Stories, Myths, Chants, and Songs of the Kuna Indians

Stories, Myths, Chants, and Songs of the Kuna Indians PDF Author: Joel Sherzer
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292757859
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The Kuna Indians of Panama, probably best known for molas, their colorful appliqué blouses, also have a rich literary tradition of oral stories and performances. One of the largest indigenous groups in the South American tropics, the majority of them (about 70,000) reside in Kuna Yala, a string of island and mainland villages stretching along the Caribbean coast. It is here that Joel Sherzer lived among them, photographing and recording their verbal performances, which he feels are representative of the beauty, complexity, and diversity of the oral literary traditions of the indigenous peoples of Latin America. This book is organized into three types of texts: humorous and moralistic stories; myths and magical chants; and women's songs. While quite different from one another, they share features characteristic of Kuna literature as a whole, including appreciation of their environment and a remarkable knowledge of their plants and animals; a belief in spirits as an important component of their world in curing, magic, and aesthetics; and, especially, great humor and a sense of play. Vividly illustrated by a Kuna artist and accompanied by photographs that lend a sense of being present at the performances, the texts provide readers with a unique aesthetic perspective on this rich culture while preserving an endangered and valuable indigenous oral tradition.

Stories, Myths, Chants, and Songs of the Kuna Indians

Stories, Myths, Chants, and Songs of the Kuna Indians PDF Author: Joel Sherzer
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292787588
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description


Stories, Myths, Chants, and Songs of the Kuna Indians

Stories, Myths, Chants, and Songs of the Kuna Indians PDF Author: Joel Sherzer
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292757859
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book

Book Description
The Kuna Indians of Panama, probably best known for molas, their colorful appliqué blouses, also have a rich literary tradition of oral stories and performances. One of the largest indigenous groups in the South American tropics, the majority of them (about 70,000) reside in Kuna Yala, a string of island and mainland villages stretching along the Caribbean coast. It is here that Joel Sherzer lived among them, photographing and recording their verbal performances, which he feels are representative of the beauty, complexity, and diversity of the oral literary traditions of the indigenous peoples of Latin America. This book is organized into three types of texts: humorous and moralistic stories; myths and magical chants; and women's songs. While quite different from one another, they share features characteristic of Kuna literature as a whole, including appreciation of their environment and a remarkable knowledge of their plants and animals; a belief in spirits as an important component of their world in curing, magic, and aesthetics; and, especially, great humor and a sense of play. Vividly illustrated by a Kuna artist and accompanied by photographs that lend a sense of being present at the performances, the texts provide readers with a unique aesthetic perspective on this rich culture while preserving an endangered and valuable indigenous oral tradition.

Reimagining Panama's Musical and Cultural Narratives of Jazz

Reimagining Panama's Musical and Cultural Narratives of Jazz PDF Author: Patricia Zarate de Perez
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1793621845
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Panamanian Suite narrates the complex relationship between Panama and the United States by following the development of music in each nation. As an important port of Caribbean migration in the twentieth century, Panama played an essential role in the emergence and shaping of cultural forms such as jazz.

A Guide to the Latin American Art Song Repertoire

A Guide to the Latin American Art Song Repertoire PDF Author: Stela M. Brandão
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253221382
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
A reference guide to the vast array of art song literature and composers from Latin America, this book introduces the music of Latin America from a singer's perspective and provides a basis for research into the songs of this richly musical area of the world. The book is divided by country into 22 chapters, with each chapter containing an introductory essay on the music of the region, a catalog of art songs for that country, and a list of publishers. Some chapters include information on additional sources. Singers and teachers may use descriptive annotations (language, poet) or pedagogical annotations (range, tessitura) to determine which pieces are appropriate for their voices or programming needs, or those of their students. The guide will be a valuable resource for vocalists and researchers, however familiar they may be with this glorious repertoire.

Lessons from a Quechua Strongwoman

Lessons from a Quechua Strongwoman PDF Author: Janis B. Nuckolls
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816528586
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Using the intriguing stories and words of a Quechua-speaking woman named Luisa Cadena from the Pastaza Province of Ecuador, Janis B. Nuckolls reveals a complex language system in which ideophony, dialogue, and perspective are all at the core of cultural and grammatical communications among Amazonian Quechua speakers. This book is a fascinating look at ideophones—words that communicate succinctly through imitative sound qualities. They are at the core of Quechua speakers’ discourse—both linguistic and cultural—because they allow agency and reaction to substances and entities as well as beings. Nuckolls shows that Luisa Cadena’s utterances give every individual, major or minor, a voice in her narrative. Sometimes as subtle as a barely felt movement or unintelligible sound, the language supports an amazingly wide variety of voices. Cadena’s narratives and commentaries on everyday events reveal that sound imitation through ideophones, representations of dialogues between humans and nonhumans, and grammatical distinctions between a speaking self and an other are all part of a language system that allows for the possibility of shared affects, intentions, moral values, and meaningful, communicative interactions between humans and nonhumans.

Upper PerenŽ Arawak Narratives of History, Landscape, and Ritual

Upper PerenŽ Arawak Narratives of History, Landscape, and Ritual PDF Author: Elena Mihas
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803265298
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The rich storytelling traditions of the Alto Peren� Arawaks of eastern Peru are showcased in this bilingual collection of traditional narratives, ethnographic accounts, women's autobiographical stories, songs, chants, and ritual speeches. The Alto Peren� speakers are located in the colonization frontier at the foot of the eastern Andes and the western fringe of the Amazonian jungle. Unfortunately, their language has a slim chance of surviving because only about three hundred fluent speakers remain. This volume collects and preserves the power and vitality of Alto Peren� oral and linguistic traditions, as told by thirty members of the Native community. Upper Peren� Arawak Narratives of History, Landscape, and Ritual covers a range of themes in the Alto Peren� oral tradition, through genres such as myths, folk tales, autobiographical accounts, and ethnographic texts about customs and rituals, as well as songs, chants, and oratory. Transcribed and translated by Elena Mihas, a specialist in Northern Kampa language varieties, and grounded in the actual performances of Alto Peren� speakers, this collection makes these stories available in English for the first time. Each original text in Alto Peren� is accompanied by an English translation, and each theme is introduced with an essay providing biographical, cultural, and linguistic information. This collection of oral literature is masterful and authoritative as well as entertaining and provocative, testifying to the power of Alto Peren� storytelling.

What is Poetry?

What is Poetry? PDF Author: Nigel Fabb
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107001854
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Illustrated by 130 languages and literatures, this book explores poetry's unique psychological qualities.

Kuna Art and Shamanism

Kuna Art and Shamanism PDF Author: Paolo Fortis
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292743556
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Known for their beautiful textile art, the Kuna of Panama have been scrutinized by anthropologists for decades. Perhaps surprisingly, this scrutiny has overlooked the magnificent Kuna craft of nuchukana—wooden anthropomorphic carvings—which play vital roles in curing and other Kuna rituals. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, Paolo Fortis at last brings to light this crucial cultural facet, illuminating not only Kuna aesthetics and art production but also their relation to wider social and cosmological concerns. Exploring an art form that informs birth and death, personhood, the dream world, the natural world, religion, gender roles, and ecology, Kuna Art and Shamanism provides a rich understanding of this society's visual system, and the ways in which these groundbreaking ethnographic findings can enhance Amerindian scholarship overall. Fortis also explores the fact that to ask what it means for the Kuna people to carve the figure of a person is to pose a riddle about the culture's complete concept of knowing. Also incorporating notions of landscape (islands, gardens, and ancient trees) as well as cycles of life, including the influence of illness, Fortis places the statues at the center of a network of social relationships that entangle people with nonhuman entities. As an activity carried out by skilled elderly men, who possess embodied knowledge of lifelong transformations, the carving process is one that mediates mortal worlds with those of immortal primordial spirits. Kuna Art and Shamanism immerses readers in this sense of unity and opposition between soul and body, internal forms and external appearances, and image and design.

Chiefs, Scribes, and Ethnographers

Chiefs, Scribes, and Ethnographers PDF Author: James Howe
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292779631
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The Kuna of Panama, today one of the best known indigenous peoples of Latin America, moved over the course of the twentieth century from orality and isolation towards literacy and an active engagement with the nation and the world. Recognizing the fascination their culture has held for many outsiders, Kuna intellectuals and villagers have collaborated actively with foreign anthropologists to counter anti-Indian prejudice with positive accounts of their people, thus becoming the agents as well as subjects of ethnography. One team of chiefs and secretaries, in particular, independently produced a series of historical and cultural texts, later published in Sweden, that today still constitute the foundation of Kuna ethnography. As a study of the political uses of literacy, of western representation and indigenous counter-representation, and of the ambivalent inter-cultural dialogue at the heart of ethnography, Chiefs, Scribes, and Ethnographers addresses key issues in contemporary anthropology. It is the story of an extended ethnographic encounter, one involving hundreds of active participants on both sides and continuing today.

The Ecology of the Spoken Word

The Ecology of the Spoken Word PDF Author: Michael Uzendoski
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252093607
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This volume offers the first theoretical and experiential translation of Napo Runa mythology in English. Michael A. Uzendoski and Edith Felicia Calapucha-Tapuy present and analyze lowland Quichua speakers in the Napo province of Ecuador through narratives, songs, curing chants, and other oral performances, so readers may come to understand and appreciate Quichua aesthetic expression. Guiding readers into Quichua ways of thinking and being--in which language itself is only a part of a communicative world that includes plants, animals, and the landscape--Uzendoski and Calapucha-Tapuy weave exacting translations into an interpretive argument with theoretical implications for understanding oral traditions, literacy, new technologies, and language. A companion websiteoffers photos, audio files, and videos of original performances illustrates the beauty and complexity of Amazonian Quichua poetic expressions.