| Description | On February 17, a curer living near the village of Puka yaku spent part of his day overseeing the preparation of an hallucinogenic drink made from the Banisteriopsis vine commonly known as ayahuasca. Although I tried to watch the preparations closely, I was asked to keep my distance from the operation. Much of the supervision and preparation were delegated to his son-in-law and grandson, who harvested the vine from their field, scraped its bark, and then cooked the mixture, which, when it was done appeared as a brown colored liquid with a whitish tinged layer near the top. That evening, the curer, accompanied by his son-in-law and grandson drank the ayahuasca in the early evening. While drinking, the curer and his son-in-law or "masha" conversed informally about events that concerned them, involving family members whose health problems might be the result of spiritual attack. About an hour after drinking the ayahuasca, and once it became dark, the curer began to whistle breathily, and then began singing this song. I was lying in a sleeping bag on the floor holding the microphone as close as possible, but the crowdedness of the room made it difficult. Although I can identify certain utterances in this song as Quechua lexical items, I was told by a Quechua consultant who later listened to my recording that these songs were not meant to be intelligible to ordinary Runa (the term Quechua people use to refer to themselves), and she resisted any attempts on my part to confer meaning upon individual words. Curers learn these songs from other curers. My consultant calls this song his "takina", which is a special song sung for the removal of death. In this particular instance, I believe the curer was singing for preventative, precautionary reasons, since his two daughters had only minor physical complaints. |
