Related Papers
Time to Listen – Decolonising Hearing and Knowing for an Auditory Anthropology in a More-than-Human World
Time to Listen – Introduction: Current Challenges in Musicology and Anthropology
2024 •
Bernd Brabec
This is the introductory chapter of the volume submitted as “habilitation” at Universität Innsbruck. It gives some definitions and ideas about ethnomusicology, auditory anthropology, and musicology, describes the scope of the volume, and relates three aspects of decolonising hearing and knowing in the context of the volume’s chapters and the author’s work.
Creation and Creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America. Anthropological Perspectives
How to Charge a Voice with Power? Transmuting Nonhuman Creativity into Vocal Creations in the Western Amazon (2023)
2023 •
Bernd Brabec
Indigenous conceptions of the world often state that “our” human world is only an appearance of a more “real” world of mythical and powerful beings. Therefore, creativity in this chapter is conceived as originating from this “more real” realm of spirits, and consequently has to be brought into the human world by specific techniques, by ritual vocal creations. In the beginning of this paper, properties of the sonic domain and specifically of the voice are examined. In particular, the localization and functions of the voice in the dualism of interiority and physicality are of interest, in order to find out, how ritual and also everyday creation of new vocal forms or songs can be conceptualized for Western Amazonian indigenous people, with examples from Shipibo-Konibo traditions and innovations. Here, the focus will lie on the functions of the voice, and how the human voice can be enhanced, or “charged with power” for more effective singing or uttering. Among the Shipibo, a sophisticated system of using the voice and sounds is in place, constituting an important factor in the construction of Indigenous ontologies, ranging from everyday speech to skillful singing in ritual contexts. The rule-sets of controlled transformation and of controlled vocalizing (e.g. in voice masking for powerful singing) affect and recreate each other, and can be understood as a Deleuzian abstract machine that in turn facilitates creativity among non-human beings addressed through transformation. Therefore, the study of the voice reveals further insights into the creation of realities in the Western Amazon.
Sonic Substances and Silent Sounds: an Auditory Anthropology of Ritual Songs (2015)
Bernd Brabec
In Western Amazonian indigenous and mestizo medical concepts, substances play a great role. In order for a substance to be efficient, a ritual or medical specialist should sing a song or whistle a melody towards the remedy. The song is then ‘contained’ in the remedy. The song may be for instructing, negotiating with, or repulsing non-human persons, like animals, spirits, or ancestors. Magical singing is also effective by singing directly to a client. Specialists can establish performative ontological linkages between human and non-human persons. By singing such linkages into being, the singer inscribes the non-human’s qualities in the human client’s body, very much like when ingesting a substance. The singers’ voices are understood as a substance that remains in the body. The same applies if the song was sung or whistled onto a remedy or a tobacco cigarette. These phenomena allow for a deeper investigation into indigenous conceptualisations of the sonic and of what can be heard and understood by whom. Finally, these findings shed more light on local concepts of the structure of the world within which we, and the spirits, live.
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology
Resocializing recordings: Collaborative archiving and curating of sound as an agent of knowledge transfer (with Matthias Lewy, 2023)
2023 •
Matthias Lewy, Bernd Brabec
[resumen en español abajo] The authors discuss their methodologies for creating and relistening to recordings in collaboration with Indigenous People in Peru and Venezuela and contextualize them within the discourse about overcoming power structures that shape divides between the Global North and South, in both urban and rural trajectories, and in Western and Indigenous knowledges. When it comes to giving back or sharing sound recordings, we suggest the term resocialization rather than restitution or repatriation. In Indigenous lifeworlds, sound works much differently than in modern conceptualizations of music as art or entertainment. Indigenous theories of sound complement frameworks of copyright, which are still mainly based on modern views of human creativity. Working in archives and exhibitions, we seek collaboration with Indigenous experts when archiving, publishing, displaying, or playing recordings. We show how Indigenous and European specialists can foster eye-level bilateral knowledge transfer by fruitfully cocurating sound and multimedia installations in exhibition contexts. Enmarcados en el discurso sobre la superación de las estructuras de poder que dan forma a las brechas entre el Norte y el Sur globales, entre las trayectorias urbanas y rurales, y entre los saberes occidentales e indígenas; los autores estudian las metodologías de creación y reescucha de grabaciones en colaboración con indígenas de Perú y Venezuela. Cuando se trata de restituir o compartir grabaciones sonoras, sugerimos utilizar el término “resocialización” en vez de “restitución” o “repatriación”. En los mundos de vida indígenas, el sonido funciona de forma muy diferente a las conceptualizaciones modernas de la música como arte o entretenimiento. Las teorías indígenas sobre el sonido complementan los marcos de derechos de autor, que siguen basándose principalmente en los puntos de vista modernos sobre la creatividad humana. Por ello, al trabajar en archivos y exposiciones, buscamos la colaboración de expertos indígenas a la hora de archivar, publicar, mostrar o reproducir grabaciones. Mostramos cómo las instalaciones sonoras y de multimedia en exposiciones artísticas pueden ser comisariadas conjuntamente por especialistas indígenas y europeos, fomentando así la transferencia bilateral de los conocimientos.
Introduction: Considering Music, Humans, and Non-humans (2013, with Anthony Seeger)
2013 •
Bernd Brabec, Anthony Seeger
The Human and Non-human in Lowland South American Indigenous Music, ed. 2013. Ethnomusicology Forum Vol. 22(3). Full Issue.
2013 •
Bernd Brabec, Jonathan Hill, Acácio Piedade
Research on music was almost neglected during the history of the anthropology of Lowland South American indigenous societies. This may be due to their difficult accessibility and lack of infrastructure in former research, as well as due to the different focus of researchers. However, the area is now thriving, because many anthropologists and ethnomusicologists have recognised the central role music performance plays in ritual, specifically when ritual action involves non-human agency. The role of animals, plants or spirits in Lowland South American cosmologies has been studied intensely during the last decades, and laid way for the theories of perspectivism and new animism. The authors show how music is used in cosmologies where communication between humans and non-humans is paramount. Further on, they suggest that the sonic domain can help in explaining many indigenous narratives about transformations and non-human agency. 1. Introduction: Considering Music, Humans, and Non-humans . By Bernd Brabec de Mori & Anthony Seeger 2. Apùap World Hearing Revisited: Talking with ‘Animals’, ‘Spirits’ and other Beings, and Listening to the Apparently Inaudible. By Rafael José de Menezes Bastos 3. Flutes, Songs and Dreams: Cycles of Creation and Musical Performance among the Wauja of the Upper Xingu (Brazil) . By Acácio Tadeu de Camargo Piedade 4. Instruments of Power: Musicalising the Other in Lowland South America . By Jonathan D. Hill 5. Shipibo Laughing Songs and the Transformative Faculty: Performing or Becoming the Other. By Bernd Brabec de Mori 6. Focusing Perspectives and Establishing Boundaries and Power: Why the Suyá/ Kïsêdjê Sing for the Whites in the Twenty-first Century. By Anthony Seeger
Singing the Sonic Substance
Julio Lugon
With the conceptual content in mind I would reason on a small selection of songs obtained from Brabec’s field-recordings, archived in the Phonogrammarchive of Vienna.
Silent Substances of Sound
Julio Lugon
I would like to think that every now and then we human animals hear and listen unrecognizable signs of sound, sometimes explaining those just by thinking that is something generated far away on space, or even explaining this phenomenon to ourselves as something product of our imagination. In any case, these assumptions had been a great matter of study to scholars in many different areas including psychological scientists, acousticians, neurobiologists or artists. In this exercise I would like to centre my interests on the works of ethnomusicologist Bernd Brabec de Mori about the Shipibo-Konibo people´s understanding of sound; this indigenous group uses sound to heal (or damage) among other applications, but the sound here is not only understood as energy waves travelling trough the air (or another medium), but more explained as a powerful influential substance, which sometimes could also be silent. Lastly we would experiment composing and analysing a silent piece of music.
Non-humans in Indigenous South America - Ethnographies of Indigenous Cosmologies, Rituals and Songs
The Inkas Still Exist in the Ucayali Valley - What We Can Learn from Songs (2019)
2019 •
Bernd Brabec
Anyone who stays in the Western Amazon lowlands for a while will be confronted with a multitude of disturbing experiences: indigenous or mestizo people tell stories that sound rather mythical and unbelievable to moderns, though people insist on their literal truth. Furthermore, one may witness situations where indigenous explanations seem fairly logical while applying what one has learned during his or her socialisation in the so-called West becomes increasingly difficult. Considering this, it appears that what many local people hold as literal truth is difficult to be proven – or falsified – by the common means of scientific documentation and reproduction. This kind of truth seems to be located on an ontological level that is different from, or only in parts overlaps with, the ontology of pragmatic life that is undoubtedly shared by indigenous people and their visitors.
Shipibo Laughing Songs and the Transformative Faculty: Performing or Becoming the Other (2013)
Bernd Brabec
