixed as a fundamental

step for the artistic creation is under a visible transformation. This results in a re-

encounter with traditions and in the overture to other realities, within the Western

thought, that can ease the ontological needs. Regarding the hegemonic deprivation

imposed by the colonialist thinking, Adolfo Colombres states:

Europe was more universal in those times, when it started their “discovery”

voyages, their military conquests and the expansion of their markets and

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colonies, than in posterior times. Because jumping into the world didn’t make

them think of a critical re- evaluation of their ideas, instead their convictions and

prejudices became stronger, in order to rigorously impose them onto the rest of

the world at any price, to fulfil their goals of domination. (Colombres 2005:8) 9

We barely understand that there are other ways of making things according to the

different traditions, geographic conditions, social structures, etcetera, that help to find

new meaning in the arts and also help to re-invindicate the relationship between men

and their surroundings, especially with nature.

So, as a result of this overture of thinking, where I personally found the ancestral

knowledge a useful tool for a productive making of daily activities. The indigenous

communities that still live under those rules, openly recognize it. According to

Clementina Chicunque: 10“…In the Kamsá community the moon is kept in mind for woods

cutting. For example, to make a house the wood cannot be cut during the first quarter moon.

Otherwise, some little animals, the weevil, appears in the wood and damage it all over, so

there are those beliefs about in which time of the year they appear and in which time of the

year they damage the wood…” (C. Chicunque, personal conversation, July 30th 2014)

With that knowledge, productivity becomes ideal and the resources are exploited at

maximum. The fundamental bases for work are the cycles of nature. To act using that

knowledge could help us to get a capacity to display the best virtues and skills in

ourselves. During the process of creation, I hypothetically assumed the spring season

as the ideal period for creation, in order to relate it with the period of rebirth and bloom

that is manifested in nature. Thinking that if men are a microcosm in itself, they are

also the minimal representation of nature. (Velázquez 1997:27)

To go back again to the usage of this knowledge and intuitions to investigate, develop

or reactivate other kinds of thought and action will probably reveal us some sort of

balance, which was experienced by the ancestors.

9 Translator´s note: This extract was translated for this work. 10 Teacher and community leader. She is part of the Kamsá community of Sibundoy (Valle del Sibundoy, Putumayo, Colombia)

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In country areas, the usage of ancient wisdom is something common in the daily life of

a lot of people, either indigenous or settlers. Although there are many territories where

mono-cropping system predominates, still there are farmers who refuse to do without

their inherited knowledge and keep bio-diverse crops. In my opinion, it is there where

the academy and we, as researchers and precursors of new paradigms must create

systems of information and preservation good enough to safeguard the knowledge and

its territories. Otherwise, the art that we present will be another product in the shelves

of the intellectuals of the contemporary world.

Here our concern is to talk about music and creativity, but besides it exists the

opportunity and even the need to acknowledge new conceptions and flairs that help to

find new meaning in everyday activities and thus, enrich the artistic expressions. Carlos

Martínez Sarasola provide us an approach about the value that the indigenous

communities bestow on their daily activities: “Daily life is preceded by an uncountable

number of small sacred acts that give everyday life its true meaning. Nothing is done

by the indigenous without previously address to the powers or forces of nature and the

cosmos, heading their existence to a sacred direction.” (Martínez Sarasola 2004:48)

So, this is how our making is manifested in that small inner pulse that each of us carries

within, which is inherited by a sociocultural past and influenced by the growth

environment. If music is a manifestation of our cultural identity and if what define us is

the beverage that we drink at dawn or the geography of our flesh, then our creations

recall the ontological roots from which we are part of.

The Tale of the Orality. The Transmitting Medium of Knowledge

Having into account that nowadays the word lacks value in the West and

acknowledging that in many traditions it has been the bedrock to preserve and transmit

their cosmovisions. I make use again of this voice aiming to safeguard and remember

the implicit great power of the word. Thus, the orality has been a precedent recalled

and vivified during the process of musical composition, in order to find the Esferas

Andinas [Andean Spheres], which demark the edges of Latin America and that

encloses a small portion of cultural reality.

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It is worth acknowledging that in the collective and individually we are covered by a

past filled with its own aesthetic, codified in the perennial wisdom directly or indirectly

transmitted by our ancestors (grandfathers and older people).Through myths, legends,

rituals, celebrations or through daily life, invaluable “knowledges” were orally and

informally transmitted in the woods, mountains, kitchens and markets; showing how

the word possesses a weight that reflects absolute truths for many

communities.(Barrios 2004:156)

In a visit to Sibundoy11, la Mamita Esperanza from La Vereda Menta, as she threshes

corn, tells how the soot that is accumulated in the wood of the roof due to the cooking

with firewood is used in some recipes for pregnant women. This woman inherited the

wisdom about medicinal plants from her mother and now, based on the acquired

knowledge, she is in charge of providing service to the community (especially in case

of feminine ailments.)

The disbelief and set views on the rational mind frequently unable the perception of

other kinds of surrounding realities. In my trips to the Colombian Amazon, I had the

chance of listening to stories which seemed extremely fantastic, but when having the

experience of being in that environment, the stories became real and irrefutable. In the

Andean-Amazon geography, the orality comes before the writing. The knowledge that

the traditional healers transmit is supported by their own life experience, the

information and resources come from natural surroundings (plants, animals, rivers,

etcetera) and they are always remarking that their knowledge was not learnt from any

book. Carlo Severi states something similar to this, based on his investigations with

African communities: “The lack of writing-thus goes the usual argument- establish

somekind of social memory, and like this, a certain sort of society is defined.”12 (Severi

2010:31)

And now, I will make a brief etymological description of the word bibliography: graphy

(from Greek graphein) is a way of writing or portray sounds visually; and biblio (from

the Greek biblion) means paper or board used to write. This description is explained

aiming to show that the knowledge studied during the academic path is commonly

11 Municipio del Valle del Sibundoy. It belongs to the department of Putumayo, located in Southwest Colombia. 12 Translator´s note: All the extracts from this author were translated from Spanish for this text.

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found in books, which summarize and shrink the whole knowledge in printed paper.

This is opposite to the knowledge of the indigenous communities of Latin America and

many others of the world (African, Asiatic, Oceanic, etcetera) that preserved their

knowledge through weavings, sculptures, paintings, myths, etcetera, as a mechanism

to preserve and convey their knowledge. Related to the issue, I quote Severi again

when he affirms:

Many “oral” situations were not only held with words, but also with a certain usage of

images. So, actually, “written” is not opposite to “oral” as its antonym, it includes a lot

of mixed situations ―“oral, “iconographic”, “gestural”, etcetera. (Severi 2010:40)

Hence, if we try to return to our ontological roots, we should go back our attention to

these sources, which are like reintegrated vehicles of knowledge that certainly makes

easer the reencounter with our Latin American essence. Another example is a story of

the traditional healer of the Kamsá community, Miguel Mavisoy, who after being asked

by a woman if he had ever had a book published, he answered with the following

anecdote―“…I have books, but in the hard disk (the mind)… Because if I write a book,

all the effort that I would do I wouldn’t give it away already chewed to another person.”

(Miguel Mavisoy, personal conversation, July 29th 2014)

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Taita Miguel Mavisoy

Considering these other ways of approaching to the knowledge, It is opened up the

possibility of finding new paradigms of understanding that enables the development of

new cognitive competences (Llamazares 2011,2012) and the rediscovery of skills in

the contemporary man, known and attributed to the man of ancient times.

Going deeper into the cosmogonic conception of the body and the use of it as a healing

element, we can see how important is for the aboriginal cosmovisions, the power of

the throat, the mouth and therefore the word in communication. (Velázquez 1997:36)

So, the word embodied in singings, prays, onomatopoeias, etcetera is the medium by

through the traditional healers or Taitas success in establishing contact with the world

of the spirits and thus heal a patient or in some circumstances, set a spiritual balance.

Ana María Llamazares give us an approach about this:

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Remarkable examples of this same deep interrelation, which is within the apparent

simplicity of oral cultures, are given by shamanic practices, especially the ones that

tend to the healing of illnesses of the soul and body. The shamanic trance is a

particular state of consciousness, in which is usually included the use of images, the

production of sounds, narratives -mainly mythological- or the recite of songs or

prays, the smell derived from the burning of incises or resins and the corporal

movement… This synergy of cognitive methods that is articulated through the orality

has remarkably effects over the consciousness of the shaman, who works in a trance

state, and the consciousness of the “patient” who is being healed. (Llamazares

2012)

Additionally, the orality is the medium of transmission of knowledge from a teacher to

a trainee that transcend rationality and through which the first-hand experience (fully

sensed by the being) allows the understanding of this type of communication and

transmission. In this case, the word gets sacred value and utmost importance, whoever

wants to make use of it has the responsibility of using the word with awareness

because the power it represents is endless.

The Legacy of the Ancestors Enclosed in the Word and the Arts

With the intention of keeping the word alive, the elderly have clinged to it in the middle

of a vast ocean. Powerful and energetic words echo their experiences, through myths

and legends they try to guard a noble wisdom. This wisdom can be a source of clarity

and strength for a person with some perceptive sensibility. It depends on the person

and on the heart.

Being aware of the emergent needs of these new times, I dare to remark the

importance of acknowledging the complementarity between the conscious listening

and the conscious use of the word, so that both elements can be unified and shaped.

In that way, we would recognize their intrinsic value.

The search on the traditional wisdom motivated the need to immerse myself into an

inner silence, acknowledging and making space to receive a “word creator” that

transmits knowledge or transforms. Grasping these kinds of knowledge, I could recall

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them and activate a synesthetic process13 in the development of the musical creation

(a synesthetic process was carried out with the poem Wiñay, that appears later on this

text).During the investigation and creation process, I set the premise of using the word

as a medium to decode daily life activities (I highlight the subject Lab of Symbolic

Language that was a guide for this process).In this case, the word enclosed in the

knowledge has been the support for musical development. We emerge and build

ourselves starting from the verbal expression, the same way that our ancestors did.

The approach to the Andean- Amazon ancestral knowledge started in the year 2009,

as a result of several visits to the department of Putumayo, especially to the towns of

Sibundoy and Mocoa, which belong to the Southwest of Colombia and that are part of

the Colombian Amazon Area.

13 The concept of synesthesia refers to the perception of a sensation through different senses. Thus, the color of a sound can be visualized or a palette of colors can be listened to.

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The light green circle in the lower left hand highlight the area of the country that is enlarged in the following map.

(Source: Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi –www.igac.com.co)

18

The area indicated by the green circle is the area where the field research was done.

(Source: www.zonu.com )

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The main goal of these visits was centered on the investigation of the traditional

medicine of the Kamsá community14, especially the ritual of yagé15. As a result of the

continuous visits to the Colombian Amazon Area, I discovered invaluable natural

richnesses, new ways of facing daily difficulties, a remarkably simplicity in the natives,

the usage of natural resources in its purest state, among many other things. Those

field experiences caused a gradual change in the inner structures that shaped me as

a person and influenced me to start the research of paradigms related to the Latin

American socio-cultural environment from which I am part of.

In the areas where the ancestral knowledge still prevails, the teaching of daily activities

is carried out making things. For example: In the chagra16 work father and son, like this

the son learns from the father the same way the father learnt from his father. The word

of the eldest is summarized in “watch and learn.” There are no manuals, it is learnt

from the practice, making mistakes, drinking chicha.

Getting away from the Andean heights for a moment and moving to the Brasilian

Atlantic Rainforest, I will make reference to a mythological extract from Candomblé

that exemplifies the fact of simply paying attention to the learning of knowledge. The

aim of this reference is to incorporate another cosmovision, which is not too related to

the Andean-Amazon, but it is close and integrates our Latin America:

Durante dezesseis anos ali ficou ajudando o velho orixá.

Exu não perguntava.

Exu observava.

Exu prestava atenção.

Exu aprendeu tudo.17 (Prandi, 2001:40)18

14 Camsá or Kamëntsá is a community settled in the Valle del Sibundoy, Putumayo, Colombia. 15 Name that the indigenous communities from the Andean- Amazon foothills of Colombia use to refer to the sacred plant ayahuasca, which is the result of a mixture between a liana or vine (classified by Richard Evans Schultes as Banisteriopsis caapi) and chacruna or chacropanga (psychotria Viridis) 16 Translator´s note: small farm. 17 Translation: For sixteen years, he was there, helping the old orisha. Exu didn’t ask. Exu watched. Exu paid attention. Exu learnt everything.

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During the research and learning of the Andean Amazon ancestral knowledge, I found

myself in similar situations to the ones described in the previous extract. The

grandfather Alfredo Juajibioy, with whom I had direct relationship, y is a man of few

words, he explains one time the task to be done and then he keeps silent so that the

task can be carried out. Later, I will deepen on the process I went through with the

Taita Alfredo, the knowledge enclosed in the plants, the rituality and the new ways of

making things that influenced my development as an individual and that has been a

fundamental support for my development as an investigator and musical creator.

The indigenous communities Kamsá and Inga, inhabit the same territory, that’s why

they share many of their habits, and the arts are not left out―the weaving of the

chumbe19 is one of the most important expressions for both communities.

Traditional chumbe of 3 yards long

18 In the bibliographic references and comments, Reginaldo Prandi makes the following comment, which I think it is appropriate to divulge it for the text: “o aprendizado iniciático deve ser lento e baseado na observação, de preferência sem que o iniciando faça perguntas. Quem pergunta muito não aprende” (Prandi, 2001:529). Translation: “The initial learning must be slow and based on the observation, it is better for the beginner not to make questions. Who asks too much does not learn.” 19 Traditional woven belt used by women in their daily dressing. It is also used to decorate traditional crowns.

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Small chumbes

In the chumbe, the thinking and the cosmovision of the community are imprinted, they

are codified in a symbolism that describes daily life, the nature and the family. In this

work, the women “weave the thinking” and represent in their weavings their tradition

and legacy. As a mechanism to preserve this knowledge, this work has stopped being

exclusively a women´s job and nowadays it is taught to children. Clementina

Chicunque (previously quoted) who is a teacher at the Colégio Bilingüe Artesanal

Kamëntsá, points out:

…At Preschool, the children learn the colors. In first grade, they learn to tie, they

learn to cross the threads and start assembling a small woven belt, but without

patterns because each part of the chumbe is a pattern and it has to be exact to

make it…What the chumbe has, the mind has it, so since little kids the children

learn the pairs, two by two, one minus, two minus, all that is progressively taught

to the child…

(C. Chicunque, personal conversation, July 30th 2014)

I have based part of my music composition development on this research with the

Kamsá community, aiming to incorporate the relationship of symbols with music and

arts. Later on, I will make a detailed description on the investigation of the symbology

of the Kamsá community and its relation with the composition of Esferas Andinas.

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Crowns of feathers

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The Vegetal Realm Becoming Closer to the Music

The Tobacco and the Coca, Elements of Power

The tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L., Nicotiana rustica L.) is a native plant from South

America and nowadays it is spread all over the Americas. The coca (Erytroxylum coca,

Erytroxylum novogratense) is native to the Andean Mountain Chain of Peru and Bolivia,

between 1968,5 and 6561,68 feet above the sea level (area named Yungas) and it is

harvested in smaller proportions in Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and

Chile.

The tobacco, as well as the coca were and go on being considered sacred plants for

many traditions of the Americas, because with them, amplified states of awareness

can be reached. The coca leaf is used to resist tiredness, hunger, and the altitude

sickness commonly known as soroche or apunamiento; while the tobacco is a

depurative at a physical and energetic level. It is very used in the rituals of yagé as a

“guiding plant”. Both plants are used for fortune-telling, protection or to communicate

with tutelary spirits.

As a consequence of the industrialization of the coca, its consumption has been

reduced to smoking, which is the intake through the respiratory tract-without any

medicinal purpose-.There are other ways of consuming tobacco ―through the nasal

inhalation (using rapé of tobacco),chewing, drinking infusions or licking (tobacco on

gel). In order to obtain this gel or molasses “tobacco leaves are boiled down to a

concentrated liquid…it acquires the consistency of thick molasses― that is

ambil…Tobacco enters very much into [the] shamanistic and general magico-religious

complex.” (Wilbert quoted in Schultes & Raffauf, 2004:87)20

20 In the book “Tobacco and Shamanism”, the anthropologist Johannes Wilbert talks about the relation between tobacco and shamanism that hundreds of South-American societies establish.

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Ambil

Richard Evans Schultes, known as the father of the contemporary Ethnobotany,

describes the importance of the tobacco in South America:

There are few plants more important in South American shamanism, whether as

medicines or in mythology, than tobacco: Nicotiana tabacum of the Solanaceae

or Nightshade Family. It is native to the Andes. South American Indians had long

ago discovered every way of utilizing it: smoked, as a snuff, chewed, licked, as a

syrup applied to the gums, and in the form of an enema. In many tribes, payés

use tobacco smoke blown over a sick patient, especially on the area theoretically

affected, with appropriate incantations in the belief that this practice can cure of

itself or at least serve as a prelude to other treatments.

(Schultes & Raffauf 2004:87)

It is important to remember that the synthesis of the coca leaf (cocaine), achieved at

the end of the nineteenth century was used as an anesthetic. Then, at the beginning

25

of the twentieth century the prohibition of it was spread and a taboo towards the coca

leaf was installed. Thus started a detachment towards the cosmogonic conception of

the Mama Coca- sacred and affectionate name employed in the Mountain Chain of

Los Andes-.

Coca has been persecuted from the earliest European arrival in South America

and continues to be to this day as a result of the dangerous and illicit use of its

principal bioactive constituent, cocaine, in many parts of the civilized world. The

misuse of a chemically pure substance should not be confused with the “chewing”

of coca leaves amongst Indians, particularly in the lowland regions, where it

conceivably supplies certain elements lacking in the local diet.

Some of the healthiest and hardest working Indians of the Colombian Amazonia,

the Yukunas, consume enormous amounts of coca leaves daily, but this is not a

problem, as they have time to raise their crops, hunt, fish and supply their food.

Coca chewing in the Andean highlands, by contrast, is a problem of poverty of

the peasant miners and agriculturists who, working daily for overlords, have not

the time to locate or raise enough food to assuage their hunger. (Schultes &

Raffauf 2004: 99)

Mambe, coca leaf powder

26

The interest in the Andean-Amazon tradition produced a tie with the “grandfather

tobacco”, for that reason, some time ago I decided to make use of the tobacco as a

guiding element by the use of the tobacco on gel or ambil, which was made known by

two teams of researchers from the Colombian Coffee Triangle (one of them is the

Escuela de Formación Humana Chakravidya), that are related to the recovery and the

usage of ancestral traditions as a medium for the development of the being. But before

anything else, the usage of the ambil was influenced by Héctor López (uncle from my

mother´s side), who makes use of the tobacco and also is a member of the school I

already mentioned.

During the course of the research on the ancestral knowledge and the musical

development, the ambil and the coca leaf were present in thought, word and action. In

some way, I was based on the inheritance of the Murui Muinane tradition (Uitoto),

which is founded on a cosmogonic compendium extremely complex. The Cacique21

Murui Muinane Hipólito Candre “Kinerai” tells it:

Well then, he works the tobacco, he works the coca;

And once he has his own plants of tobacco and coca,

Now he searches.

He searches, and with that

He gets drunk,

Because it is said that these teachings are in the heart of the buinaima.22

Well then, with that, he keeps mambeing,23

He keeps getting drunk with tobacco.

(Chandre & Echeverri 1996: 247)

Grounded on these Andean- Amazon cosmovisions, I wished to propose a new sonoric

paradigm, integrating elements of nature that are slightly manifested in daily activities.

21 Vocative that the Murui Muinane (Uitotos) use to refer to the leader of the community. 22 Wise man or ancestor. 23 Term used in the Colombian Amazonia. It refers to chewing coca.

27

A leaf that teaches, a tobacco that gets you drunk, would probably give us an

unthinkable beatitude or comfortable musicalities.

I wish to talk about the experience that I had with the tobacco in my visits to Alto and

Bajo Putumayo. During the yagé ceremonies, the tobacco is used from the beginning

of the session until the end of it. In the ceremonial atmosphere, it is believed that

harmful spirits are clouded or confused by the tobacco smoke, working as a protective

element to free spaces from external agents or negative entities. The Taita Alfredo

Juajibioy points out that the tobacco is friend of the yagé and that when he feels that

he can be harmed, he lits his cigarrete and says his prayers in order to protect himself.

The candle protects the yaguecero (A. Juajibioy, personal conversation, August 1st,

2014).The tobacco can also be mixed with other plants, each traditional healer

develops a formula. The grandfather Querubín Queta, a well-known healer of the

Cofán community from Bajo Putumayo, advises to make an incense against the effects

of witchcraft mixing copal (Hymenaea courbaril),tobacco and pulverized flowers of

borrachero 24 (Torres 2006:239)

24 Plant from the family of the Solanaceae also called Floripondio, Toé, Trompeta del Ángel, et al.

28

Macana Borrachero (Brugmansia Suaveolens)

29

Guamuco Borrachero (Brugmansia sanguinea)

There are many references about the usage of tobacco and many other plants

throughout the Amazonian territory. Since the middle of the twentieth century,

researchers, Scientifics and curious people, who were detached from the American

idiosyncrasy started to pay attention to the Andean-Amazon tradition, not only from an

intellectual aspect, but also from the aspect of a spiritual grasping. Therefore, many of

them have turned their lives upside down completely. Jeremy Narby, in his book “The

Cosmic Serpent” describes one of his experiences with an Asháninca healer.25

A man called Sabino appeared with a sick baby in his arms and two Peruvian

cigarettes in his hand. He asked Carlos to cure the child. Carlos lit one of the

cigarettes and drew on it deeply several times. Then he blew smoke on the baby

and started sucking at a precise spot on its belly, spitting out what he said was

the illness. (Narby 1999:28)

25 Indigenous community that inhabits the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, they are also known as Campa

30

For many people and institutions from the West, the tobacco and the coca are harmful

agents, but for the essence of the indigenous people and those who have made use

of these plants without industrializing them, these plants are still conceived benevolent

entities for the human development. From this point of view, I base my artistic

creations, believing that if we let in those -other truths- to our reality, the spirits that

take care of these plants can hold us in our daily life.

Drinking Remedy, Drinking Yagé

The approach to the sacred plant yagé (Banisteriopsis caapi) was through the contact

with traditional healers from the Kamsá community, who started to frequent the area

of the Colombian Coffee Triangle (Caldas, Quindío and Risaralda).Thanks to the

presence of indigenous at the universities, it resulted an interethnic contact that helped

the yagé to be made public in this area since the beginning of the millennium.

(Ronderos 2009:130)

In the year 2008, I had the first encounter with the indigenous ancestral medicine.

Later, after a long and continuous work with the Taita Alfredo Juajibioy, many of the

structures that co-existed in my “reality” have been under transformation. The certainty

and the absolutism that governed my cosmovision were moved from its axis and a

universe of new paradigmatic possibilities was revealed to my mind.

After an uncountable number of meetings with the Taita Alfredo and some other

knowers (indigenous, half-bloods and Latin Americans) my conception of the musical

universe started to morph and the feeling of detachment towards the musicality and

sounds of my surroundings was wider and wider. I started to have intellectual questions

about the academic musical canons that did not gave room for the search of musical

conceptions that were related to my Latin American essence. For this reason, I decided

to abandon the academic conventionalism and threw myself to the search of new

musical sounds and forms, based on the ancestral knowledge, especially on the

Andean-Amazon tradition.

This process is understood as the dialectics between the nature and the cosmos and

what made this process easier was the ingestion of a sacred plant, which was essential

31

for the re-discovery of the inner and external space. Carlos Martínez Sarasola

describes it as if the nature and the cosmos got into and out the person, producing a

communion at a deep and unique level that in the last place, it searches in the bottom

of the soul. (Martínez Sarasola 2004:42)

The ritual of yagé is part of the medicine of the Kamsá people. In their language, it

receives the name of Biaji and within the ceremonial atmosphere it is known as

“drinking remedy”. They refer to this plant as the remedy to ease physical ailments,

mental and spiritual problems, and to make energetic cleanings. It is also regarded as

a protective plant, for the good luck, et al. The ayahuasca or yagé is used throughout

the Amazon Rainforest, it is known with names like—the vine of the soul, the liana of

the death, caapi, natem, daime, oasca, etcetera and it is one of the most used sacred

plants by the Amazon people. In his own words, the Taita Alfredo explains how the

yagé was discovered by the indigenous communities:

This science was an inheritance from our ancestors to the indigenous tribes,

natives before Christopher Columbus...before Christopher Columbus there

wasn’t any paste, injection, there was nothing, so the natives cured themselves

with plants and to distinguish a plant from the other, they had to smell them,

they prepared it and healed themselves.In that way, they discovered the yagé.

(A. Juajibioy, personal conversation, August 1st 2014)

The way the Taita Alfredo describes the usage of the yagé and talks about all the things

related to the yaguecero shamanic knowledge is very particular. He refers to them as

a science. I think this concept is very suitable to define this knowledge, having into

account that the making of the beverage and the training of the person who administers

it have an uncommon methodology from the point of view of the Western science, but

it is not less complex. It is a knowledge that can be basically acquired through the

experience with the rainforest environment and under the guidance of an experienced

healer. Here I identify once more the importance of the oral transmission for the

teaching of this knowledge.

32

Yagé or Ayahuasca. It can be seen a liana that is tangled onto another stem.

33

Yagé flower

Inside the Vine of the Soul

34

After smashing the yagé, the liana is cracked and is ready to be mixed and cooked with the

chacruna.

The scientific community has demystified and classified the employment of this

knowledge as unscientific, reducing it to simple acts of magic or sorcery. Curiously, in

the year 2014, it was carried out the first World Ayahuasca Conference in Ibiza, Spain,

hoping to be a multidisciplinary event with the participation of scientifics, jurists,

professionals, environmentalists and “experts” on the subject, one of them was the

Taita Juan Bautista Agreda Chindoy, who in that same year worked as governor of

The Cabildo Kamëntsá Biyá from Valle del Sibundoy. Through this type of frequent

conventionalism of the Western culture (conferences, symposiums, congresses,

etcetera), we can see how the international community is starting to give room to the

traditions of the indigenous people of the Americas. But in the other hand, in the

Andean-Amazon geographies, without the concern of the fussy intellectualism and

without caring about the beginning of the institutionalization of this medicine in the

Western world, the liana goes on tangling itself in the thickness of the hills and the

35

chacruna goes on with its photosynthesis. In the rainforest and in metropolises near

and far from the Amazon, it is still drunk the remedy that relieves, heals, reconstructs

and makes easier the inner development of the ones who drink this elixir, without the

need of the recognition or certification of the dominant big machines and of the

professional judgment of the “modern man.”

Going back again to the space and time of this knowledge, at the beginning of 2013,

in a walk by his chagra, the Taita Alfredo Juajibioy insists that the trainee of traditional

medicine must study the vegetation and its environment, the same way it is studied at

university, only that the library and the information needed are on the nature. In a new

visit in 2014, he manifests a similar idea again, this time while we were cooking yagé:

…The one who knows, the one that knows how the rainforest is like, knows

about the medicinal plants of the rainforest, because I have a lot of patients without

knowing the name of the plant… Based on yagé one starts to investigate with which

plant the patient is going to be cured, the very same yagé indicates― With this

plant or with these other plants, which are for drinking or having baths, so one

already knows where to find them, one goes, bring the plant and with that it is

cured, you see?....and it has been like that for we who walk in the right side, with

decency and honesty, we do these jobs, that is a very sacred issue, this remedy is

very sacred, this is not something to mock at as the people who take it as a game

do. No…this plant is very sacred and must be respected… (A. Juajibioy, personal

conversation, August 1st 2014)

In relation to the yagé, there are other plants used before, during and after the

ceremony. For example: Black Flatsedge (Cyperus Niger), which is a root commonly

employed by the Taita when making the cleaning26; the Borrachero (Brugmansia Spp),

or Azul Tocto, employed as a purgative. With this plant I had the opportunity of

recollecting, preparing and ingesting the beverage, it guided me towards a process of

purgation that lasted for days.

The shamanic equipment includes a great variety of objects that carry or concentrate

power. The objects vary according to the culture in question (Llamazares 2004:83). It

exists a compendium of elements within the “drinking of remedy” that integrates to the

ceremonial act―plants, quartz crystals, feathers, seeds, essences, et al. in order to

26 It refers to the energetic cleaning on the patient that the traditional healer do by employing different musical instruments or natural elements such as plants, seeds, quartzs, etcetera.

36

work on metaphysical levels. Between these elements, I want to highlight the Wayra

Sacha or Huaira Sacha (wind leaves), which is a bunch of leaves (Olyra latifolia) that

works as a broom which “sweep” the body of the patient and it is rattled at the rhythm

of the singings as a mechanism of cleaning during the ritual of yagé.

At the same time the huiarasacha goes rattling, blowing, cleaning and airing the

space-time-body-spirit, with the singing it goes naming, invoking and calling the

curative virtue (ambíi) of each of the sacred dimensions of Pachamili (Mother-

Cosmos), which are present in the microcosm-body.

It is sung and cleaned over and over again until finding and awakening the

harmonic balance of the ancestral vitality in the body-spirit of the person that has

been cured. (Torres 2007:31)27

The employment of the Huaira Sacha during the ritual has been taken as an example

of the incorporation of a ritual resource to the musical act, connecting both universes

(ritual and musical) and looking forward to make use of the natural resources, builders

of new sonorities.

The Sonoric Praxis in Rituality

The ritual is commonly constituted by the use of musical instruments and the singing,

these elements establish a bridge of communication with the guiding spirits or work as

a vehicle to conduct the being28 to other levels of consciousness. The music that is

experimented in those hierophanic29 moments take another shape, different from the

aesthetic musical conventionalism that we generally see. The ritual music transcend

the aesthetics to display itself in more subtle aspects of the individual, in fact, there is

nothing to explain in a rational view. It is a world of illogicalities (events without a logical

order) founded on the cosmogonic and metaphorical.

27 Translator´s note: All the extracts from this author were translated from Spanish for this text. 28 Understanding the being from an holistic perspective of the body-mind-spirit. 29 Term adapted by Mircea Eliade that defines the manifestation of the sacred in the ordinary daily life or in nature.

37

Going deeper in that other logic of the ancestral knowledge (habitually called

shamanism), Ronny Velázquez affirms that for “the shamanic conception, the first need

is to dominate the sound…” After the acquisition of this ruling force, the curaca or

healer will be able to dominate the other elements, the “shamanic singing and the

execution of the appropriate musical instruments are the medium to transform all their

actions in positivity. (Velázquez 1997:38)30

Through the proposition of a conceptual turning about sounds, we can claim that music

can be a practical tool for the peoples actions (beyond its usage in the shamanic

environment) .By Allowing ourselves to pull the veil of the fixed aesthetics, we would

succeed in finding in this muse abstract geometries31 ( geometric structures of high

order, which are represented in the religious stained glasses, the sunflower, the nautilu,

etcetera) or we would re-encounter some practicability that can work in little explored

levels of the individual. This is not a minor fact, if we accept that the paradigms of the

contemporary world are founded on formal structures that have determined the human

behavior and development, making it difficult to change concepts and reconfigure

patterns. At least, that is one of the biggest limitations that I have found during the re-

discovery process of the sound and the re-signification of my own cosmovision.

I pretend to focus on the singings in the ritual of yagé that are known in the Peruvian

rainforest as ícaros. I wish to talk about this sort of sonoric praxis, not aiming to

intellectualize something that would be pretty ridiculous to reduce to a mental and

discursive level, but with the intention of examining a musical resource used by the

traditional healers who use ayahuasca. In order to approach to the yaguecera sonority,

I wish to quote Rosa Giove, who is a member of Takiwasi (Center for Drug Addiction

and Research on Traditional Medicine) and describes the singing in detail in the

following way:

“The ícaro is a fundamental part in the healing task in the Amazon. It

summarizes the knowledge of the shaman, it constitutes its curative

patrimony, its working tool and the inheritance that is left to the trainee. It is a

30 Translator´s note: All the extracts from this author were translated from Spanish for this text. 31 I want to point out the relation between the knowledge of high order and the knowledge at a practical and rational level, for this I want to quote Robert Lawlor, who makes an accurate description in his book Sacred Geometry: “Geometry as a contemplative practice is personified by an elegant and refined woman, for geometry functions as an intuitive, synthesizing, creative yet exact activity of mind associated with the feminine principle. But when these geometric laws come to be applied in the technology of daily life they are represented by the rational, masculine principle: contemplative geometry is transformed into practical geometry.” (Lawlor 1982:7)

38

vehicle of his energy and its efficiency mostly depends on the training of the

healer through diets, purgatives ingestion and a lifestyle that integrates the

ancestral knowledge…It is said that in those states of consciousness, induced

by the drinking of “teaching plants”, the shamans have listened to the melody,

without volition or reasoning, feeling that the plants impose themselves and in

many times in an unknown language. (Giove 1993)32

After his experience with healers of the Peruvian Amazon, Jeremy Narby says:

“According to the shamans of the entire world, one establishes communication with

spirits via music. For the ayahuasqueros, it is almost inconceivable to enter the world

of spirits and remain silent.” (Narby 1998:68).The singing is the essential element to

activate the ayahuasca. The singing is present since the collection of the plant until the

time of the ceremony. The Taita Alfredo talks about this without going deeper on the

subject: “The same yagé teaches him the singing, there is a lot of singing―Uitoto,

Coreguaje, Cofán, Siona, Macaguaje, Inga…then he chooses, it depends on one´s

concentration when drinking of yagé and there, the singings of the tribes get to him

and he picks up one of those singings…My singing is Siona!” (A. Juajjibioy, personal

conversation, August 1st 2014)

The singing is resignified when it is experimented during the ceremony of yagé. The

result of the union of the singing with the effects of the plants is strengthen in the person

who is participant of this communion. Rosa Giove says: “When perceived in an altered

state of consciousness, the ícaro helps to take in the visions, it removes the subjective

contents from different levels, it guide us in the work of self-exploration and at the same

time is the link with reality.”(Giove 1993). Regarding the value that the word acquires

during the ritual, Severi affirms “The ritual word is as important as the word that

narrates because it is uttered with the same crucial goal, for example for therapeutic

reasons or for fortune telling. A word that instead of narrating, acts. A word that naming,

transforms and reveals. (Severi 2010:44)

During the experience, the rattling of the singing and visions invade the body and

transfigure the mind. “ During the session, the shaman paints the body of the patient

with those images, while he tune his typical ritual singings or “ícaros” to invoke the

protective spirits and succeed in re-establishing the health balance of the patient

(Llamazares 2004:97)

32 Translator´s note: All the extracts from this author were translated from Spanish for this text.

39

Immersed in the Colombian Amazon Basin, with the intention of exploring the

environment of this knowledge, surrounded by the plants that heal, roots that purge

and animals that make company, the Taita Alfredo answers the question about the

utility of the singing:

“To activate the body of somebody or to activate the remedy, to activate the

remedy, I mean to make the conjuring, the remedy is activated by singing and

with a branch called Huaira Sacha…and to heal and to give spiritual strength to

the patient or cure the illnesses or anything odd that the body might have, a

spiritual cleaning is done, there the spiritual strength is needed, the one who

knows, knows how to control his science.” (A. Juajibioy, personal conversation

August 1st 2014)

As a consequence of the ceremonial ritual experience, leaded by the singing and the

execution of musical instruments, my perception of the musical act got new meanings

and the understanding of what is real and “unreal” acquired new nuances. This fact

was the fundamental axis that motivated the beginning of a research on new organic

sonorities related to my own half- blood essence.

To finish the understanding of the sonoric praxis in rituality, the participation in the

Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments and New Technologies33 was a fundamental

stage for the re-signification of the music. The acknowledgement of the relation

between the sonority and the rituals was truly experienced after being part of this

group, and I highlight the collective work as the bedrock for succeeding in getting what

was previously described.

Esferas Andinas and Esferas americanas34

The beginning of the process of musical creation was centered on the examination of

the different ways of executing the violin. I was interested in achieving uncommon

sounds with an outstanding gestural and sonoric nature. The goal was to transcend

the canons learnt in the Conservatory by taking a physical and gestural stance,

33 Orchestra of the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was created and it is conducted by Alejandro Iglesias Rossi, under the conceptual frame of giving the appropriate value to the native instruments of the Americas. 34 Translator´s note: Andean Spheres and Latin American Spheres.

40

adjusted to the reality of the Latin American man, succeeding in mixing the academic

and the popular field.

At first I supported the search on Pythagoras´ s investigations on the monochord, he

is credited with first establishing the relationship between number ratios and sound

frequencies (Lawlor 1982).Pythagoras made measurements with the monochord and

proved that when depressing the midpoint of the string, the resultant was the octave

(1/2), dividing it in two the resultant was the fifth (2/3) and subdividing the string in the

same way, the resultant was a fourth (3/4) (Gaona 2010). Recalling the investigation

on the monochord, I assiduously examined the pinch and the open- stringed harmonics

of the violin, aiming to compose a new sonoric geometry capable of describing one of

the many Latin American realities.

Following the search for new sonorities, based on the harmonics of the violin, I made

special emphasis on the Andean concepts on which I am going to briefly expand:

- Ayni. Defined in English as reciprocity. In the Andean cosmovision, it refers to

the balance and solidarity in giving and receiving between men and between them

and their environment (animals, plants, etcetera.); In where from a naturally

conscious way “I give what I can give and I receive my fair share”. In this way,

there is harmony between the parts that interact with each other. The concept of

Ayni is also found in other Andean models like the minga or minka35 and the barter

(exchange of goods and services).

- Sumak Kawsay or Suma Qamaña. Is a concept that is loosely translated as Good

Living. It belongs to the philosophy of life of the Andean people, it has fundamental

values for the existence such as: complementarity, equilibrium, harmony,

creativity, serenity and duality. It has a spiritual sense with nature and the living

beings, including the balance among the tri-partition of the cosmos―Hanan Pacha

(the upper world), Kay Pacha (The world of the middle, the world of the mankind)

and Uku Pacha (the lower world).

These Andean concepts were the theoretical directives that shaped the musical course

of the work. If these directives had not been experienced at a personal level (through

35 Collective work executed by the indigenous communities as a mechanism for the sustainability of the group. The Taita Alfredo Juajibioy describes it: “…Mote and chica were given to the worker so that he would clean the soil, harvest or anything. At the end of the task he drank chicha and ate the meat with mote or he took the meat wrapped for home.”

41

the participation in rituals, interviews, et al.) they would have stayed back just as

concepts. For that reason, the process also represented the learning and grasping of

new values.

Parallel to the compositional process, the body work contextualized the musical act.

During the period of creation, I explored different body disciplines, some of them were

suggested in the curricula of the Master Degree on Musical Creation and some others

by my own initiative (yoga, contact improvisation), relating the bodywork to the creative

process in order to transcend the paradigm of the purely intellectual musical creation.

The hypothesis of Alejandro Iglesias Rossi36 in which he invites to establish a relation

between the gesture and the music (guided by the martial arts) was vital for the process

of composition. It made me reconsider the way of executing musical instruments into

a way in which the expression of the spirit can succeed in getting involved and

manifested in the musical act.

Contact Improvisation has been one of the tutelary disciplines for the encounter with

the body and its relation with music. The lessons were under the guidance of Cristina

Turdo at the UNA (Universidad Nacional de las Artes, previously called IUNA) in a

University Extension Course and in a Lab of Interdisciplinary Research, which is

coordinated by her.

36 Founder of the Master Degree on Musical Creation, New Technologies and Traditional Arts and conductor of the Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments and New Technologies from the Universidad de Tres de Febrero.

42

Lab improvisation. Year 2012

Contact improvisation outdoors

43

The Four Spheres of the Work- Spherical Movements-

Based on the research previously described about the monochord, I decided to recall

and make use of the sonorities that belong to my reality and assimilate part of the

Andean-Amazon conception to express it on the work. In this way, I decided to name

this compositional process Esferas Andinas, whose goal was to achieve a creation

typical of this region, beyond the musical forms commonly known.

The work does not have a lineal structure, the four movements pretend to stand on its

own, the same way the four edges of the square have a self- sustaining form or the

four edges of the rhombus point to the four cardinal points. Annick de Souzenelle,

based in the kabbalistic conception describes it the following way:

The number 4 is a symbol of stability: four legs give balance to any solid shape;

four walls provide the structure for a house. Beyond these practical examples,

the value of four brings the idea of an enclosed, secret and concealed place.

Whoever stops there will undergo a trial.

All traditions point to this notion of trial linked with the number 4: the practice of

quarantine is one example descended from the ontological law. (Souzenelle

2015:64)

Now, I will describe through the written word, the dynamism that contains each

spherical movement, but before anything -as any other art with transcendental goals-

listening to it will be the best way of grasping its symbolic content.

The first movement called Esferas Andinas,that at the same time is the name of the

whole work, is the genesis that gives power and growth to the rest of the movements.

It represents the first period of time in which many processes of inner transformation

were carried out (based on some proposals of the Master Degree on Musical

Creation).The spheres displayed in the musical moment summarize the

reconsideration of structures and concepts achieved in this process.

44

From a melodic discourse, the following movement, Inicios Esféricos is a calling to the

ancestors, it is the initial place for the encounter with them. The movement is built in a

mysterious atmosphere, where the air is the operating element used to succeed in

meeting the ones who already went through this earth. Quoting the Colombian

musician and researcher Luis Antonio Escobar, it becomes apparent how complex and

necessary is to investigate our culture (mixed race, forgotten, abused, etcetera) and to

meet again the sensed and unknown essence.

Like in other time, now are needed strong batallions that are allocated to

research, armed with faith on our own virtues and especially, on our ancestor’s

virtues, which are also part of what now is the new race of the Americas.

(Escobar 1985)37

Keeping on with the goal of proposing an organic sonority, the third movement, Huaira

-which makes allusion to the element used in the ayahuasca rituals previously

described38. It proposes a sonority similar to the friction of the trunk of the trees and it

was achieved by making friction with the bow over the violin strings. The rhythmical

element is present in order to recall the hypnotic beat that the Taitas or curacas

produce in their rituals with different instruments, and the slight resemblance to the

huayno acts in form and harmony to end up with the ícaro singing.

Finally, the fourth movement Wiñay -that in the Quechua language means eternal or

always in every time- is related to Fredy Chikangana´ s poem. The movement takes

its name and its musical form from the recited nature of that poem. After reading it over

and over again with the purpose of grasping its essence, a synesthetic action was the

precursor for the creation of this last “sphere of sound”. The last melodic movement

returns to a familiar music form (recitative) and to the conventional sound of the rubbed

stringed instruments (violin, viola, etcetera) after going through the three previous

movements of innovative form.

As it was previously mentioned, the poetic words belong to Wiñay Mallki (Fredy

Chikangana.)39 His poem Wiñay was made public through its publication in: Biblioteca

Básica de los Pueblos Indígenas de Colombia: Tomo 7, Ministerio de Cultura. In this

37 Translator´s note: My translation 38 See “The Praxis of Sound.” 39 Poet from the Yanacona community from the South-East of Cauca, Colombia.

45

way, I have intended to include the knowledge and the art of others, aiming to promote

the interdisciplinary in my musical creations by giving a substantial content to the

development of the sounds that I have tried to achieve.

46

Wiñay Roots K‟apay muñamanta urkupikuna Smell of pennyroyal in the mountain

Sincca Nose

Taita cunay ninapaypi Advice of the Taitas at the fire

Shimi Mouth

Caballu manñaman sarak Horses at the edge of the cornfield

Ñawi Eyes

Sipsicay ancha-tutapicuna Whispers in the dark night

Rinri Ears

Shimi sayrimanta kokari Words of tobacco and koka

Yuyal Thinking

Yupijahuapiyupi sachapimanta Footprints over footprints in the forest

Caru-caru llaktayok Strangers

Nima runapa huarmiri Silence of men and women

Huañushca Death

Yahuar pachapura Blood in the soil

Wiñay Roots

Ucju Body

Wiñay Roots

Wiñay Mallki (Fredy Chikangana)

47

This is how the four spheres interact in the musical game. They were created in four

years of investigation, experimentation and development. They emerged from

unconscious inspirations that were expressed as they emerged and I found in these

events a relation with the idea that “the inspiration comes from the unconscious”

(Campbell 1991:71)

The Influence of Knowledge for the Creation of Esferas Andinas

Stimulated by the wish of “Volver a la Maloka”, based on the investigation done in the

Andean-Amazon area, the academic resources provided by the Master Degree in

Musical Creation and the interaction with people who helped to reach that goal; I came

to the conclusion that as an individual, exists a substantial aspect that emerges from

the agricultural. I have clear that my place of growth was not entirely a rural area, but

the fact of having been raised in an agricultural country, inevitably evoke the

idiosyncrasy of that region and I see that many of the sounds achieved in the work

bring childhood memories back.40

There is a fact in the yaguecero shamanic world that has disturbed me. A method for

throwing “small spears” called “chontiar”.This action is related to a magic act that can

even cause death. The Taita Alfredo tells it with his own words: “…this has been a very

envied science, the stronger dominates based on witchcraft, sorcery, based on chonta

se chontea and he can kill (A. Juajibioy, personal conversation, August 1st 2014)

Velázquez affirms that “the tsenzak or poisoned small spear of the Shuaras can also

be sent through the throat, they are capable of making harm from a great distance.The

tsenzaks are spread in the space, the same space in which the sound is spread and

the same space that the spirits of good and evil occupy.” (Velázquez 1997:36).With

this concept of the spreading of sounds and with the certainty that it can be used as a

40 Period lived at the mountainous periphery of a small city (Manizales, Colombia) in the Central Mountain Chain of the Colombian Andes, its characteristics vary from rural to urban.

48

vehicle for a positive work, I have taken this fact about the small spreads as an

essential symbol to give another value to the sonorities41.

The partial view that was centered on music was widened until reaching an holistic

perspective, whose result was the understanding of an interdisciplinary need in the arts

and in my own artistic and personal development. Similar to hundreds of individuals

(Pythagoras, Da Vinci, Nicola Tesla, Hildegard Von Bingen, et al.) who have imbued

the world with their influential contributions based on the interdisciplinarity in

juxtaposition to the contemporary academic reasoning that suggests us to be strictly

specialized in a small portion of the vast universe.

The center as the axis of the individual and the external space

The Western culture mainly understands the center as a concept of external place or

space (urban, social and cultural centers, shopping malls. etcetera) and the center that

integrates the body is almost forgotten. Seeing the relevance that those convergent

external places have in the development of men, I think it is appropriate to set out the

task of meeting the center of the body.

We are hardly educated on the perception and awareness of this physical and subtle

space in us. Here is an explanation of how to find the center of the body: “If we divide

the full height of the human body into the harmonic divisions of the square root of 2,

calling the total height unity, we locate the vital centre corresponding to what the

Japanese call Hara (belly), a subtle physical centre, just below the navel.” (Lawlor

1982: 30)

Finding ourselves in this place (center) known and owned by everybody but inhabited

by a few, I go back to the concept of Hara, center, belly or Tan Tien (known like that in

the Taoism).This place, located in the lower belly, concentrates the major part of

energy of the nerves of the neuro-vegetative system. (Deshimaru 1993:147)

41 Based on the interdisciplinary search on music and the ancestral knowledge that my inner space claims to me, some elements that create a precise conjunction like the idea previously

developed have appeared.

49

During the course of studies of the Master Degree in Musical Creation, New

Technologies and Traditional Arts, the training on martial arts gave me awareness of

the center or Hara. At first, I understood it from a physical aspect and then, as a subtle

energetic center. The strengthening of the lower belly increases the energy or vital

force (also called ki or chi), which has meant and invaluable finding to enrich my

musical performance. Taisen Deshimaru gives an appropriate explanation about the

relation between the execution of a musical instrument and the vital force of the

musician: ““Cuando un pianista, por ejemplo, sabe tocar muy bien el piano, o un

guitarrista la guitarra, es su ki el que termina por tocar, sirviéndose inconscientemente

de la técnica aprendida”.”42 (Deshimaru 1993:147)

I want to highlight the idea of the ki as a reinforcing element for the execution of an

instrument, in my case the violin. The development of the lower belly has meant a

before and after. I wish to share my experience of the revitalization of the center as a

substantial source, not only for the execution of an instrument, but also for the daily

life.

Having been through the experience of awareness and strengthening of the Hara, I

found an analogy related to that part of the body, parallel to my investigation with the

Kamsá community. In their cosmovision, the center of the body is called Wabsbia that

is translated as stomach or belly. This part of the body is of great importance, especially

for women, because they are the ones who give birth. What follows is a story taken

from a meeting with a grandmother of the community:

The grandmothers say that because of the care of the diet, many women have not

suffered from cancer or cysts in the uterus, but now that has been lost. Now most

of the young women don’t want to wrap their bellies because of the cultural change,

so all that is being lost, However, we teach the indigenous girls to take care of

themselves a lot with the diets, to take care a lot in their periods so that the uterus

can be in good conditions. When the uterus is not in good conditions any more,

42 Translator´s note: “When a pianist knows very well how to play the piano, or the guitarist the guitar, it is his ki that finishes playing, servicing itself to the learnt technique.”(My translation)

50

there is an illness called cystitis, the cystitis results from the cold or also because

of those movements in the motorcycles, because all those movements produce

illnesses in the uterus, the wabsbia. (C. Chiquque, personal conversation, July 30th

2014)

The method used to protect the belly is a woven belt of 6 yards long approximately,

called chumbe which is woven by the women of the community. Between the symbols

that are woven, one of the most important is the symbol of the Wabsbia, in the kamsá

language, or Uigsa in the Inga language. It is considered a fundamental space where

life is originated, it is the space where men coexist. It is represented by a rhombus and

constitutes the four cardinal points. According to the Ingana community, when this

place is disintegrated it is the end of life. (Jacanamijoy 1992)

51

Wabsbia (belly)

52

Through the usage of ornaments like bracelets in which this symbol is woven, I have

included these cosmovisions into my everyday life, trying to transcend its decorative

usage to give it a meaningful and operative value, in connection with my musical and

personal interests.

Ticio Escobar gives us an approach about the different functions that the arts

accomplish in the indigenous communities: “From a feathers bracelet it is impossible

to separate its beauty from the magical-propitiatory utility, its social roles and its ritual

mobiles.”43(Escobar 1993:17)

There is an unconscious link between this symbol and the work (the relation between

the edges of the rhombus and the movements of the work).I understand this fact as a

causality from the investigation and the simultaneous musical creation.

To sum up, the work of the center of the body and the understanding that for many

cultures, the existence of a symbolic and physical central axis still prevails (bringing

back again the concept of the Maloka) provoked fundamental changes in the values

and personal ideological structures, projecting new attitudes and new ways of

socializing to the outside.

The Heaven, the Earth and the Path of Men

Going on with the previous issue about the center as a fundamental space, in which I

mainly make reference to the physical center of men, in this chapter I will expand on

the way in which from an external reference, the individual has succeeded in plowing

through the heavens and descending to the underworld through the axis mundi

represented as stairs, ropes, mountains and mainly, the image of the tree of the world.

(Llamazares 2004: 90)

43 Translator ´s note: My translation.

53

In this thesis, I make emphasis on the Maloka as the representative structure of the

cosmos, the fundamental residence that contains the Heaven, the men and the Earth,

and the tri-partition of the universe manifested in a physical and sacred aspect.

This concept of the stratification of the cosmos is claimed by many others cultures and

traditions. For the Taoism, this division is called the Three Treasures of San Bao (the

Heaven, the Earth and the men) that inhabits the human being: spirit or consciousness

(Shen, located in the space between the eyebrows),the sexual energy (Jing, located

in the lower belly)(Chia &Li 1996:36).The Andean cosmovision divides the cosmos in:

the Upper World (Hanan Pacha),the Middle World or the World of the Mankind(Kay

Pacha) and the Lower World or Underworld. (Uku Pacha)

Both examples of the stratification of the cosmos have been presented in this text

thanks to the direct experience. The former was experienced through the practice of

Tai Chi44 and the latter through rituals with Kamsá traditional healers and field visits to

the indigenous communities from Alto and Bajo Putumayo.

The intellectuality that predominates in the Western society has been seen as the

panacea to conquer, the rational view has predominated over the intangible and

metaphysical aspects. Already tired of this parcialization, the West has fixed its eyes

on Eastern philosophies, with quotes like the following, the East gives the West a

knowledge of great importance: “…hay que armonizarse con el cielo y la tierra con el

fin de que el espíritu interno sea completamente libre. Abandonar el egoísmo” 45

(Deshimaru 1993:147).With not too much to say and everything to do, it exists a need

in the Latin American society for being protagonists, truly makers of changes (internal

and external) transcending the role of just idealist thinkers from a more dignified Latin

America for everybody, finding through the action the true emancipation.

Returning to the ontological roots, when Volver a la maloka [returning to the maloka] I

decided to focus my attention on the ancestral knowledge, meeting uncountable times

with traditional healers in different cities of Colombia and the Amazon Basin. I recorded

shamanic practices, which were influenced by celestial entities (like the sun, the moon,

the sky, etcetera) and telluric energies. In a specific example, the traditional healer

44 Practice learnt during the course of the Master Degree in Musical Creation, New Technologies and Traditional Arts. And later on, with teachers like Daniel Brenner (Tai Chi Pai Lin) and Maximiliano Mazzitelli. 45 Translator´s note: “We have to harmonize with the Heaven and the Earth so that the inner spirit will be completely free. To abandon the selfishness.”(My translation)

54

Miguel Mavisoy from Valle del Sibundoy advices to clean the objects with holy water

and to take them out in the damp night during the full moon. I am not interested in

giving details of the techniques, I just want to briefly describe how some cosmovisions

acknowledge the integration of cosmic forces to their daily life, assuming that the

nature self sustains itself through the interdependent link of the multiple entities. Ronny

Velazquez affirms:

The vital energy is understood as somekind of abstract thinking. However, it is

manifested in nature. That energy, according to the aborigin cosmogonic conception

comes from the sun (Tad Ibe for the Kunas) and it is recycled in the living elements of

the same nature: men, plants, animals, mountains, rocks, waters, etc. (Velázquez

1996:27)

From this point of view, we see that every element of the cosmos is of fundamental

relevance, the view widens and contributes new notions, different from the

anthropocentrism established by the worldwide ideological system to which we have

been subjected in our academic, social and familiar education. This view results in

intrinsic changes for the needs that the contemporary world is screaming for. Needs

and changes that in the first place have happened at a personal level.

If it wasn’t because of the sun that fecundates the soil and that soil that let herself to

be penetrated or because of the celestial forces that nourish men and the soil that

holds them, our existence would have another nuance. The fact of understanding

ourselves as being held by something superior to us would seem a cosmogonic

concept assimilated by the mankind, but our behavior-actions- is extremely different

from the universal logics mentioned.

Conclusions

Since the beginning of this research, acknowledged before anything as the beginning

of a truly internal process, it happened multiple things with unexpected results, things

that were devastating for the structural inflexibility (mental and physical) in me, but

revitalizing for the paradigmatic change suggested.

55

This is how the internal structures founded on the Western academic conventionalism,

the catholic religious dogmatism, and the social and cultural models were rethought,

based on the ancestral traditions of Latin America. Understanding and assuming

paradigms like the fair trade, similar to the Andean concept of ayni and new meanings

of a social and cosmic geometric structure based on the circularity, instead of the

pyramid structures that predominate in the pedagogic curricula and therefore, in our

rational ideas of the distribution of the society and the world.

The incursion into the ancestral knowledge represented a deep transformation,

summarized in the musical manifestation. The think-say-make triad took a significant

relevance.

…the music, as the last instance to spill the content of our being through the musical

language…concluding the think-say-and make triad.

Essential Knowledge at the Service of All

It exists a knowledge which was transmitted from generation to generation in almost

all the traditions of the world. Much of that knowledge is being forgotten. It is said that

in the Amazon Basin, there are grandfathers who stops to transmit their knowledge

because they don’t have anybody to transfer their teachings. The knowledge is

inherited from father to son and it is given to the son the day the father is dying (Miguel

Mavisoy, personal communication July 29th 2014).In this case, Mavisoy refers to the

ancestral knowledge transmitted to the traditional healers.

Besides that unselfish knowledge, it exists an essential one for life, only that we are

not educated or too talked about it. Miguel Mavisoy says to his children “siéntese

bonito”, meaning the acquisition of a physical attitude and an inner disposition suitable

to the moment. It is a common phrase between the families of the Kamsá community.

The knowledge to which I am referring to is a functional knowledge for the resolution

of daily problems, like how to use basic tools-with the same ability the modern man

takes the wheel or uses his communication devices-,prepare food or the performance

in music, dancing and arts in general.

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About this, the “Agenda Indigena Amazónica: Volviendo a la Maloka,” states that “as

knowers of the forest, we don’t make that differentiation or specialization. We grew up

in the Amazonia without much differentiation between us, that’s why we know all the

things necessary for living” (COICA 2005:58).Following this model of multidisciplinary

learning, I have been involved in the discovery of new abilities, integrative and

stimulating for the cognitive and corporal development that shows the need for new

pedagogical methods for the strengthening of the individual and the collective.

Acknowledgements

I feel enormously thanked for the Great Force that vibrates in all the present and that

has allowed through so many teachers, humans and non-humans, to awake and

illuminate so many of the capacities and virtues on which now I am counting on.

Thanked for the love of my family that has held me from the distance and the nearness,

to the grandmother, to the grandparents and elderly people that by the use of their

wisdom show us the path so that we transform into men worthy of living under the

shining and tireless sun and over the lovely Mother Earth.

I would like to acknowledge the Kamsá community for humbly sharing their knowledge,

not only with me, but also with all the ones, who in a friendly way approach to their

valleys and meadows.

Thanks/Aspae

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barrios, Silvia (2004). Canto indígena: El sonido sagrado. In A. Llamazares & C. Martínez Sarasola (Eds.), El lenguaje de los dioses. Arte, chamanismo y cosmovisión indígena en Sudamérica .[The Language of the Gods. Art, Shamanism and Indigenous Worldview in South America] Buenos Aires, Editorial Biblos. Campbell, Joseph (1991).The Power of Myth. Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. New York. Anchor Books.

Chandre, Hipólito & Echeverri, Juan Alvaro (1993). Tabaco frío, Coca dulce. Retrieved from http://www.bdigital.unal.edu.co/2277/3/9789584445230.pdf

(1996) Cool Tobacco, Sweet Coca: Teachings of an Indian Sage from the Colombian

Amazon. London: Themis Books.

Chia, Mantak & Li, Juan (2005).The Inner Structure of Tai Chi. Rochester, Vermont:

Destiny Books.

COICA (2005). Agenda Indígena Amazónica: Volviendo a la Maloca, Quito.

Colombres, Adolfo (2005). Teoría transcultural del arte. Hacia un pensamiento visual independiente. Buenos Aires, Ediciones del Sol.

Deshimaru, Taisen (1993). Zen y Artes Marciales. Barcelona. Editorial Humanitas.

Escobar, Luis Antonio (1985). La Música Precolombina. “Reconquista de América por los Americanos.” Retrieved from http://www.banrepcultural.org/blaavirtual/antropologia/musicprec/musicprec4.htm Escobar, Ticio (1993). La belleza de los otros. Asunción, Centro de documentación e investigaciones de arte popular e indígena del centro de artes visuales. Museo del Barro. RP Ediciones. Fiori, Lavinia & Monsalve, Juan (1995). El baile del muñeco. Retrieved from http://www.banrepcultural.org/blaavirtual/folclor/baile/vida.htm#1 Gaona, Saúl (2010).Musical Consonance and Dissonance. Asunción Giove, Rosa (1993). Acerca del “ICARO” o Canto Shamanico. Revista Takiwasi, No. 2, 7 – 27.Retrieved from http://www.takiwasi.com/docs/arti_esp/rev_02_art_01.pdf Jacanamijoy, Benjamin (1992). CHUMBE. Arte Inga. Undergraduate dissertation to obtain the Graphic Design Degree. Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Santafé de Bogotá, Colombia. Lawlor, Robert (1982).Sacred Geometry. Philosophy and Practice. London. Thames & Hudson.

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Llamazares, Ana Maria & Martínez Sarasola, Carlos (Eds). (2004). El lenguaje de los dioses. Arte, chamanismo y cosmovisión indígena en Sudamérica. [The Language of the Gods. Art, Shamanism and Indigenous Worldview in South America] Buenos Aires, Editorial Biblos. Llamazares, Ana Maria (2011) Del reloj a la flor de loto. Crisis contemporánea y cambio de paradigmas. [From the Clock to the Lotus Blossom. Contemporary Crisis and Paradigms Shift] Buenos Aires, Del Nuevo Extremo. (2012). Repensar la oralidad desde la antropología de la consciencia. (ms) In: Material for the Introduction to the Indo-American Studies lessons. Master Degree in Cultural Diversity (UNTREF). Available in the library. (2013) “Occidente herido. El potencial sanador del chamanismo en el mundo contemporáneo”. [Wounded West. The Healing Potential of Shamanism in

Contemporary World ]. In: Revista Diversidad Intercultural #7 Año 4, pp. 67-104.

IDEIA-UNTREF, Buenos Aires. Martínez Sarasola, Carlos (2010) De manera sagrada y en celebración. Identidad, cosmovisión y espiritualidad en los pueblos indígenas. Buenos Aires, Biblos. Narby, Jeremy (1998).The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. New York: Penguin Group. Prandi, Reginaldo (2001). Mitologia dos Orixás. Sao Paulo. Companhia das Letras. Ronderos, Jorge (2009). Rituales del yagé en zonas urbanas del Eje Cafetero. Revista Cultura y Droga. Universidad de Caldas, No.16, 119 – 140.

Schultes, Richard Evans & Raffauf, Robert (2004). Vine of the Soul: Medicine Men,

Their Plants and Rituals in the Colombian Amazonia. U.S. Synergetic Press.

Severi, Carlo. (2010). El sendero y la voz. Una antropología de la memoria. Buenos Aires, SB. Souzenelle, Annick de (2015).The Body and Its Symbolism. A Kabbalistic Approach. Wheaton, IL. Quest Books. Torres, William (2006). Aztralia: Virtudes del misterio en el cáliz de colores. Revista Cultura y Droga. Universidad de Caldas, No.13, 229 – 249. Torres, William (2007). Huairasacha. Revista Cultura y Droga. Universidad de Caldas, No. 12, 27 - 34. Velázquez, Ronny (1997). Shamanismo Sudamericano. “La concepción cosmogónica del cuerpo en algunas culturas aborígenes”. Pag. 36. 1st Edition – Buenos Aires: Ediciones Continente Wilber, Ken (Ed.). (2001) Eye to Eye. Quest for the New Paradigm. Boston. Shambala.

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APPENDIXES

60

APPENDIX 1

INTERVIEW WITH ALFREDO JUAJIBIOY

(The following interview took place in the outskirts of Mocoa, Putumayo, an hour of

walk from la vereda San José del Pepino. During the interview a yagé was being

refined, August 1st 2014.)

Alfredo Juajibioy (AJ): “This science is an inheritance…from our ancestors to the

indigenous tribes, natives before Christopher Columbus, because before Christopher

Columbus there wasn´t any paste, injection, there was nothing, so the natives cured

themselves with plants and to distinguish a plant from the other they had to smell them,

they prepared the plant and healed themselves, in that way they discovered the yagé.

There are 24 types of yagé, it is a discovery from the natives…The descendants have

been discovering these plants until today, it is a chain, this is not something cheap, this

is very delicate and this is a very envied science. Before, this was very sacred, not

anyone submits oneself to be a traditional healer; because one must have a lot of

responsibility, at the same time that this has been a very envied science, the stronger

dominates based on withcraft, sorcery, based on chonta46, se chontea and he can kill.

Andrés Arias (AA): ¿What is “chontear”?

(AJ): Hurt somebody, kill the other…

From this plant, from so much drinking yagé there has been people who have turned

into tigers, they leave to the rainforest, they no longer like making love with women,

and they go to seek the tigress. There are traditional healers who have transformed

into tigers…These people leave to the rainforest. Women, what for? In the old times,

the ones who had the goal of turning into tigers didn’t want women because a woman

with the period is a poison for the Yaguecero, not even the devil is capable of standing

that. For that reason, the traditional healer, the one who is a good healer, when his

woman is going to have her period, the healer leaves or the woman have a hut for her

own, where she has a plate, a spoon, a cup and there someone brings her

food…because the period is something bad, a woman with the period cannot be given

yagé, she is not admitted in the session of yagé; it’s a crime, a woman with the period

cannot enter in a church; it’s a crime; to enter a holy field or to a funeral….and she is

banned from witnessing the session of yagé…and like this many other things. At least

the one who knows, the one who knows how the rainforest is like, knows the medicinal

plants of the rainforest because I have cured a lot of patients without knowing the name

of the plant …Based on yagé one starts to investigate with which plant this patient is

going to be cured, the very same yagé indicates ―with this plant, with these others

are for drinking or for having baths, so one already knows where to find them. You

see?... and it has been like that for we who walk in the right side, with decency and

honesty, we do these jobs, that is a very sacred issue, this remedy is very sacred, this

46 Translator´s note: Spanish name for peach palm.

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is not something to mock at as the people who take it as a game do. No…this plant is

very sacred and must be respected…

AA: From whom you learnt?

AJ: This is an inheritance…I inherited this science from my grandfather. If it had been

up to me I wouldn’t have wanted to choose this charge, this is something very delicate.

AA: It was your lot?

AJ: Of course…I suffered! I starved, everything…to half know…the real truth, one dies

from old and doesn’t get to discover everything about the science of the rainforest.

That´s hard!

AA: How your grandfather transmitted the knowledge to you?

AJ: Before dying he sent me to get the plants that are used to prepare the drinking of

yagé, so in the middle of this, when his time of death was getting closer he asked me

to bring a certain plant to prepare a calabash for drinking yagé, I prepared it…then he

asked if there was some of the drinking, me very obedient, I prepared it and brought it

to him…He said to me: “Money I don´t have, land neither, the land was already divided

among your mom and your aunts, the rest is for your grandmother, so I´m leaving you

this inheritance, for you to proceed as I have been doing with the humanity, without

any interest, your interest will be to cure people” and that’s what I have been doing.

AA: Which language did he speak?

AJ: Kamsá

So, he had been close friend of the deceased Taita Egidio, when my grandfather died

I went to him, I told him about my grandfather´ s death and stayed drinking yagé with

him and I was told what my grandfather told me. I drank yagé for 6 months with the

deceased Taita Egidio Peña…and then arrived the Taita Egidio Piranga (Uitoto), he

fell in love with me, as a dad, he told me: “see Mister, I would like you to…” He invited

me to his home. I asked Taita Egidio Peña about that because he knew well and I was

on his hands. He answered me that if I wanted to go, I should go, that he was a good

taita, an excellent one, but that I had to be careful. If there was something that wasn’t

right, to listen and don’t commit the mistake of doing something bad, the rest of the

things, commended to God and Holy Marie, do them, this guy is good people….And it

was like that, there I stayed for almost 4 months and was the only Taita from whom I

learnt the 24 kinds of yagé.

I drank yagé with my grandfather, with the deceased Taita Egidio Peña, Egidio Piranga,

Juan Ascencio Castillo, Silverio Becerra, with the Taita Salvador Moreno, Javier Jojoa,

with the Taita Diego Tisoy, with Taita Ángel Satiaca, he was the founder of the el Tigre

town. Every time he went to work he found a tiger and he killed and killed tigers, that´s

why he named it El Tigre.

I also drank with the deceased Taita Cornelio Cuaje, Brasilian Cacique, with Juan Alejo

Tisoy Reyes in the Alto Putumayo. In San Andrés with Taita Álvaro Quinchoa.

I drank for almost 18 months with the Taita Alejo Tisoy Reyes. Monthly I drank 25

leaves of Munchira Borrachero. A night before the full moon the 25 leaves were left in

62

the damp night air and the other day they were chewed. I drank water and I got lost. I

used to go where I didn’t hear any noise, next to a palmetto plant, with a blanket,

standing cool weather and frost. In that way, I became harder. For that reason I´m not

delicate, I can drink with a group of men and women in the same room. Previously,

after not drinking enough Munchira Borrachero, men and women had to be separated.

There has to be a calabash for women and another for men. That is the law…I a

stepping into the 70 years old, in June 29th it was my 69th birthday, but to this moment

I feel good.

AA: How many years you have been working with the medicine?

AJ: Drinking I half remember….and 39 years drinking yagé and healing.

AA: Which is the function of music in the ritual of yagé?

AJ: To be a healer the very same plant is the one who teaches the science, the power

is given by the Cacique, the Taita, he makes the plant the crown of science and right

away the same yagé teaches him the singing, there is a lot of singing―Uitoto,

Coreguaje, Cofan, Siona, Macaguaje, Inga…then he chooses, it depends on the

concentration when drinking yagé and there the singings of the tribes get to him until

he chooses one of those singings….My singing is Siona!

AA: What is the use of the singing?

AJ: To activate the body of somebody or to activate the remedy, to activate the

remedy, I mean to make the conjuring, the remedy is activated by singing and with a

branch called Huaira Sacha…and to heal and to give spiritual strength to the patient

or cure the illnesses or anything odd that the body might have, a spiritual cleaning is

done, there the spiritual strength is needed, the one who knows, knows how to control

his science…the one who knows, knows. It is not like the one who is learning…like this

is the law of the yagueceros. (He says it stirring the contents of the pot)

AA: For what the tobacco is used for?

AJ: It is good to smoke it, the candle protects the yaguecero. The tobacco is friend of

the yagé…there are people like me who don’t like tobacco, but it is the law of the people

who taught me, so I have to have tobacco in the hand. When one feels that somebody

wants to bother, one lits a cigarrete and casts a spell for protection, sacred pray to

Saint Michael, Saint Gabriel or Saint Raphael or anyone related to Jesus, beg to Jesus

for the protection of God and that all the bad intentions don’t reach us…that is!!

AA: What would be called the traditional healer in the Kamsá language?

AJ: Taita yaguecero

AA: You live time in a different way?

AJ: That doesn’t matter, for me everything is the same.

AA: You use the intention in the job that you do?

AJ: Of course, mi intention is ask God for permission and then one commends oneself

to God, Holy Marie and to the spell. One focuses on what need to know or see, it

depends on how many patients there are. One focuses in the patients and their needs,

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which remedy they need, if any of them suffer from any weird disease, and there one

examines the case…One also focuses his attention on seeing in which way the patient

can be helped. There are people that don’t do it because they want to be cured, they

just do it to bother, they drink the remedy to test the Taita…because of that they are

punished, the same remedy punishes them so that they don’t mock at the person who

administer this sacred medicine.

AA: Did you learn from some book?

AJ: I can´t read or write, analphabet indian. (laughting!!)

AA: So the nature teaches you?

AJ: Yes, with the science of the remedy I´ve walked a lot, I have walked the entire

length of Colombia, departments, little towns, corners, part of Ecuador, Brasil, I have

walked habits, dialects, a little bit of everything. In that aspect, I don’t complain, only I

have to thank God because he is the only one who allows, gives life; everything that

one asks for to God, God gives, when one asks for something with faith, God gives…

AA: The language is very important?

AJ: Logical…nowadays there are many learners, at least for giving yagé anybody

administers it. The people has to know with who they are going to drink because

somebody irresponsible in case that somebody dies on them, they don’t care. There is

the key. One has to be at the beck and call of the drinkers of remedy, at the beck and

call of one´s life, the life of the others.

AA: The traditional healers have some kind of identity papers?

AJ: Of course, in 1998 we had a Traditional Healers Seminar in Santiago (Valle del

Sibundoy), two months later we moved to Mocoa, eight days of seminar. Then, every

year we repeated that…I have an old document, the permission that was given to all

the healers who were there, asking to all the authorities not to bother the natives, but

to help us…They wanted to take this medicine away from the indigenous during the

administration of Uribe, and there the indigenous community, we got together and

asked them: from where the Western medicine comes from? If all the pastes and

injections come from the plants, and that they tells us with what we, the indigenous

healed ourselves when the Western drugs didn’t exist. In that way, we raised up and

then, problem solved. So, we could go on working with the medicine, because that is

the law of the indigenous community, the habits, all the indigenous habits, for example

the carnival (Carnaval del Perdón), the food, the mote, the meat, the chica…In the old

times when there wasn’t any aguardiente they got drunk with chicha and sugar cane

juice or raw cane sugar, the cane was ground and to drink, because the sugar cane

juice is the father of the aguardiente.

AA: The idea of community is already lost?

AJ: Nowadays not so much, In the Alto Putumayo (Valle del Sibundoy) still exists.

Sometimes the mingas are seen, the cuadrillas are already lost.

AA: What were the “cuadrillas”?

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AJ: It was a group of workers, men and women who took turns to work. They were

managed by the Caporal or Capataz. They worked on tasks in 3 yards wide and 65

yards long, that was a task and it was the same for everyone. Every eight days it was

checked on the list and a person was assigned a day.

Mingas or Chicamingas were used, where mote and chica were given to the worker so

that he would clean the soil, harvest or anything. At the end of the task he drank his

chicha and ate meat with mote or he took the meat wrapped for home.

Nowadays that tradition is not so seen, the habits are changing, regarding dressing,

just a few people dress in cusma and pacha.47

AA: The communities from Bajo and Alto Putumayo are different?

AJ: The indigenous from Alto Putumayo dress with two cusmas and the sayo48 and

the communities of Medio and Bajo Putumayo dress only with trousers and cusma,

neckerchief and chaquira if they have.

I don’t lose the habit of wearing my cusma when I´m going to drink remedy…

AA: The elderly are respected in the community?

AJ: Of course, the indigenous governor who leads the people, in Sibundoy the

governor of the Kamsá people, has the responsibility of leading the indigenous people

in tasks, such as the cleaning of the park, the maintenance of bridges, the cleaning of

the roads. In the old times, people met on Sundays and during the service the governor

spoke, he asked for volunteers for a job, women were asked to make chicha for the

workers. At 1 o´ clock in the morning the horn sounded (churiar) to invite the people to

work, at 7 o´ clock the people were having breakfast and were ready to work.

When shovels didn’t exist the cows shoulder blades were used, they were sharpen and

tied to a stick. That was the tool in those times.

That is what can I remember, I about to turn 70 years old and I have many memories

from the old times, habits, everything.

AA: That knowledge is being lost?

AJ: No, imagine, nowadays the first thing the governor do is to see if there is money,

they fight to be governors and in the old times they didn’t. No, nobody used to fight to

be a governor because it was a difficult position, in that time nobody helped him with a

cow for the people, the cow had to be from the governor,he had to provide food to

everyone in carnival times…

The chicha is very important, without chicha is not a party chicha of corn with sugar

cane juice or raw cane sugar, but the chicha cannot be missing…Where there there is

an indigenous there is chicha!...In Caquetá, when I was 17 years old, the habit of the

47 The cusma is a short-sleeved robe below the knees, which is used by men. The pacha is a feminine dressing, described as a wooden black skirt adjusted to the waist with a chumbe (traditional woven belt) 48 Ruana made of long vertical threads worn by men.

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indigenous in there was that when someone arrived, the first thing he was given was

chicha, wherever he didn’t drink chicha he wasn’t feed, because if he didn’t drink chicha

he couldn’t eat. Nowadays no, the one who doesn’t like it, just doesn’t like it or is asked,

in the old times no…the one who doesn’t drink chicha is because he doesn’t like

anything.

AA: Is there any basic knowledge for the living?

AJ: First, the indigenous keeps his chagra where he has plantains, sweet manioc,

corn, yams. Then, he has to have his house (made of Iraca leaves) and the floor made

of peach-palm covered with crushed Guadua bamboo mats…He has to have his

shotgun, blowpipe that we call bodoquera, his fishnet. If he doesn’t have anything of

that, he is worthless, he is not made for this world. When one goes to visit the girls, the

first thing they ask is: Do you know how to use a shotgun? Do you know how to use

the fishnet? Do you know how to shoot arrows to the long- tailed monkeys?

AA: What do you use to poison the arrows of the “bodoquera”?

AJ: That´s cooked, the roots of the tress are chopped, skin of trees, buds and it is

cooked where there is a casa de congas, a candle is light next to it. When it starts

boiling the casa lights up, then the mud sauce- pan consumes itself and it is strained,

then is placed on fire again until it turns like honey, then a bit is spread in the arrow.

The part that is poisoned is marked with a knife and it is dried with a candle, when it

is already dry and toasted it is ready….The native used to live from the hunting and

the fish obtained from his fishnet.

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APPENDIX 2

INTERVIEW WITH CLEMENTINA CHICUNQUE

(Wednesday July 30th 2014)

“When the mother eats heavy meals, the baby has reflux, the mother must drink milk

with water. If the mother starts drinking aguapanela with cinnamon, the babies bottom

gets dry…We have discovered that the woman that has a good diet will have good

health; the controlled diets avoid problems during the menopause. The loss of control

of the diet provokes the hot flushes, headaches, the cooling of the body or desperation.

The grandmothers say that because of the care of the diet, many women have not

suffered from cancer or cysts in the uterus, but now that has been lost. Now most of

the young women don’t want to wrap their bellies because of the cultural change, so

all that is being lost. However, we teach the indigenous girls to take care of themselves

a lot with the diets, to take care a lot in their periods so that the uterus can be in good

conditions. When the uterus is not in good conditions any more, there is an illness

called cystitis, the cystitis results from the cold or also because of those movements in

the motorcycles, because all those movements produce illnesses in the uterus, the

wabsbia.”(Laughting!)

Answer to the question about the relevance of the Moon

“The community works with the moon, even to cut a plant for the use of yagé, for

example, during the first quarter moon you cannot drink; so, in the women the moon is

had in account, in animals too…Before full moon girls are born, after the full moon the

boys are born. Sometimes the Western doctors say that there is still a week or fifteen

days to wait and sometimes they are born before or later, and the doctors don’t have

into account these things. However in the community we have them into account.

When children are born, here some works have been done …when the child has a

year is starting to walk and during that time we use the full moon, so their little feet are

washed from the knees downwards to make his joints strong so that he has security

when walking and to the girls we do the same thing, so that their little feet are strong.

So, see this is because of the moon, not at any time…the moon is very important, for

peoples life too…In the Kamsá community the moon is kept in mind for woods cutting.

For example, to make a house the wood cannot be cut during the first quarter moon.

Otherwise, some little animals, the weevil, appears in the wood and damage it all over,

so there are those beliefs about in which time of the year they appear and in which

time of the year they damage the wood…

About the Chumbe (traditional woven belt)

The chumbe is used to wrap the belly and wear the dress (women)

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The chumbe is woven by women in the loom.

In this chumbe of 15 pairs, we can see the sun (shinye),a bunch, a worm, a

bear…According to the number of pairs, the figures are bigger.

Andrés Arias (AA): This weaving. Would be a way of weaving the thinking?

Clementina Chicunque(CCh): Each figure has its own history because the ancient

people made the patterns according to the way they looked at the nature, based on

that they weaved. For that reason, the children are taught history, they are taught all

about the chagra and the medicinal plants.

I made an investigation about the wraps to know their function. So, many grandmothers

told us that the function of this wrap was very important because it held part of the

women´s belly and in the old times, the community wore their dressings and the baby

was held in the wrap, so the newborn baby didn’t get cold, stomachache, because the

baby was always wrapped up and protected with the chumbe. Then, the chumbe was

used to wrap the babies from feet to shoulders, well tied up. The Western world told

the ancient people that it was no necessary to tie up the babies, because that didn’t

awake the skills of the hands and that they couldn´t move with their feet tied up, but

the Kamsá community tied them up because they said that when the child made efforts

to get out the wrap by moving their feet, their joints joined together in a better way. So

it has much meaning.

AA: Did you inherit any knowledge?

CCh: Yes, I work with medicinal plants, especially in relation to children, I like healing

children, to guide the young people to use this wrap to make the children´ s life better

because that has been completely lost.

AA: The Latin Americans are welcomed to this knowledge?

CCh: The settler likes this. The same indigenous reject it. It is as if the settlers would

like to be indigenous and the indigenous to be settlers.

***

The figures in the chumbe have a special meaning, for example there is an element

which was used for harvesting, a basket.

Another element is [water and soil]…In the Kamsá community each figure woven in

the chumbe was taken from the nature, like the rhombus which represents the belly or

wabsbia in Kamsá language. We also find the Sheep, which is an element that appears

in the nature in the shape of a munchira (a specie from the borrachero) in white color.

When this element appeared in the trees, the community learnt that it was the time for

sowing corn, when that little Sheep (munchiro borrachero) turns black it becomes

dangerous for the plant itself.

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There is another pattern called Ramo, the plant is in the nature and is the ramo, it can

also be the ribs of an animal. Each one of the figures woven in the chumbe have its

meaning, that ´ s why we explain to the children their meaning.

There is a pattern called the Bear, which is a tale. In the weaving it is described the

story of a living bear that in the times of the carnival, he appeared and broke into the

houses taking women to the mountains(that’s what we were told); in another figure it

is described the dead bear.

These are figures from the nature that were born from the indigenous mind…see this

one that is a worm, they are like bending, they form the Earth and feed the

Nature…There are also creations of people. There is another figure that represents

the worm and according the number of the pairs the figure is bigger.

There is a figure of the wings of an animal, for example hen wings, that is the way

people expressed themselves…

A figure that people considers the sun…

AA: This knowledge is taught to children?

CCh: Where we work is a school,and it is where all the community of indigenous

children study.

AA: Is the school bilingual (Spanish/Kamsá)?

CCh: Bilingual

In there we teach the arts, the traditional medicine, the medicinal plants and all about

the harvesting of the medicinal plants that the Kamsá community knows. The children

learn each one of the little figures, for example in Preschool, the children learn the

colors. In first grade, they learn to tie, they learn to cross the threads and start

assembling a small woven belt, but without patterns because each part of the chumbe

is a pattern and it has to be exact to make it because if one thread is lost the pattern

don’t come out, it is like Maths, its exact!

AA: The point is to help their minds and development?

CCh: Right,see all what the chumbe has,the mind has it, so since little kids the

children learn the pairs, two by two, one minus, two minus, all that is

progressively taught to the child.The combination of colors,the meaning of the

colors.

There is another pattern that resembles the sun, in Kamsá is called the Shinye.49

AA: the wabsbia is related to the sun?

CCH: No, wabsbia is the belly and shinye is the sun.

In the wraps with many pairs big figures can be seen…

49 Shinye is the figure of an empty rhombus with a point in the middle, different from the wabsbia which is a full rhombus.

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APPENDIX 3

Text from the book Tabaco frío, coca dulce [Cool Tobacco, Sweet Coca.] In the

words of the Cacique Hipólito Chandre “Kinerai”.

How We Were Formed by the Word of Tobacco and Coca

Entonces pues aunque de esta manera existen buenas enseñanzas, esas enseñanzas están en el corazón del buinaima50

Y, ¿de qué manera las vamos a sacar? Entonces, como se dice que el buinaima las tiene,

el que prepara buen tabaco, el que prepara coca estudia ese punto.

¿Cuántas palabras buenas tiene el buinaima? – él dice así.

Verdaderamente el buinaima tiene la buena Palabra, tiene Palabra

fría, tiene Palabra dulce, tiene aliento de vida, tiene aliento para despertarnos, tiene aliento de tranquilidad.

Por eso se dice, cuando un joven por primera vez mambea coca y prepara tabaco, él lo prepara poniendo cuidado y, solo, él habla con el papá.

Entonces, “yo quiero saber todas las cosas que el buinaima tiene en su corazón”, él dice, “yo quiero saber todas las oraciones de vida que el buinaima tiene en su corazón”.

Entonces el papá le dice: “si usted se sienta, “si usted vela, “usted va a sentir”.

“Si usted vive bien”, él le dice, “usted va a aprender”.

50 buinaima, hombre sabio.

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Entonces

“es verdad”, el joven dice. “Hay que sembrar tabaco”, el papá le dice,

“hay que sembrar coca”, le dice, “solo”, le dice, “la verdadera palabra le estoy contando”, le dice.

Entonces el que por primera vez mambea coca en verdad cumple con eso porque quiere aprender sobre eso.

Entonces trabaja el tabaco, trabaja la coca y ya teniendo mata de coca y mata de tabaco comienza a buscar.

El busca, y con eso51

se embriaga – porque se dice que en el corazón del buinaima hay.

Entonces con eso él viene mambeando, él viene embriagándose con tabaco. El viene viene viene – en verdad –

cuando en eso, ya nace la propia mata de coca, nace la propia mata de yuca dulce, nace la propia mata de maní. 52

Y ya con esa Palabra él va a cuidar – al lado de la primera mata de coca que nace

él prueba oraciones, al lado de la primera mata tabaco que nace él prueba oraciones, al lado de la primera mata de yuca dulce que nace, también

prueba oraciones, al lado de la mata de maní

él prueba oraciones. Para descubrir las enfermedades,

para descubrir la enfermedad del tabaco, para descubrir la enfermedad de la coca, para descubrir la enfermedad de la yuca dulce, para descubrir la enfermedad del maní para mirar en eso.

Entonces él va buscando,

cuida su mata de coca, cuida su mata de tabaco, cuida su mata de yuca dulce, cuida su mata de maní – él quiere saber

51 Con tabaco y coca 52 Al decir “propia” mata de coca, de yuca dulce y de maní, se está refiriendo también a que nacen criaturas (hombres y mujeres).

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sobre eso. De esta forma

en verdad él va aprendiendo, en verdad escucha oración de tabaco, escucha oración de coca, escucha oración de yuca dulce, escucha oración de maní.

De la misma manera estas cosas mi papá me las contó a mi.

Y así yo fui buscando, y fui velando al lado de las criaturas.

Pues esta palabra que he buscado es para contarla de esta forma,

son, buenas enseñanzas para saber sobre la enfermedad de la criatura de uno, para saber sobre la mugre de la criatura de uno, para saber sobre el mal en que cae la criatura de uno, para saber sobre la parálisis de la criatura de uno.

Uno busca esos puntos Para aprender bien. Porque la propia palabra es así la estoy contando,

y podrá parecer que esto lo cuento así no más53

Esta palabra la saqué de donde no se puede sacar54, y hoy así la cuento.

Y el que no sabe dirá que son mentiras; dirá así, pero esto tiene poder, tiene palabra, tiene aliento – son Cosas de poder.

Podría parecer que esa persona55

entiende, que esa persona es un brujo; pero no es ningún brujo, no entiende – simplemente es palabra del que cumple las dietas de coca, es palabra del que cumple las dietas de tabaco.

Estas cosas que estamos contando no son ideas del corazón de otro anciano; lo de otros ancianos lo conocen

53 Es decir, como algo que se le ocurrió en ese momento o que no más escuchó de otra persona. 54 “ñenídinomona”, literalmente “de donde es prohibido”. 55 “esa persona” es aquel que dice que esto son mentiras.

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los jóvenes de ellos. Asimismo, ésta es la palabra que yo cumplí

cuando aprendí el trabajo de la coca, esa palabra que escuché estoy contando.

Así para después poderle contar a los niños cuando nazcan.

Entonces, ya mis hijos nacieron, ya se criaron como jóvenes, ya se están volviendo viejos.

Entonces, ya de ellos nacieron otros niños. Ya a ellos los he visto, y ya hay quien me diga “abuelo”.

Entonces esa palabra ya está hoy para contar, la palabra que hoy se escucha es la palabra con que he venido mambeando coca.

“Es cierto lo que contaba mi abuelo” ellos dirán después, “yo conocí a mi abuelo, “y entonces mi abuelo hablaba así”

ellos dirán. Los ancianos de otra parte cuentan otras cosas,

pero sobre eso yo no sé. Y así, esta palabra

parece que se cuenta sólo por jugar. Estas cosas sólo están en el corazón del que cumple,

en el corazón del que no cumple no están – están pero solo de palabra.

Así está lo que he venido buscando, ¿acaso el que no más mambea56

las tiene?, no las tiene. Así pues ésta no es conversación del que viene de tradición de baile,

aunque es lo mismo, sólo habla así el que trabaja la coca mirando por sus hijos.

Y así, no se puede decir que es lo mismo. Sólo ésta es la palabra que recibí, el aliento que recibí, aunque parezca que es otra cosa. De la misma manera está

la parte de la mamá, la palabra de cultivar la yuca dulce es tranquila,

la palabra de preparar la yuca dulce es dulce, la palabra de maní es tranquila, la palabra de yuca brava es tranquila, la palabra de daledale es tranquila, la palabra de ñame es tranquila,

56 Es decir, mambea pero no trabaja la coca.

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la palabra de ají es tranquila – porque ella lo trabaja con ese corazón, aunque es difícil se vuelve dulce. Y la mamá ya de ahí entonces

hace crecer a la hija, y ya ella se vuelve una joven.

Ya viendo eso, con ánimo, fuertemente sopla, fuertemente tiempla.

De esta manera está la parte de la mamá. Y así, de ahí, cuando se hace oración

se dice, “papá”, y se dice, “mamá –

“ellos vienen haciéndonos crecer, “vienen haciendo aumentar nuestro aire de vida”.

De esta manera está la propia Hoja del papá, y la propia Hoja de la mamá.

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APPENDIX 4

Sheet music of the work Esferas Andinas. It has 4 movements named in the

following way:

1st movement―Esferas Andinas

2nd movement―Inicios Esféricos

3rd movement―Huaira

4th movement―Wiñay

Note: For the execution of the work it is suggested to use a microphone in each

instrument, applying a moderate reverb effect on each of them.