The Polyglot
in the distribution of the forest’s flora and fauna, has profoundly
Forest
by Bruce Albert, anthropologist
For those who grew up in the silence of the forest, the city noise is painful.
Davi Kopenawa
he Amazon rainforest is a continent-
biome spanning an area of some
6.5 million square kilometers (ten
times the size of France) that over­
laps nine Latin American countries
and represents almost half of the
remaining rainforests on earth. This
vast region encompasses a wide variety of terrestrial and aquatic
ecosystems, and contains the highest percentage of the world’s
known biodiversity.
Today however, it is seriously threatened,1 in particular
due to the expansion of agricultural activities (livestock and
soybean farming). The Amazon has been inhabited for at least
eleven thousand years by a complex mosaic of indigenous peoples
who, in spite of several centuries of spoliation and decimation,
still represent a little over 400 indigenous groups speaking
approximately 240 different languages.2 The Amazon thus has
a long cultural history that, in contributing over time to changes
1. Some experts predict a 40 percent loss of forest cover by 2050; see Britaldo
Silveira Soares-Filho et al., “Modelling Conservation in the Amazon Basin,”
in Nature 440, no. 7083 (March 23, 2006), pp. 520–23.
2. See Eduardo Góes Neves, Arqueologia da Amazônia (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar
Editor, 2006); Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Cuenca
Amazónica, coica.org.ec; Francisco Queixalós and Odile Renault-Lescure (eds.),
As línguas amazônicas hoje (São Paulo: ISA-MPEG, 2000).
320
a good example of the influence of the biophony of the tropical of the golden-headed manakin are the heã for the Lonchocarpus
influenced its natural history.3 The Amazon is not (or rather, has
never been) a virgin forest. Studied and transformed by its native
inhabitants for many thousands of years, it has always been an
inhabited forest. As a result, its extraordinary biodiversity is
inherently interconnected with the history of its socio-diversity.
According to the present state of our knowledge,
which is far from complete, the Amazon forest is home to 1,300
species of birds, 427 species of amphibians, and 425 species
of mammals.4 These animals, in spite of their large diversity,
mainly depend on plant-based food sources,5 which are unevenly
distributed and subject to wide seasonal variation. As a result, the
animal population is both low in density and highly mobile, while
a large part of the game sought by native hunters is nocturnal
and/or arboreal.6 All of these features make hunting in this
region a complex and very challenging activity whose outcome is
always unpredictable.
Moreover, as one would imagine, the thick tangle and
great diversity of vegetation in the forest—50,000 species of
plants and trees7—create a vegetal screen that, beyond a very short
distance, is impenetrable to the eye. This means that hunters are
only able to discern or, at best, glimpse their ever-elusive prey, after
observing possible clues as to their presence on the ground.
Consequently, it is mainly through the experience of
listening to their environment that they are able to detect the
presence or movement of game in the undergrowth or up in
the treetops. It is thus understandable that Amazonian hunters
not only acquire an extensive knowledge of the sounds of
the forest from a very young age, but also that the concert of
animal sounds that constantly surrounds them deeply informs
the language and the cosmology of their people. The acoustic
culture of the Yanomami Indians in northern Brazil, with whom
I have had the privilege of communicating for several decades, is
3. See William Balée, Cultural Forests of the Amazon: A Historical Ecology of People
and Their Landscapes (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2013); Charles R.
Clement et al., “The Domestication of Amazonia Before European Conquest,”
in Proceedings of the Royal Society 282, no. 12 (August 2015).
4. See Russell Alan Mittermeir et al., “Wilderness and Biodiversity Conservation,”
in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100, no. 18 (September 2, 2003).
5. Seeds and fruit fallen from trees or directly foraged in the tree canopy.
The layer of fallen leaves on the ground is poor in nutrients.
6. See Leslie E. Sponsel, “Amazon Ecology and Adaptation,” in Annual Review of
Anthropology 15 (October 15, 1986).
7. See Kenneth J. Feeley and Miles R. Silman, “Extinction Risks of Amazonian Plant
Species,” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 30 (July 28, 2009).
chirring of the large cicadas announces the arrival of Omoari a,
rainforest in the lived knowledge of the Amazonian peoples.8 As
a tribute to the work of Bernie Krause, I shall provide a few
examples here, that include hunter communication with the
voices of the forest, the learning of ceremonial and shamanic
chants, and the myth of the origin of animal languages.
Yaro pë heã:
The Voices of the Forest
W
hen out hunting or gathering, the Yanomami,
as they make their way through the forest,
maintain an ongoing dialogue with its many
different voices. Their attention is thus continuously turned
toward and listening to the biophony of the forest, and they
are always quick to use mimicry to respond to their nonhuman
interlocutors. Moreover, in addition to this ever-attentive acoustic
focus, they are constantly involved in decoding an elaborate
system of sound associations connected with the notion of heã.
This is the term hunters use for the songs, cries, and
calls of many birds (as well as of amphibians and certain insects)
that they interpret as acoustic clues indicating the possible
presence of the prey, fruits or plants associated with them. As
one hunter laconically summed it up for me, “When there are
many animal voices talking in the forest, we say there are sound
signs of game among them.”
In this system of sound associations, the cooing of a
fasciated antshrike is perceived as indicating the presence of a
tapir, while the undulating song of a black-tailed trogon signals
a herd of collared peccaries. Approaching spider monkeys are
hailed by the two strident tones of the small blue-headed parrot,
a passing red brocket by the staccato trill of the plain-brown
woodcreeper, and the flute-like whistling of the wing-banded
wren betrays a nine-banded armadillo somewhere in the vicinity.
In terms of plants, the melodious song of the cocoa
thrush reveals the presence of mombin plums, and the loud,
halting whistles of the yellow-green grosbeak signal that of the
fruit from the Pseudolmedia laevigata tree. The trills and humming
8. We owe the concept of biophony (nonhuman biological sound production)
to the remarkable work of Bernie Krause, The Great Animal Orchestra
(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2012).
Davi Kopenawa’s story about the decoy hunting of a tapir:
utilis liana, which is used as an asphyxiant in poison fishing, while
the heã for the fruit of the cabari tree is found in the melancholy
notes of the common potoo,9 and the ripened fruit pods of the
Brazil nut tree are heralded by the song of the little pearl kite.
The etymology of the term heã probably comes from
he, “head,” which refers to the tip or “endpoint” of something,
and ã associated with sound and voice. The intransitive verb
heãmuu means “to mark one’s presence by a sound.” When
approaching a friendly collective house, for instance, the act of
whistling to announce one’s arrival is called husi heãmuu. The
term can thus be linked to the idea of a “sound marker.” With
its complex network of associations between indexical animal
voices and the presence of game or useful plants in the forest,
the Yanomami heã constitute a permanent and flexible acoustic
positioning system that, inculcated from a very early age, can
always be relied on to guide hunters and gatherers through
the “great animal orchestra” of the forest.10 As the Yanomami
shaman Davi Kopenawa explains:
The animal voices of the forest that we know, the heã
calls that we talk about among us, are the words we
have heard from our elders, and they left them to us,
saying, “This song is the heã of this game animal or of
those fruits!” And we’ve kept them inside of us from
our childhood up until now.11
Furthermore, some of these calls are also considered to
be acoustic clues for climatic and ecological events.12 Thus, the
two low notes followed by the full-throated call of the screaming
piha are considered to be the heã of thunderstorms, while
the blue-crowned motmot’s gloomy, repetitive morning song
presages the “time of the fat monkeys” (the peak of the rainy
season, from June to August), and the silver-beaked tanager’s
sharp bursts of chirping indicate the beginning of the “time of
the peach palm fruits” (January to March). Finally, the vigorous
9. Its poisonous fruits, cut into strips, are made edible by a long process of
soaking them in the river and extensive boiling.
10. A sound installation inspired by this theme (Heã, by Stephen Vitiello) was
presented as part of the exhibition Yanomami, Spirit of the Forest at the Fondation
Cartier pour l’art contemporain in 2003.
11. This quote, as well as most of the information above, comes from a
conversation between Davi Kopenawa, Bruce Albert, and Stephen Vitiello
in the collective house in Watoriki in January 2003.
12. Heã sound signs can also be associated with events created by humans (the
approach of sorcerers, guests, warriors, white visitors) as well as with mythical
or shamanic events and characters. Finally, the term heã applies to propitiatory
chants connected with the ceremonial foods of the big reahu feasts.
the being of the dry season.
This constant attentiveness to the voices of the forest is
complemented by an equally zealous concern for communicating
directly with the animals. Hunters are thus accustomed to
imitating the calls specific to many animals, their mates, and
offspring in hopes of luring them within range of their arrows.
This huge repertoire of simulated animal voices generally
involves various types of whistle calls (huxomuu) or onomatopoeia-
based phonic imitations.13 The only wild game decoy I have seen
the Yanomami employ is a T-shaped wooden whistle used for
mimicking the call of the tapir.
There is indeed quite a large number of forest animals
that the Yanomami are able to “call” (nakai) and “make answer”
(wã huamãi). During our conversations, it seemed to me that,
depending on the differing talents of my interlocutors, these sonic
decoys could be applied to most of the game commonly hunted by
the Yanomami: from toucans, aracaris, macaws, trumpeters, guans,
curassows, quails, big and small tinamous to tapirs, peccaries, deer,
jaguars, agoutis, spider monkeys, red howler monkeys, black saki
monkeys, and white-fronted capuchins. Moreover, this capacity for
phonic imitation covers not only game animals, but very nearly all
of the fauna in the forest area known to and traveled by hunters
(most Yanomami names for birds, game or not, in fact come from
onomatopoeia based on their songs).14
The aim of such call hunting methods is to make game
“run up” (rërëmãi) in front of the hunter, while he conceals his
human appearance under a sound mask in order to be perceived,
at least in voice, as a fellow animal, a mate, or an offspring. They
are thus strategies designed to attract, entice, or provoke a sense
of caring in the animal that will induce it to become docile and
available, waroro, a word that is also used to describe the open,
generous feelings associated with friendship, love relationships,
or parenthood (the verb waroroai means “to let oneself slide”).
Ultimately, however, the expression used to describe the result
of this sound trick is the same as the expression that refers to the
ploy that is sometimes reserved for disloyal allies, who are lured
to an intercommunity reahu celebration by phony demonstrations
of friendship and then shot with arrows (nomihirimãi). Let us hear
13. Simple whistles (made by blowing out or sucking in air) or whistling with the
fingers, with hands cupped into a conch, by pinching the lower lip or cheek,
or with the use of a folded leaf.
14. The Yanomami distinguish between animals that can be “made to come by
imitating them” (haxamãi) from those for whom “we make do with simply imitating
the voice” (wã uëmãi pio), for example in a hunting tale or a mythical story.
When a good tapir hunter is on the trail of a tapir in the
forest and wants to arrow it, he imitates its voice, and
as he approaches it, he makes it answer his call. That
is what he does when the tapir’s traces are still fresh
and the animal is nearby, lying in the undergrowth.
Then we act like a tapir by imitating its voice in order
to lure it. We talk to it: “sharp, two-toned whistle.” And
it answers back: “ẽẽẽẽiii” Then it comes out of the tangle
of vegetation. We do not move and we call it again:
“whistle.” It answers: “ẽẽẽẽiii!” and comes closer: “tëk tëk
tëk!” (imitating the sound of its feet). Then we talk to it
from a very close distance: “series of aspirated double-
clicks.” To deceive it we remain hidden, otherwise it will
run off immediately. After that, we start all over again:
“series of aspirated clicks, series of sharp whistles.” If
it gets suspicious and turns around, we have another
go: “two long whistles.” Then it comes back and runs
toward us thinking it hears its little one calling.15
Although they may take the form of a dialogue, the
communication that the sonic decoys attempt to establish is
not of course a real interchange. The message, though it may
briefly create a sense of familiarity, is an interspecific artifice that
does not seek any other response from the animal than that it
succumb to its fate, which, as game, is to satisfy the cannibal
“hunger for meat” (naiki) intrinsic to humans: cannibal because,
as a descendant of the animal ancestors from the primordial
time, present-day game are considered by the Yanomami to be
a human people endowed with a different appearance (body):
In the primordial time, animals were humans, but they
became game. Although they are still human, they
now have the false appearance of game and are the
inhabitants of the forest only because that is where they
were transformed in the past. This is what they think of
present-day humans: “We are the same people as them,
but they have such a great desire for our flesh that they
seem to us to be evil beings! Yet they are not. They’re
our fellow beings!” That’s right. We are people who are
of the same kind as the animals and yet we eat them!16
15. From a conversation between Davi Kopenawa, Bruce Albert, and Stephen
Vitiello, Watoriki, January 2003.
16. From conversations between Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, Watoriki, 1997.
321
 Davi Kopenawa ends his description of the tapir
hunt with a series of onomatopoeia related to the killing of the
animal: “Thaiii (the snap of the bowstring)! Kosho (the impact
of the arrow)! Uwooo hoo hoo hoo (the tapir whimpering in pain)!
Tëk tëk tëk (its feet running away)! Kurai (sound of the animal
falling)!” The narrative art of the Yanomami makes pervasive
use of onomatopoeia and ideophones, demonstrating once
again the influence of the acoustic environment of the forest in
Amerindian forms of linguistic expression. But in addition to
the usual panoply of phonic mimetisms, when storytellers want
to emphasize the dramatic intensity of certain episodes in their
narrative, as is the case here, they may amplify this tendency
toward acoustic iconicity to the point of substituting the entire
descriptive narration with sequences of coded onomatopoeia.
In doing so, they are seeking to completely break away from the
formal constraints of describing the events in order to create,
via a succession of sound simulations obvious to the audience,
a shared acoustic experience that comes as close as possible to
the sensual world of the forest.17
Amoã hi ki–: Song Trees
T
he Yanomami language has a verb to describe the
“choruses” of cicadas, amphibians, or red howler
monkeys: herii. This word also refers to the collective
singing of humans. When allied houses get together for the big
reahu funeral feasts, Yanomami men and women alternate in
singing songs (amoã pë18), night after night, in order to celebrate
the abundance of ceremonial foods from their gardens (manioc
bread, plantain soup, peach palm fruit soup), along with game
hunted and smoked for the occasion. In the central plaza of the
collective house, the women line up in one or more rows and sing
as they move back and forth, stomping the ground with their
feet.19 One behind the other, the men either walk or move around
the circumference of the central plaza in a kind of running dance.
These groups are led by a male or female singer, who is recognized
for his or her voice and repertoire, and is thus given the role of
17. See Eduardo O. Kohn, “Runa Realism: Upper Amazonian Attitudes to
Nature Knowing,” in Ethnos 70, no. 2 (2005).
18. From amo, “center,” “interior,” and , “sound” or “voice.”
19. The Yanomami metaphorically associate this “stomping” with the stamping
of deer (haya mahasimuu).
322 TH E PO LYG L O T FO R EST
a soloist. The tune is first sung out alone by this soloist, who is
called a “song tree” (amoã hi). To heighten the resonance of the
singer’s voice, the mouth is placed in the crook of the right arm,
which is bent, with the hand placed on the shoulder. Immediately
afterwards, the rest of the group takes up the song in unison
—which, as the euphoria increases, is often put to the test by
bursts of laughter or the mimicry of mischievous youths.
The amoã pë consist of very short musical phrases,
certain parts of which are rhythmically repeated. Exchanged by
singers during the reahu, they circulate between allied groups over
vast distances within the Yanomami territory. They are highly
popular tunes whose content is generally made up of brief
descriptions of movements and sounds observed in the forest
(animals, fruits, breezes, streams), similar to free-form haiku,
supported by a simple melodic line:
Keakeamuu keakeamuu a-ëëë! (twice) Wixa xina a ka keakeamuu
keakeamuu a-ëëë! [It goes up and down, up and down! The
tail of the black saki monkey goes up and down!]
Reiki reiki kë-ëëë! (twice) Mõra maki uxuhu a ka reiki reiki
kë-ëëë! [They hang, they hang! The ripe fruits of the
Dacryodes burseraceas tree hang, hang!]20
The origin of these songs is attributed to Yõrixiamari a,
the mythical ancestor of the cocoa thrush. Commonly heard
along the riverbanks, where the males flock together in the
evening to sing in concert, the cocoa thrush’s melodious warble
consists of a set of alternating musical phrases. According to
the myth, Yõrixiamari a unexpectedly arrived one day at a reahu
celebration given by female toads and was so horrified by their
ugly croaking that he ended up teaching them his own way of
singing. However, the amoã pë songs themselves, which are never
attributed to human authors, are said to come from distant “song
trees”(amoã hi ki) that were created by the demiurge Omama on the
edges of the urihi a forest-land, with each tree corresponding to
one of the regional Yanomami languages.
Yanomami shamans see these vocalizing trees in the form
of huge trunks adorned with dazzling white down and covered
with vibrant mouths that let out an endless stream of harmonious
songs. As Davi Kopenawa further explains, the amoã pë songs that
are struck up during reahu festivities “are images of the amoã hi ki
trees’ melodies. The guests who like them keep them in their chests
20. The two examples that follow come from the Rio Catrimani region and date
back to the 1970s. A recent CD produced by the Yanomami association Hutukara
contains twenty of these songs, which are transcribed and translated: Reahu heã.
Cantos da festa yanomami.
so they can sing them later, during the feasts they hold in their own
homes. This is how they spread from house to house.”21
Learning the songs of the xapiri helper spirits is the alpha and
omega of the initiation process for every Yanomami shaman:
If we try hard to answer the spirits, the images of the
yõrixiama a thrush and of the reã hi song tree quickly
come down to help us. They lend us their throats and
reinforce our tongues. This way, the words of the
xapiri’s song rapidly increase within us just as in a tape
recorder. We drink the yãkoana22 with our eyes fixed on
their presentation dance and lose all fear of singing
before the people of our house.23
The songs that the xapiri spirits sing via the intermediary
of their shaman “fathers” have the same name, amoã pë, as those
of the herii “choruses” and are believed to have originated from
the same “song trees.” It was said in the past that the spirits
had to go and cut the branches of the “song trees” in order to
obtain their melodies,24 and because of this the harmonicas that
the first napë pë (foreigners, “whites”) to visit the region gave to
the Yanomami were also called “song trees.” More recently, this
expression (along with yõrixia kiki, “cocoa thrush objects”) was
also applied to tape recorders. The description of how the xapiri
get their songs follows the same semantic shift:
The spirits of the yõrixiama a thrush and the ayokora
a cacique—but also those of the sitipari si and taritari
axi birds—are the first to accumulate these songs in
big sakosi baskets. They gather them one by one with
invisible things similar to the white people’s tape
recorders. Yet there are so many of them that they
can never come to the end of them! Among these bird
spirits, those of the yõrixiama a thrush are really the
songs’ fathers-in-law, their true masters.25
The birds that are mentioned here are all, like the
cocoa thrush, outstanding vocalists. However, this distinguishing
quality is actually due less to their songs themselves than to
these birds’ astonishing ability for mimicry. Among them, the
21. Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky, p. 59. The “song trees” are
sometimes also referred to as yõrixiama hi ki, “cocoa thrush trees” or by the shamanic
name, reã hi ki.
22. Hallucinogenic powder.
23. Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky, p. 90 (for a general
description of the shamanic initiation process, see chap. 5).
24. See chap. 4 of Maria-Inês Smiljanic’s thesis, “O corpo cósmico: O xamanismo
entre os Yanomae do Alto Toototobi” (Brasilia: University of Brasilia, 1999).
25. Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky, p. 58.
yellow-rumped cacique stands out in particular for its beauty and
visibility, as well as for its extraordinary talent as a “polyglot.”
It lives on the edge of the forest in large colonies and is able to
imitate over forty different species of birds, as well as mammals,
amphibians, insects, and even sounds that come from human
dwellings (screaming, crying, barking), alternating between these
imitations and its own calls and songs.26
The yellow-rumped cacique is thus an emblematic
singer, a meta-singer able to reproduce most of the animal songs
of the forest. It is probably for this reason that the xapiri spirit of
this bird is endowed with a very special significance in Yanomami
shamanism: it is the only spirit that allows shamans to regurgitate,
in front of everyone, the sorcery plants or the evil objects that they
extract from the bodies of the sick. The yellow-rumped cacique’s
talent for sound mimicry would thus seem to give it this privileged
shamanic role as an emblem of the ontological mimicry practiced
by shamans in their sessions. As a matter of fact, the latter must
identify with the “images” of the animal ancestors from the
primordial time, whom they “call,” “bring down,” and “make
dance” as helper spirits; and doing so they successively adopt
their subjectivities and their vocal expressions.27
In general, there are two ways that this “becoming
image” and this identification with the xapiri spirits may occur
during the shamanic sessions. The first involves a presentation
dance which is performed by the shamans and which mimics,28 in
a generic way, the dance of the spirits that are being summoned.
During this dance, the shamanic songs describe, from a distance,
and with a great wealth of aesthetic detail, the appearance and
movements of the xapiri, along with the different mythological
situations and cosmological settings in which they are involved.29
The second way is often brief and sporadic, with the shamans’
bodies suddenly becoming caught up in a very close and literal
26. Thiago V. V. Costa, Christian B. Andretti, and Mario Cohn-Haft, “Repertório
vocal e imitação de cantos em Cacicus cela na Amazônia central, Brasil,” in XV
Congresso Brasileiro de Ornitologia (Porto Alegre: Pontifícia Universidade Católica
do Rio Grande do Sul, 2007). Lawrence’s thrush is probably the most talented
“polyglot” bird in the Amazon. However, its elusiveness (it sings up in the
canopy, is visually unremarkable, lives in closed primary forests and only in the
westernmost part of the Yanomami territory) is what probably led it to be eclipsed
by the yellow-rumped cacique in the shamanic world of the Yanomami Indians
(Mario Cohn-Halt, personal communication).
27. Shamans are called “spirit people” (xapiri thë pë) and performing shamanic
activities is “to act as a spirit” (xapirimuu).
28. This presentation dance is the dance that the guests reproduce at reahu
celebrations between collective houses.
29. Several examples of these narrative songs translated by young Yanomami
scholars can be found on the CD by the Hutukara Association mentioned in note 20.
identification with the specific animal spirits that they are
successively calling down. Their gestures and vocals—which
become onomatopoetic sequences of animal sounds—then
refer explicitly to the gestures and vocals of the particular game
ancestors being presentified.
It is this mimetic practice of “becoming a xapiri image-
being” (xapiripruu)—whose purpose is to restore the dual human-
and-animal state of the primordial ancestors, in a reversal of the
mythological tribulations of speciation—that is the primary aim of
the young shaman’s apprenticeship. In this experience of ontological
regression, which is the main challenge of the initiation process,
sound is a crucial element, as Davi Kopenawa explains to us here:
When we inhale the yãkoana powder, we no longer
see humans very well. They take on an alarming
appearance, they stink of smoke and the noise they
make becomes frightening. When the power of the
yãkoana starts to grow inside of us, we become very
agitated and it becomes impossible for us to remain
lying in our hammock. Only the forest seems pleasant
to us and we only feel good when we are listening to it.
This is because the xapiri only want to be heard when
the humans are silent. They hate the racket we make
and take off as soon as they hear it.
Once we have died as a result of the yãkoana, we see the
trees become human beings, with eyes and a mouth. We
also hear the voices of the forest animals speaking just
like I am doing now. We understand them very clearly.
People who have not taken the yãkoana cannot see them.
They only hear their voices through our songs, the songs
in which the spirits name themselves, and then they
think that these words are truly beautiful. In these songs,
the xapiri describe the unknown places from which they
come; they describe places inhabited by other human
beings, faraway hills and forests they have visited.
When we die as a result of the yãkoana, our heads and
mouths shrink. The xapiri reveal themselves to us and we
hear nothing but them. We see them as an illuminated
cloud of downy feathers or bees. They constantly
appear and disappear. When they dance together, their
songs are truly beautiful. First we hear their voices
coming to us like the humming of flying beetles. Then
we gradually start to make out their mouths, their eyes
and their adornments. And that’s when we can really
respond to them by imitating them.30
– pëã:
Yaro pëã hwaiwii
The Origin of Animal
Languages
M
ost of the “stories from the primordial time”
(hapao tëhëmë thë ã) that the old Yanomami
tell are about the final upheavals of a time
in which humans and animals were still one and the
same. As a result of a long series of misunderstandings
and transgressions recounted by these stories, the primordial
ancestors, the Yarori pë,31 lost their original “humanimal”
state. Although these happenings are often told with much
exuberant humor, this loss is nonetheless considered to be
an unfortunate founding event. The period that these stories
describe is thus that of a regrettable ontological separation
between humans (predators) and animals (edible food).32 It is
literally “the ancestors’ becoming-bad time” (në pata pë xi ka
wãrirãeni tëhë) or “the ancestors’ becoming-game time” (në pata
pë ka yaroprariyoni tëhë).
In the process of undergoing these successive trans-
formations, the ancestors lost their human language and bodies,
and took on the many different animal “skins” (pei siki) and “voices”
(pei wã)33 that were presaged by the virtuality of their original
zoonyms. In addition, their inner images (utupa pë34) also spawned
as many classes of shamanic spirits as the ancestral names
contained in this zoonymy:35 “The Yarori pë ancestors from the
30. From a conversation between Davi Kopenawa, Bruce Albert, and Stephen
Vitiello, Watoriki, January 2003.
31. “Humans with animal names,” the Yarori pë are, literally, the “game people
from the origins.”
32. The word translated as “animals” in this text actually means “game” (yaro pë)
in the Yanomami language, as opposed to “domestic animals” (hiima pë), which
are inedible. The primordial “humanimals” were cannibals, humans then became
hunters. Since the game animals have kept their original human interiority, the
savage cannibalism of the primordial time has been replaced by this derivative,
and thus mitigated, form of cannibalism, which is hunting.
33.The word wã (or ã) means “noise,” “song,” “voice,” and “speech.” The verb wã hai
can thus be translated generically as “to emit a sound” or more specifically “to talk.”
34. The concept of utupë a (pl. utupa pë) refers, among other things, to the bodily
image of every human or nonhuman as a vital identity principle, as well as
to the original ontological form of every existing being from the “primordial
time.” Thus, as a component of the person, it is also conceived as a sort of inner
remnant of this primordial ontological form.
BY BRUCE A LBE RT 323
 primordial time changed into xapiri spirits and animals. Their
images became xapiri and their skins have become game.”36
In a reversal of our naturalistic evolutionism, what we
have here is thus animals descending from humans.37 Animality
and its divisions emerge from an original humanity that combined
the attributes of both of these orders, and which still constitutes
their common core. From this point of view, there is no past
“animal nature” of which the humans would represent the apex,
or external “animal kingdom” of which they would be destined to
become the “masters and owners.” Rather, they are, much more
humbly, just one of the many existing peoples that inhabit the vast
world of the urihi a forest-land and that, all together, make up its
interlocutory and cosmopolitical environment.
The Yanomami thus consider the different animal
species and the individuals within them to be peoples and
persons endowed with as much subjectivity and sociality
(primary qualities) as the human race (in its different variants).
The only things that distinguish the former from the latter are
their differing corporeal forms and their vocalities (secondary
qualities). From this perspective, the colors and patterns in the
feathers and fur of the animals are considered to be painted
body decorations, their cries and calls to be natural languages,
with all of these distinctive characteristics being the result of the
metamorphoses undergone by the first “humanimal” ancestors.
There is a myth about the primordial time that tells the story
of how the animals got their colors and their languages.38 Its
anti-hero is the lazy, foul-smelling Opossum (Narori a) who,
after being pitifully rejected as a suitor, invents black magic in
order to get revenge on his more fortunate rival, the master of
honey.39 After slaying his adversary, Opossum takes refuge in
35. The xapiri pë have retained the human appearance of the animal ancestors
from which they originate, but in a minuscule form. In addition, each spirit name
constitutes a class of entities (species) which covers an infinite number of identical
image-beings (individuals).
36. From a conversation between Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, Watoriki, 1997.
37. On this subject, see Claude Lévi-Strauss quoting Tastevin on the Kaxinawa
in the introduction to The Jealous Potter (Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press,
1996), p. 7.
38. Several Yanomami versions of this myth can be found in Johannes Wilbert
and Karin Simoneau, Folk Literature of the Yanomami Indians (Los Angeles: UCLA
Latin American Center Publications, 1990), pp. 229–68. This particular story was
recorded in 2003 with Davi Kopenawa’s father-in-law. It broaches a classic theme
in Amerindian mythology: see Claude Lévi-Strauss, “L’Origine de la couleur des
oiseaux,” in Comme un oiseau (Paris: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain/
Gallimard, 1996). The originality of this version, however, is that it deals on the
same level with the usually less prominent theme of the animals choosing their
languages.
324 TH E PO LYG L O T FO R EST
the hollow of a tree, and the other ancestor animals kill him by
crushing him with a huge rock. They then smear their bodies
with his blood, his brains, and his bile in order to acquire the
distinctive designs and colors that are found in their feathers
and coats (this is also the origin of the present-day practice of
human body painting):
Then, after they had finished, they wanted to start
talking in their own language. At that time the forest was
still new and raw, and it smelled very good. The game
people gathered together in large groups and some of
them, who were becoming macaws, began to say:
“Those of us who are here will try out our words first!
But how are we going to talk? No! We mustn’t ask
ourselves that! We’re going to talk in macaw! We will
make ourselves understood like this: ããã ã ã ã ã!”
The others answered them:
“Yes! Go ahead, you try first!”
“Are our words beautiful like that?”
“Yes, they’re beautiful!”
“Very good! Then let’s all talk like this! ããã ã ã ã ã!”
They immediately shouted out joyfully: “Hi! wẽ wẽ wẽ
wẽooo!” and flew off in noisy flocks to the tops of the
trees, which is where they have been feeding ever since.40
This same discussion was then repeated by many other
groups/species of ancestors from the primordial time who, having
each become game, then took off to settle in the different forest
habitats where they live today. The Yanomami thus consider
animal vocalizations to be linguistic forms equivalent to those of
“human people” (yanomae thë pë), and the terms used to describe
their forms of communication are often the same as those used
to describe human communication (conversations, ceremonial
dialogues, songs, lamentations). Moreover, describing the biophony
of the forest by putting animal conversations “into sound” in the
form of a mixture of onomatopoetic sequences and human words
is also a common narrative device in Yanomami stories about the
forest, such as those that describe, for example, the rich diversity of
animal calls and songs that gradually come to life at dawn.
39. Opossum is a famous character in Claude Levi-Strauss’s Mythologiques and it
would be interesting to analyze his rather surprising presence in this type of myth.
The opossum is a small marsupial, solitary, nocturnal, and omnivorous, known for
its unpleasant smell and poor hunting skills. It has a long, hairless tail, its fur is a
mix of dull yellow and black, all of which gives it, according to Buffon, “an ugly
look.” Opossum’s rival is often associated with the flavorful and much-loved honey
of the yamanama naki (Scaptotrigona sp.) bees.
40. Story told by Lourival Yanomami to Bruce Albert, recorded by Stephen
Vitiello, Watoriki, January 2003.
In contrast to our anthropocentrism, the Yanomami
consider animals to be former human beings who have taken
Pages 101 / 115
on the appearance (the “skin”) of game in the eyes of present-
day humans (who were later created by the demiurge Omama)
while, at the same time, maintaining their original subjectivity. Territory no. 4 Dzanga-Sangha National Park, Prefecture of Sangha-Mbaéré, Central African Republic
This premise leads them to consider that, in spite of this
corporeal difference, animals still see humans as their own
fellow creatures (except that they are “house dwellers”). So
Dzanga-Sangha
whenever the subject came up among us, the Yanomami would
insist on telling me that, in this regard, humans are without
any doubt also animals, or rather, that they are “another of the
same” animals (ai yama ki hwëtu).41 And they sometimes complete
this statement by explaining to me that the xapiri, who come by Bernie Krause
from the images of the first ancestors, consider humans to be
ghosts, and that, in addition, these xapiri spirits are “fathers”
(yaro pë hwiie pë) to the animals, who are merely their imperfect
“representatives” in the forest.
It is therefore not very surprising that, in the end, an NTIL THE EARLY 2000S, THE DZANGA-SANGHA RAINFOREST, LOCATED IN THE SOUTHERNMOST PART OF THE CENTRAL
ontological cosmopolitanism with such closely intertwined human AFRICAN REPUBLIC, FEATURED SOME OF THE RICHEST, DENSEST, AND MOST BEAUTIFUL BIOPHONIES ON THE
and nonhuman points of views should be associated with an
equally complex “humanimal” polyglotism. For the Yanomami, PLANET, WITH THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF ORGANISMS OF EVERY TYPE REPRESENTED. In the past two decades,
it is this polyglotism that gives such a resonant texture to the “silent however, incessant logging, mining, and the poaching of signature animals for protein and economic resources (ivory)
calm” of the forest (tisi ã wai) and opposes it to the “disorderly
racket” (tisi ã thethe) of the city. This confrontation between, on have transformed the biome. This plundering has had a profound negative impact not only on wildlife, but also on human
the one hand, the silence that gives order to the polyphonic voices groups, such as the Babenzélé Pygmies, or the Ba’Aka, who have lived there, more or less peacefully and in balance
of the forest and, on the other, our industrial cacophony, which
seals up all thoughts by filling them with darkness (in the words of with their environment, for millennia.
Davi Kopenawa), is in fact the focal point of the work of Bernie Recorded by Louis Sarno in 1994, this soundscape, realized in December 2004, represents the remote Dzanga-Sangha
Krause—one of the very few people who has been able to make
indigenous peoples his masters in the art of listening. bai, a marsh-like environment. This spot has, in the past, been frequented for most of the year by forest elephants that
gather there to bathe and partake of the salt minerals present in the bai. They can be heard splashing and showering throughout much of the sequence. There
Paris, December 201542
Translated by Jennifer Kaku are also many species of birds like Hadada ibis and African Grey parrots (and nearly 400 other species), western gorillas, and a wide variety of other creatures.
Situated just three degrees north of the equator, sunrise and sunset occur very quickly, literally in a matter of minutes. One moment it is completely dark; the
next, the sun has risen. This, too, is articulated in the soundscape: one moment just a few insects; the next, with the first light, a biophonic symphony.
41. A Yanomami variant of “standard animism,” to use Philippe Descola’s
expression from Beyond Nature and Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
A weak central government, lack of respect and support for the Ba’Aka, and the absence of protection for both wild and human life has allowed for some of
Press, 2013), p. 140.
42. The author wishes to express his gratitude to Stephen Vitiello (artist) for
the world’s most devastating acts of brutality and poaching to occur, especially to the elephant herds present in this example. Most of the elephant family
kindly allowing him to consult his recordings with the Yanomami from 2003.
He also wishes to thank Helder Perri Ferreira (linguist) and Mario Cohn-Haft
members have now been slaughtered, the ivory sold off to the illegal trade in Asia and the United States (second only to China in the volume of ivory sold)
(ornithologist) for their patience and their detailed answers to questions during
the writing of this text, as well as Uirá Garcia (anthropologist) for providing where the lust for this illicit “product” remains virtually unchecked as of this writing, while the lives and culture of the Ba’Aka have been profoundly disrupted,
information from his work in progress on the ethno-acoustics of Awá Guajá
hunting (see Uirá Garcia, “Karawara. A caça e o mundo dos Awá-Guajá,” perhaps irreversibly.
PhD thesis, São Paulo: University of São Paulo, 2010, chap. 7).
B Y B R U CE ALB ER T 325