Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Most of the songs are composed by young people who are seeking supernatural powers, and have gone off wandering in solitary places for hours and days, their flute at their lips; thus one has to take into consideration the influence that the musical scale peculiar to such and such a flute will exercise on the tunes that are made up. When a young man wishes to acquire supernatural power, be it for hunting, for gambling, or for shamanism, etc...,he runs away from everyone, he wanders aimlessly through wild lonely places, where he lets himself fall into endless daydreams, more or less accompanied by hallucinations. Finally he sets himself to composing a song which will be for him the total expression of that particular experience. This song "belongs" to him; that is to say that everyone calls it his song, the song of so-and-so. But he never keeps it to himself along, like a secret; he will sing it openly in front of others. And if it pleases them musically, they'll learn it and it can even become very popular and go through quite a few variations. But its supernatural effectiveness is limited only to him who found it, whose voice and special way of singing the spirits will of course know how to recognize.

-Jaime de Angulo

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