Forest of flutes: multispecific interactions between plants, spirits, humans and the iyamaka aerophones

Abstract

This article offers an approach on the iyana bamboo and the flows of this plant in the worlds of the Haliti Paresi people of Mato Grosso and in the construction of their social and musical structures. The bamboo paths draw networks of interaction between plants, spirits, humans and the set of aerophones generically called iyamaka, flutes or just jararacas. This bundle of multispecific relationships operates transformations in the bodies of bamboos and in their notable ontological and sound diversity when they metamorphose into powerful wind instruments. About this process, marked by a cosmopolitical regime surrounded by care and intentions, it is intended to argue that the transformative and performative circuits of the bamboos – like paths that cross and revolve times and spaces of a cosmic geography – are made through negotiations and seductions systematized in relational strategies such as counter-domestication and asymmetric mutualism, in which they imply daylight and night darkness.