Yekuana Revisited

Medicine Woman of the Yekuana People (from Los juegos de la Yekuana)

Tawaniwechi is a second track from Music of the Venezuelan Yekuanan Indians [Folkways, 1975] in this year's list. This particular recording of a Yekuana shaman, the last on the record, was not recorded by neither musicologist listed in the credits on the record, but is rather a historic recording from 1912 by the German anthropologist Theodor Koch-Grunberg. Walter Coppens, Barbara Brandli, and Jean Francois Nothomb, who recorded all other music on the collection decided to include the old wax cylinder recording for historical context. In the recording made in Nauakuna in the South of Venezuela, a shaman is heard using the voice of the spirit Tawani. Even though Tawani is a defunct spirit, the voice of Tawani, invoked in this recording, sounds much like it did one hundred years later as can be witnessed in the film Los juegos de los Yekuana by Enrique Blein. The image above is based on a still from the film.