| >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> |
Dance and Sound
In the indigenous world, especially the pre-Hispanic one, living in strict contact with nature led to a stronger perception of sounds and their meaning. Mapuche music springs from this tradition. It is not codified and written down like Western music but is based on melodic patterns and ancestral rhythms that are transmitted orally from father to son. This music is the foundation for poetry, dance, dramatic representations, mythological beliefs, empirical medicine as well as cosmological and religious beliefs. The Mapuche musical repertory includes songs only for voice as well as for instruments, songs for working, playing, funereal songs, lullabies…htm
Machi (a sort of shaman) songs are very important because along with dance they mark the harvest festivals and magic-religious ceremonies. The shamanic singing is based on a simple rhythm, persistent and monotonous that facilitates entry into a state of higher-consciousness. The most ancient instrument that accompanied these ceremonies is the Wada, a gourd filled with seeds, like a rattle.
But the most interesting and most “shamanic” instrument of the Mapuche culture is the Kultrun, a drum made of wood and leather whose sonar and visual symbolism incarnates the key elements of cosmovision and the beliefs of this people. Every machi paints and plays his Kultrun in a different way, usually holding with in the left hand and hitting it with a wooden drumstick covered in colored wool.
The wooden body of the instrument represents the earth: the leather cover that makes the sound is divided into four sections like to the four cardinal points. The whole encloses a series of magic objects (stones, animal or vegetable remains, metals) but most importnatly it holds the voice of the machi that was introduced at the moment the drum was closed, during the ritual of its building.
Mapuche songs from the city
Orality in mapuche songs
(from the website Serindigena.cl)
(14/10/2005)
print
|
 |
|
|
| >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> |
|
|
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Deepening
>
Flash Animation
|
|
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
|
|
