Transposition (Nov 2023)
Contaminations musicales et hiérarchies vocales. Filmer la transmission des anent avec les Achuar
Abstract
The Achuar nation of the Ecuadorian Amazon plays a sacred music called anent. These monodies are used in a variety of ways in the course of daily life, ranging from propitiatory activities to declarations of affection, from dream encounters with ancestors to the management of community conflicts. A cognitivist approach in Amazonian anthropology has led to anent being presented as mental forms of action, and to their importance as a musical phenomenon being undervalued. In this article, I propose to listen to anent again from the point of view of anthropological theories of the socialisation of the body in Amazonia, focusing on the process of musical transmission, which the epistemology of anent allows us to understand simultaneously as acoustic imitation and body-to-body contamination. These are based on a hierarchical triangular relationship including the voice of the initiator, that of the initiate and an ancestral source. This transmission is also a driving force behind processes of subjectivation and the setting to music of asymmetrical power relations, and thus pursues the Achuar political philosophy of living well, rooted in the musico-acoustic experience. In order to grasp the socio-corporal experience of anent music, the data on which this article is based were collected in filmed transmission workshops, echoing the ritual space of transmission and the visionary Achuar experiences that give it shape.
