Steven Lee Rubenstein Memorial Scholarship 2016
Guilherme Orlandini Heurich
Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
SALSA’s Board of Directors is pleased to announce that the Stephen Lee Rubenstein Memorial Scholarship Committee has selected Dr. Guilherme Orlandini Heurich (Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) to receive its Travel Award to present his paper, “The shaman and the pen-drive: singing and forgetting in Araweté verbal art” (see full abstract below) at the 2016 X SALSA Conference in Tulane, USA.
The shaman and the pen-drive: singing and forgetting in Araweté verbal art
At the beginning of 2011, the Araweté began to use the pen-drive radio to reproduce their songs. This immediately resulted in a surge of Araweté interest in record- ing and listening to songs, and a surprising increase in the number of shamans among them. The songs, traditionally sung only once by a male shaman in a ritual context, could now be reproduced at any time. The Araweté say that a dead relative only sings through shamans who knew them when they were alive, which begs the questions: what happens when a dead person’s voice can be reproduced after these shamans have passed away? What happens when the dead can sing forever? This presentation will reflect on these questions – particularly on their implications for the concepts of forgetting and discourse in anthropology – through a description of how the Araweté came to use pen-drives and the impact this had on their shamanic practices.
Panel: De-Centering Approaches to Discourse in Native Amazonia, organized by Janet Chernela and Javier Carrera Rubio.
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