The Position of Music in Culture
(a) With the Fuegians today we can distinguish between sacred and profane songs. The Yamana themselves contrast songs sung merely for pleasure - pasannas- with all other kinds. But it may be doubted whether originally there have been such songs without deeper significance. In the first place it is worth noting that the profane songs are quite overshadowed by the ceremonial ones, apparently they are sung much less frequently and are in general less appreciated It is hardly due to mere hazard that so few pasanna have been recorded; the only older author who enumerates different kinds of songs (Th. Bridges), does not mention pasanna. The fact that the melodies of just these songs (examples 25-27) bear such strong European characteristics, clearly testify that they must be younger and alien to the original Yamana culture.
(b) Generally, even play songs of which the Yamana possess a few (but of which we have no phonographic records ) are considered profane. But even games have always been suspected to derive from serious activities and to have lost their original significance by and by. This is above all true of the games of adult, which look remarkably like -sacred- dances, whether the participants lay one hand upon the shoulder of the nearest other one and, forming a narrow chain, take rhythmical side-steps or, holding hands, form a slowly revolving circle, or whether they hop back and forth on one foot, a "game" which easily may have derived from a bird pantomime. In all probability children's games should be looked at the same way. One of them is a pantomime of rowing, accompanied by song, just like in the pantomimes of the adults. It has not been possible to ascertain whether songs are sung when canoeing in reality. (It seems most unlikely that the swing, unknown in the rest of America, should be an original feature of Yamana culture).
(c) The presumed transition from ceremonial toe profane customs may even be studied at the animal dances and animal songs, most of which are only enacted in connection with youth initiations, while some of them serve general entertainment. It is probably this kind Th. Bridges refers to under the name of jakus, songs sung for general pleasure and bearing names like "West Wind", "Northern Sky" and even more often of different birds. Bridges who knew nothing of the youth initiation says that they are not supposed to mean anything; but every song is connected with "some vague superstition" about the origin of all the things bequeathed from father to son! Every one of the Halakwulup songs belongs to animal pantomimes too, with the sole cxception of ' fetching water" (H. 32), the magic meaning of which one might conjecture but can not be certain of without closer data.
(d) With the Fuegians we cannot even find help in the texts of the songs: they consist without exception of "meaningless syllables". But there again one might put the question: were they meaningless from the beginning, or have they only lost meaning? The theory which makes development start from a singsong without words and claims that particularly primitive peoples have such "textless" songs, overlooks a series of facts which make it very improbable that such a state of things ever existed. Above all, one would expect that such meaningless vocalizations should be left to the pleasure of the singer, to be changed at will from singer to singer, from one occasion to another. As a matter of fact the opposite is the case: the "meaningless" texts are preserved to the letter and handed down together with the melody just as if they did have a meaning! Furthermore one would expect that the texts with a meaning appearing as a novelty upon the next stage of development should be of less importance than the melody, more subject to variations and to being passed on from one kind to another (the melody being entrusted with the sole meaning) and that the kinds should be typical and easy to distinguish according to the aims of the singing. But again we find just the opposite: in primitive -and even in more recent- cultures the text is of superior importance, within certain limits of formation and of local styles the melodies are to a great extent subject to changes and the rhythm of the different stanzas is adapted to the text, it is not -or only to a small degree- melody, but text that defines the kind. On the other hand there are a great number of perfectly reliable proofs of that - and how - the meaning of texts can grow obsolete. Often the songs are taken over from neighbours and passed on although the language is not understood. Thus .A. W. Howitt in 1861 found "meaningless" songs with the Australian tribe of the Narrinyeri and 1880 with another tribe the comprehensible original of the same songs. The Papua of the Murray Islands in Torres Straits have taken over all their older songs with the cults from the Western group of islands, with a language they barely, if at all, understood; and even more recent profane songs which they pretend to have invented themselves have texts in this old (and no doubt decayed) language of ceremony. Thus in every case of meaningless songtexts it will be more likely to suppose that their meaning no longer exists than not yet, particularly so when, as with the Fuegians - and just the same with the Tehuelche all songtexts are incomprehensible from beginning to end. Really meaningless vocalizations are usually restricted to certain kinds as yodling songs which are a reasonable consequence of imitating the overblowing of pipes - or to certain parts of the stanzas, like the refrain.
The above reflections will find support in circumstances still prevailing with the Fuegians: while the canoe-faring tribes do not have any texts left with a graspable meaning, they are still found with the Selk'nam in certain instances. Thus at the initiation of boys the women before the ritual of washing and painting the bodies of the novices sing: ša wrekán = scrape off the dirt, make clean; and, these preparations over: kat e hápen yahá = dry the body, [the dirt is] gone.(24)
(e) The initiation of youth has here been amalgamated with the mask plays, which probably do not belong to the original cultural property of the Selk'nam to the great kloketen festival, while the Yamana have kept the mask festival (kina) - taken over from the Selk'nam - completely separate from the youth initiation (ciexáus).
Every one of the spirits, respectively demons, represented is characterised through a special mask and body painting but even more by gait and movement, by its own call and song. According to the annotations of Gusinde there can be no doubt that it is not the melody, which does not differ from that of other kinds, but prevailingly if not exclusively the manner of delivery that characterizes. For representing phenomenona beyond and above the natural the acoustic mask is just as important as the optical (cf. even ).
Although women play a more passive part during the kloketen, yet they have a few songs to sing during the time of the festival - and this is the only occasion when they do sing. In the first days they strike up a song at night and towards dawn in order to hasten the return of daylight (examples nos. 43-44). During the whole festival which lasts many months the women have the daily duty to soothe the furious feminine spirit of the earth, xalpen, with songs.
(f) An even greater importance than in pantomimes, song has in the activity of the witch doctor. Hypnotising through the incessant and monotonous repetition of one short motive, with speed and strength ever increased by forceful accents and abrupt movements and accompanied by violent rhythmic movement of the whole body (swinging jerks of the upper body, dancing), song is the only means of intoxication known by earliest cultures. The shaman uses it before every act of magic in order toe set himself into that state of trance which alone lends him the extraordinary powers of curing illnesses (examples nos. 39-41) or inflicting them upon absent enemies, to drive e away snow or rain, to provide rich prey in game or fish (examples nos. 17-18) and to make his own tribe victorious over hostile neighbours (example no. 38), etc.
It is significant that the Selk'nam have the same verb for "singing" and for "falling into trance" (yewín). And in general singing and magic powers are in their conception if not identical, yet very closely connected. Sometimes the vocation for shamanhood (xon) is recognized at an early stage from the circumstance that the boy often sings -even in his sleep. The adept becomes a shaman when the "wayuwen" of a deceased xon relative passes over to him. Wayuwen is the personal witchcraft (probably even conceived as an independent personality), the being of the deceased medicine man and at the same time his personal song or more exactly his particularly bewitching manner of singing. One might just as well say: "I have seen my relative in a dream, he is going to be my wayuwen", as: "He will give me his song!" The wayuwen accompanies the xon as his guardian spirit, is always near him and is evoked by song before every act of magic; as soon as it has entered the shaman it takes over singing, the shaman merely lends it his voice. Or to express it in our rationalistic language: the xon sings until song and movements have grown automatical, which of course happens sooner with older people with a great deal of yewín experience than with novices; at any rate even they need 30 to 40 minutes before falling into trance and they do not by any means always succeed. The hours after midnight are preferred for singing. His wayuwen which might be called his personal style, and his singing are characteristic of the medicine man (examples nos. 19, 20). At any rate it happens that close relatives softly join in with the song. (Even with the Indians of North America the conception of personal witch songs revealed by the totem animal or in dreams is familiar).
(g) The meaning of the death songs is not quite clear. It would at any rate be unwise to consider them as expressions of personal. private and so to say profane feelings without closer scrutiny. Not as if the primitives did not feel pain and sorrow at the loss of relatives; on the contrary they give way to their affections much more freely than highly civilizated peoples. But just therefore the utterings of these affections themselves could not be formed to songs.
With the Selk'nam custom evidently demands that the mourning wife or mother utter a loud groan of sorrow several times a day but particularly in the evening and morning dusk (!) during the whole mourning period of many months. In the nightly mourning gatherings in the first weeks after the funeral the mourners and their relatives yell and howl for hours at a time at the deathbed. All these sound utterings which probably renew or possibly arouse the affect by means of the traditional wailings, could hardly be called songs, although their continous repetition automatically lends them a certain regularity.
The Yamana like the Selk'nam have the custom of wailing. But besides they have two kinds of real dirges: one of them, talanwáia, (example no. 22) consists of a series of short rhythmic formulas repeated several times upon the same tone and pronounced by a member of the family of the deceased while another of them holds a funeral speech. The other kind (example no. 21) belongs to the general death festival yamalasemóina in which the participants are divided in two groups and perform a mock battle.
The assertion of most authors, that the Fuegians completely lack musical instruments, is misleading inasmuch as the ethnologist has to consider not only all kinds of implements for making sounds or melody, but anything by means of which some kind of sound is produced intentionally. And more recent observers have registered a number of such sound devices, although their range is of course limited to what one might expect within the limits of such a primitive culture.
What has been known longest is the custom of the Selk'nam to blow on the wind-pipe of a newly killed wild duck (or guanaco). Unfortunately we do not know on what occasions or to what purpose (hunting or fertility magic?). Children in North Germany; have preserved the same custom in connection with goosekilling on St. Martin's day.
Furlong's observation, according to which Yamana women tamp the ground with pairs of long thick posts at the death dance, is of particular ethnological importance. This only rhythmic sound device of the Fuegians has a parallel in Assam, where Garo women when watching the dead accompany their songs by tamping (or beating?) the ground with a piece of wood (or a shuttle); likewise among the Kurnai in Southeast Australia in a ceremony preliminary to the initiation the mothers of the novices keep time by tamping their yam-sticks on the ground.
In the mask plays of the Selk'nam and Yamana the ground of the festival hut is beaten with rolled-up dry guanaco (S) or seal (Y) hides so as to mark the appearance of a wrathful spirit of the earth - the lewd xalpen - (S), the yetaita, the fall of men killed etc. The rolled-up hide as a stroke instrument is already mentioned in the original myth of the kina of the Yamana, so it apparently from the beginning belongs to the paraphernalia of the mask plays just as it has survived up to this day in European carnival celebrations as a harlequin's wooden sword. Again the same instrument is used by South Australian women, though not as a beater but rather as a drum - an important parallel in spite of the different technique, as it is far from the only one between Fuegian and Southeast Australian culture (See pp. 93-95 Besides, men in Southeast Australia beat the ground with strips of bark which at least as far as the acoustic effect is concerned equals that of the rolled-up hides.
other means are employed as acoustic illustrations of the rampagings of the demons represented at the mask plays: they strike the ground of the festival hut with their fists; they bellow into their hands bent to tube form and held on the ground. If the first custom might be considered as a fore-runner of stroke instruments, the second is that of wooden tubes into which Australians amongst others speak and howl in order to distort the voice.
Techniques similar to the ones used here to represent the demons (and to scare the women) are even used to frighten away the evil powers. To this purpose the first day of youth initiation the Yamana strike the framework of the festival house with branches and dancing sticks and the ground with their fists. The Southeast Australians strike the ground with (leafy) branches and also strike two sticks or suchlike against eachother.
Not only in this mimic and apotropeic function, but - at the shaman festival pešére- even in its hypnotic effect the voice is supported by artificial noises. The witch doctors of the Selk'nam replace the rattles customary with Indian tribes of higher culture with vigorous shaking of their skin mantles, a rustle which further increases the excitement caused by dance and song. Just like the Paeolithics of Europe (Mentone) the Selk'nam of the coast hang strings of rattles of mussel or conch shell around the necks of their children or let them play with such. Even such rattling adornments probably had apotropeic significance from the beginning.
|
 INDEX: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
HTML y diagramación:
Contactos 
Next page
Lenguas y culturas de Chile