"Music and dance in the Guaycurú rituals: performance and cosmology from a dialectical perspective"

Silvia Citro & Adriana Cerletti.

39th World Conference of the International Council for Traditional Music. Viena, Austria, 4 – 11 Julio 2007.

In this paper, we analyze the song-dance as the dominant performance genre in the rituals of the Guaycurú aboriginal peoples of the Argentine Chaco until the mid 20th century. We propose a musical and choreographic analysis in which the Mocoví and Toba genres are compared, focusing on three expressions documented in our fieldwork: the Vizcacha (name of a big rodent) and Manik (ostrich) performed by the Mocoví, and the Nmi or Baile sapo ("toad dance") performed by the Toba.

On one hand, we intend to demonstrate that these song-dances condense experiences and meanings about the nature-culture relationships that characterize the cosmologies of the hunting-gatherers of South American lowlands. On the other hand, we analyze the articulation between the circular character of the choreography and the reiteration through minimal variations as the structural principle of the musical discourse. We propose that these aesthetic forms have contributed to promoting the ritual experiences that Victor Turner called communitas, and have also constituted a sign of collective identity.

Finally, we summarize the transformation in the aesthetics and the social ends of this performance genre, in relation to the changes in the ritual contexts, and especially in the age and gender of the performers. We describe the change from the promotion of sexual intercourse among the young, involved in the traditional song-dances, to the preservation of collective identity by the elders, in the new Christian rituals incorporated through the colonization processes.

Our theoretical and methodological approach stresses the relationship among aesthetic forms, cosmologies and socio-cultural practices, starting from a dialectic perspective that confronts the approaches focused on music and dance as both aesthetic objects and performative processes. We consider them as cultural unities that can be extracted from the flow of socio-historic process, to be quoted, transformed and reinterpreted by performers in each new practice.