Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Forest
by Bruce Albert, anthropologist
For those who grew up in the silence of the forest, the city noise is painful.
Davi Kopenawa
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3. See William Bale, Cultural Forests of the Amazon: A Historical Ecology of People
and Their Landscapes (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2013); Charles R.
Clement et al., The Domestication of Amazonia Before European Conquest,
in Proceedings of the Royal Society 282, no. 12 (August 2015).
4. See Russell Alan Mittermeir et al., Wilderness and Biodiversity Conservation,
in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100, no.18 (September 2, 2003).
5. Seeds and fruit fallen from trees or directly foraged in the tree canopy.
The layer of fallen leaves on the ground is poor in nutrients.
6. See Leslie E. Sponsel, Amazon Ecology and Adaptation, in Annual Review of
Anthropology 15 (October 15, 1986).
7. See Kenneth J. Feeley and Miles R. Silman, Extinction Risks of Amazonian Plant
Species, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 30 (July 28, 2009).
Yaro p he:
The Voices of the Forest
15. From a conversation between Davi Kopenawa, Bruce Albert, and Stephen
Vitiello, Watoriki, January 2003.
16. From conversations between Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, Watoriki, 1997.
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TH E PO LYG L O T FO R EST
a soloist. The tune is first sung out alone by this soloist, who is
called a song tree (amo hi). To heighten the resonance of the
singers voice, the mouth is placed in the crook of the right arm,
which is bent, with the hand placed on the shoulder. Immediately
afterwards, the rest of the group takes up the song in unison
which, as the euphoria increases, is often put to the test by
bursts of laughter or the mimicry of mischievous youths.
The amo p consist of very short musical phrases,
certain parts of which are rhythmically repeated. Exchanged by
singers during the reahu, they circulate between allied groups over
vast distances within the Yanomami territory. They are highly
popular tunes whose content is generally made up of brief
descriptions of movements and sounds observed in the forest
(animals, fruits, breezes, streams), similar to free-form haiku,
supported by a simple melodic line:
Keakeamuu keakeamuu a-! (twice) Wixa xina a ka keakeamuu
keakeamuu a-! [It goes up and down, up and down! The
tail of the black saki monkey goes up and down!]
Reiki reiki k-! (twice) Mra maki uxuhu a ka reiki reiki
k-! [They hang, they hang! The ripe fruits of the
Dacryodes burseraceas tree hang, hang!]20
The origin of these songs is attributed to Yrixiamari a,
the mythical ancestor of the cocoa thrush. Commonly heard
along the riverbanks, where the males flock together in the
evening to sing in concert, the cocoa thrushs melodious warble
consists of a set of alternating musical phrases. According to
the myth, Yrixiamari a unexpectedly arrived one day at a reahu
celebration given by female toads and was so horrified by their
ugly croaking that he ended up teaching them his own way of
singing. However, the amo p songs themselves, which are never
attributed to human authors, are said to come from distant song
trees(amo hi ki) that were created by the demiurge Omama on the
edges of the urihi a forest-land, with each tree corresponding to
one of the regional Yanomami languages.
Yanomami shamans see these vocalizing trees in the form
of huge trunks adorned with dazzling white down and covered
with vibrant mouths that let out an endless stream of harmonious
songs. As Davi Kopenawa further explains, the amo p songs that
are struck up during reahu festivities are images of the amo hi ki
trees melodies. The guests who like them keep them in their chests
20. The two examples that follow come from the Rio Catrimani region and date
back to the 1970s. A recent CD produced by the Yanomami association Hutukara
contains twenty of these songs, which are transcribed and translated: Reahu he.
Cantos da festa yanomami.
so they can sing them later, during the feasts they hold in their own
homes. This is how they spread from house to house.21
Learning the songs of the xapiri helper spirits is the alpha and
omega of the initiation process for every Yanomami shaman:
If we try hard to answer the spirits, the images of the
yrixiama a thrush and of the re hi song tree quickly
come down to help us. They lend us their throats and
reinforce our tongues. This way, the words of the
xapiris song rapidly increase within us just as in a tape
recorder. We drink the ykoana22 with our eyes fixed on
their presentation dance and lose all fear of singing
before the people of our house.23
The songs that the xapiri spirits sing via the intermediary
of their shaman fathers have the same name, amo p, as those
of the herii choruses and are believed to have originated from
the same song trees. It was said in the past that the spirits
had to go and cut the branches of the song trees in order to
obtain their melodies,24 and because of this the harmonicas that
the first nap p (foreigners, whites) to visit the region gave to
the Yanomami were also called song trees. More recently, this
expression (along with yrixia kiki, cocoa thrush objects) was
also applied to tape recorders. The description of how the xapiri
get their songs follows the same semantic shift:
The spirits of the yrixiama a thrush and the ayokora
a caciquebut also those of the sitipari si and taritari
axi birdsare the first to accumulate these songs in
big sakosi baskets. They gather them one by one with
invisible things similar to the white peoples tape
recorders. Yet there are so many of them that they
can never come to the end of them! Among these bird
spirits, those of the yrixiama a thrush are really the
songs fathers-in-law, their true masters.25
The birds that are mentioned here are all, like the
cocoa thrush, outstanding vocalists. However, this distinguishing
quality is actually due less to their songs themselves than to
these birds astonishing ability for mimicry. Among them, the
21. Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky, p.59. The song trees are
sometimes also referred to as yrixiama hi ki, cocoa thrush trees or by the shamanic
name, re hi ki.
22. Hallucinogenic powder.
23. Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky, p.90 (for a general
description of the shamanic initiation process, see chap. 5).
24. See chap.4 of Maria-Ins Smiljanics thesis, O corpo csmico: O xamanismo
entre os Yanomae do Alto Toototobi (Brasilia: University of Brasilia, 1999).
25. Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky, p.58.
p:
Yaro p hwaiwii
The Origin of Animal
Languages
34. The concept of utup a (pl. utupa p) refers, among other things, to the bodily
image of every human or nonhuman as a vital identity principle, as well as
to the original ontological form of every existing being from the primordial
time. Thus, as a component of the person, it is also conceived as a sort of inner
remnant of this primordial ontological form.
BY BRUCE A LBE RT
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TH E PO LYG L O T FO R EST
the hollow of a tree, and the other ancestor animals kill him by
crushing him with a huge rock. They then smear their bodies
with his blood, his brains, and his bile in order to acquire the
distinctive designs and colors that are found in their feathers
and coats (this is also the origin of the present-day practice of
human body painting):
Then, after they had finished, they wanted to start
talking in their own language. At that time the forest was
still new and raw, and it smelled very good. The game
people gathered together in large groups and some of
them, who were becoming macaws, began to say:
Those of us who are here will try out our words first!
But how are we going to talk? No! We mustnt ask
ourselves that! Were going to talk in macaw! We will
make ourselves understood like this: !
The others answered them:
Yes! Go ahead, you try first!
Are our words beautiful like that?
Yes, theyre beautiful!
Very good! Then lets all talk like this! !
They immediately shouted out joyfully: Hi! w w w
wooo! and flew off in noisy flocks to the tops of the
trees, which is where they have been feeding ever since.40
This same discussion was then repeated by many other
groups/species of ancestors from the primordial time who, having
each become game, then took off to settle in the different forest
habitats where they live today. The Yanomami thus consider
animal vocalizations to be linguistic forms equivalent to those of
human people (yanomae th p), and the terms used to describe
their forms of communication are often the same as those used
to describe human communication (conversations, ceremonial
dialogues, songs, lamentations). Moreover, describing the biophony
of the forest by putting animal conversations into sound in the
form of a mixture of onomatopoetic sequences and human words
is also a common narrative device in Yanomami stories about the
forest, such as those that describe, for example, the rich diversity of
animal calls and songs that gradually come to life at dawn.
39. Opossum is a famous character in Claude Levi-Strausss Mythologiques and it
would be interesting to analyze his rather surprising presence in this type of myth.
The opossum is a small marsupial, solitary, nocturnal, and omnivorous, known for
its unpleasant smell and poor hunting skills. It has a long, hairless tail, its fur is a
mix of dull yellow and black, all of which gives it, according to Buffon, an ugly
look. Opossums rival is often associated with the flavorful and much-loved honey
of the yamanama naki (Scaptotrigona sp.) bees.
40. Story told by Lourival Yanomami to Bruce Albert, recorded by Stephen
Vitiello, Watoriki, January 2003.
B Y B R U CE ALB ER T
Dzanga-Sangha
by Bernie
Krause
NTIL THE EARLY 2000S, THE DZANGA-SANGHA RAINFOREST, LOCATED IN THE SOUTHERNMOST PART OF THE CENTRAL
AFRICAN REPUBLIC, FEATURED SOME OF THE RICHEST, DENSEST, AND MOST BEAUTIFUL BIOPHONIES ON THE
PLANET, WITH THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF ORGANISMS OF EVERY TYPE REPRESENTED. In the past two decades,
however, incessant logging, mining, and the poaching of signature animals for protein and economic resources (ivory)
have transformed the biome. This plundering has had a profound negative impact not only on wildlife, but also on human
groups, such as the Babenzl Pygmies, or the BaAka, who have lived there, more or less peacefully and in balance
with their environment, for millennia.
Recorded by Louis Sarno in 1994, this soundscape, realized in December 2004, represents the remote Dzanga-Sangha
bai, a marsh-like environment. This spot has, in the past, been frequented for most of the year by forest elephants that
gather there to bathe and partake of the salt minerals present in the bai. They can be heard splashing and showering throughout much of the sequence. There
are also many species of birds like Hadada ibis and African Grey parrots (and nearly 400 other species), western gorillas, and a wide variety of other creatures.
Situated just three degrees north of the equator, sunrise and sunset occur very quickly, literally in a matter of minutes. One moment it is completely dark; the
next, the sun has risen. This, too, is articulated in the soundscape: one moment just a few insects; the next, with the first light, a biophonic symphony.
A weak central government, lack of respect and support for the BaAka, and the absence of protection for both wild and human life has allowed for some of
the worlds most devastating acts of brutality and poaching to occur, especially to the elephant herds present in this example. Most of the elephant family
members have now been slaughtered, the ivory sold off to the illegal trade in Asia and the United States (second only to China in the volume of ivory sold)
where the lust for this illicit product remains virtually unchecked as of this writing, while the lives and culture of the BaAka have been profoundly disrupted,
perhaps irreversibly.
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