I didnt know folks said only eat what your trying to ally or learn the icaros of, Interesting, but yes I was under the impression garlic was a big no no

The Shipibo can ‘listen’ to a
song or chant by looking at the
designs – and inversely, paint a
pattern by listening to a song or
music.

The Shipiba paint, for example, a
large ceremonial ceramic pot
known as a mahuetá. The pot is
nearly five feet high and with a
diameter of about three feet.
Neither Shipibo tribe member can
see what the other is painting , yet
both whistle the same song.
When they finish both sides of
the complex geometric pattern,
they are identical and match each
side perfectly.

It is commonly known in literature about ayawaska singing, that the singers claim to ‘receive the songs from the spirits’. However, by analyzing a broad corpus of recorded performances by different medicos, one will be aware that actually the musical structures and basic lyrics are transmitted from father to son, of from teacher to student. It was not yet recognised that ‘a song’ in Western Amazonian ontologies is not defined by its musical and textual struc- ture as in Western understanding (where most ‘songs’ are written down and therefore fixed in structure). A ‘song’ is defined by its actual performance, and every rendering of similar (musical or textual) structures is another ‘song’. Consequently, it is not the structure, which is transmitted from the spirits, but the form of the actual performance: additionally uttered unique lyrics phrases and most importantly the performance style. The applied voice mask defines pitch, intonation, timbre, tempo, and accentuation. A musical structure, ob- viously a ‘Real Human song’, is therefore rendered in the way the respective non- humans sing. Voice masks include for example a nasal singing style, high tempo, or on the contrary, a grave voice with throat-generated roughness. The most common mask is a high falsetto voice, with or without nasalization. The ‘bril- liant voice’ (wirish) indicates current contact with powerful non-humans or super-humans (like the chaikoni jonibo or the Inka).

CONCLUSION

When I had recently started fieldworking I was surprised to encounter only very few difficulties when asking indigenous people to record their songs. Contrary to all my expectations, people were eager to have their voices recorded, even when performing presumably secret magic songs, in explorative settings as well as during current rituals. When I returned to the singers and their communities with tapes and edited CDs, they were highly appreciated and listened to some- times enthusiastically, if possible via the village’s loudspeaker.
I noticed that among the Shipibo, a broad category of song topics could be called itiki ikμ (sung about singing). Many songs about other specific topics were preceded or concluded with some phrases of itiki ikμ when performed in an explorative setting in front of my microphone. I was particularly surprised that this was not done among inexperienced singers, but mainly by renowned and highly experienced ones. It seems that they cared very much about what hap- pened to their voice:

Excerpt from an itiki ikμ song (lines 76–85) performed by Roberto Dμvila Barbarμn at Sinuya river, 2005.


makinaninbiboxonje enkaya bibokin
jana rebon bibokin je pino jana rebonbi makexonbokin
yamin ewan makekin jakaya boai
jawen jeman boai abaanon yoikin
joi jakon bixonki je
Themachinereceivesit,

Translation:

(like) I receive it myself,
(like I) receive it at the tip of the tongue,
at the tip of the hummingbird’s tongue.
(In the same way as I) make it resound well the great metal makes it resound,
(the metal) carries (the voice) itself away
it carries (the voice) to his home country and there, they will talk about
receiving this very good voice/song.

I translated biti as “receive” in the whole passage in order to underline the parallel process marked by the singer who was also a healer, when choosing the same word for describing how he receives songs from non-human beings during samμ ‘diets’ and rituals and how my DAT-recorder received his own very good song. He also is concerned about the song’s fate: he predicts that after carrying it to my home country, me and my fellow ethnomusicologists will talk about how I received the song, which proved entirely correct. Predictions ranged from such easily imaginable situations to the imagination that I will earn a lot of “round brilliant metal” (which was not yet fulfilled), and also addressed some more precise details of my fieldwork’s effects:

Excerpt from an itiki ikμ song (lines 22–27) performed by Antonia Ahuanari Medina in Paococha, 2004.

ramakaya ixonban
non joi bixonki
jaribi banexon
chiní aniaibo
chiní aniaibaonki
jakaya ninkanon

Translation;

Right now I am going to sing
and our voice/song (the researcher)
received (he will also) leave here (with us),
(so that) the youngest ones,
the youngest ones while growing
can listen to this very (voice/song).

However, although the machine ‘receives’ the voice or song, and it’s re- production may serve for research presentations, earning some coins, or edu- cating children, recorded magical songs do not work. Why?
I have shown in this chapter, that profound analysis of indigenous singing styles, singing contexts, and song lyrics can shed new light on concepts known in anthropology (animism, mimesis, perspectivism). The anthropological theories in general rely much on analyzing mythology and other narratives, on kinship relations, warfare, eating and being eaten, and most of all on visual descriptions and clues. Therefore, techniques like ‘existing charged with power’ (speaking), ‘using the spirits’ language’ (singing), or ‘establishing performative ontological connections’ (naming in song) have hitherto been treated peripherically at most. But analyzing the audible helps us to encounter elaborate models (like yointi) which allow for magical action and manipulation.
I repeat what I said in the beginning: the term ‘magical’ I have to apply because there is no scientific measure available that could grasp the sub- stantiality of voice. For indigenous Shipibo people, this does not pose a problem, and they do not perceive their voices’ effect as magical, but as something logi- cally embedded within their ontology. Vice versa, for example, for Westerners it is logical that substances contained in certain medicaments are received like keys in a lock by enzymes produced in the human body, and therefore are effective—a concept absolutely absurd for indigenous people who therefore perceive the effectiveness of these medicaments as something ‘magical’.
A portrait photograph—this is even fairly obvious to Westerners—does not contain the whole physicality of the depicted person. In the same way, a re- cording does not contain the substantiality of sounds, or of voices. The recording may carry the voice away and conserve it for the younger generation, but it is an image of the voice, like a photograph. In both cases, also the image carries meaning and a certain magical potentiality implicit to the mimetic faculty of image-producing machinery.
The image or recording would be again a tool for magical actions or manipulations. Often, for instance in love magic, a photo- graph of the one to conquer is positioned on an altar, for example, or soaked in a prepared perfume, or whatsoever. Anyway, it is a mimetic object but not an agent. A recorded voice is definitely not apt to reproduce the original magical effects of koxonti, yointi or naikiti by being played.
When considering these techniques, it should be clear by now why recordings of magical songs do not work properly. The koxonti recording does not simultaneously think the proper lyrics when played. A CD player’s existence is not ‘heightened’ when singing.
The singer has to be a person (human or non-human) to be able to musically socialize with non-humans whose properties are then transmitted. When a CD player reproduces nasal falsetto sound, no listener will mistake the machine with a shape-shifted healer who embodies a tree-person apt to cure an illness. Like the physical body escapes from being captured by a camera’s photon ingestion, the substance of voice which is responsible for its magical potential is not by any means affected by a microphone’s registration of periodic air pressure change.
Maybe, this substantiality of voices—and of sound in general—hitherto unacknowledged in naturalism, results at the one hand in effective techniques of voice-based magic in indigenous societies, and similarly, on the other hand, in this great and well known difference between a live concert and a CD recording in Western societies. Although a recording can be touching and emotionally moving, it does not work properly, as music in live performance works.