Ulutun: sound, materiality and power in a Mapuche ritual

ABSTRACT

In this article I reflect on sonic power in a Mapuche healing ritual guided by a machi (Mapuche ritual specialist): the ulutun. Through her prayers, songs and instrumental performance, the machi revitalises the affected person, their family, and their environment and frightens away ‘the bad’. If the machi and, to a certain extent, Chaw Ngünechen (Mapuche god with attributes of totality) are responsible for the production of sound, their power additionally comes from newen, the immanent force of the world, its beings, and objects. From a Mapuche conception of sound, this does not consist only in vibratory force, but rather also in a manifestation of newen, and the change in its vibratory qualities constitutes the expression of more or less newen. This double comprehension of sound, as both vibration and newen, aligns with ethnomusicological and affect theories and contributes to research focused on other cosmologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Mapuche music
• sound
• materiality
• affect
• ritual
• shamanism

Acknowledgements

In addition to acknowledging Mercedes Antilef, I am grateful to Juan Ñanculef for his friendship and advice. The translations from Mapudungun (Mapuche language) were completed by Gerardo Chandía Millanao, and Jaqueline Caniguan attentively revised them, and I thank both for their collaboration. I extend this gratitude to all the peñi (brothers) and lamngen (sisters) who assisted me as I drew near to the Mapuche world. Luis Achondo, Magnus Course and Hannah Snavely read a preliminary version of this article, and their comments were fundamental to strengthening several of the arguments. Finally, the careful feedback from the reviewers and guidance from the editors have encouraged me to delve into the central ideas that I develop here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Mapuche are the most prevalent Indigenous population in Chile, with 1,745,147 people, which represents 9.9% of the total population in the most recent census. Even though the majority of the people recognised as members of the Mapuche people (629,483) live in Santiago, Araucanía continues to be the region with the largest percentage of Mapuche individuals, a 34% of the 318,296 people (estimates based on Resultados CENSO 2017).

2 Chaw Ngünechen (also called Ngünechen) can be translated as ‘Father God’. He is the only Mapuche deity with attributes of totality, probably influenced by Christianity. Ana Mariella Bacigalupo (1995a, 1997) has developed a detailed analysis of the distinct accounts about the origin and development of the concept of the deity between the XVI and XIX centuries, as well as the characteristics and various manifestations of contemporary conceptions of Ngünechen.

3 Chilean colonialism began in the second half of the nineteenth century, at a moment when the young Republic invaded and militarily occupied the ancestral Mapuche territory and moved the Mapuche people onto reservations. For more information about Araucanía, the process of colonial plunder, and continuing colonialism, see the works of José Bengoa (2000), Comunidad de Historia Mapuche (2013), Martín Correa (2021), Pablo Marimán et. al (2006), and Fernando Pairican (2020). As Patricia Richards notes (2013), for the Mapuche, Chilean neoliberal democracy has represented the continuation of systemic racism and colonial plunder.

4 The kultrung is a kettle drum with a wooden body, typically laurel, over which a leather membrane is stretched. The tethers are made of the same leather. The drum’s interior contains objects with symbolic value, including the machi’s voice, which she deposits into it, and designs related to Mapuche cosmology are typically drawn on the membrane. In general, the kultrung is hit with a colihue (Chilean bamboo) drumstick (trupükultrungwe), with the end covered in wool. In certain dances, such as the choyke pürun, the drum is hit with two colihue sticks. The kaskawilla most often used today is made of four bells attached to a leather handle covered in wool. The wada is a gourd with a handle and seeds in its interior. The machi or one of her helpers typically plays these instruments. Musicians who play instruments such as the pifilka (longitudinal wooden flute, most commonly with one tube that has interior modifications) or the trutruka (long trompet with a cow’s horn on one end and a mouthpiece on the other) also participate in collective rituals. For a detailed description of these and other Mapuche musical instruments, see the work of José Pérez de Arce (2007).

5 The ngillatun, a propitiatory ceremony, is the most important ritual of Mapuche society and, therefore, is the ritual most studied by anthropologists and historians, among others (see, for example, Bacigalupo 1997; Course 2012; Faron 1964; Ñanculef 2018; Stuchlik 1976). Other important ceremonies for the Mapuche society in general include the wetripantü (New Year celebration), the eluwün (funeral ceremony) and the mafün (wedding). The datun – sometimes called machitun – is a complex therapeutic ritual led by the machi. There are many descriptions of this ceremony (for example, Alonqueo 1979: 160–73; Citarella et al. 2018: 147–72; Coña 2017: 348–66; Grebe 1973; Isamitt 1934; Métraux 1973: 190–5), but Ana Mariella Bacigalupo’s (2001: 81–7) is the most exhaustive. Other relevant rituals for the machi are the machiluwün (initiation ceremony) and the ngeikurrewen (ritual for renewal).

6 I have decided to employ the present spelling (ulutun), given that it is the term that is most used in academic literature.

7 Mercedes Antilef employed the expression ‘the bad’ (in Spanish, ‘lo malo’) to allude to the spirits, ‘demon’, or ‘devil’ (wekufü) responsible for the ailments of the person being treated. Throughout this article I use the aforementioned expression in this way. Magnus Course (2011: 33) observes that terms such as spirit or weküfü refer ‘to beings whose morality is not necessarily predetermined’. The rather imprecise way that Mercedes Antilef refers to the entities causing the bad is common within Mapuche cosmology. As Course notes, ‘Mapuche accounts of the supernatural are characterized by their ambiguity, an ambiguity that in turn reflects the fundamental ambiguity of the entities in question’ (33).

8 Mercedes Antilef always referred to a spirit of an ancestor machi (machi püllü) responsible, along with Chaw Ngünechen, for her power. Other machi refer to the filew, a complex spiritual entity that would correspond to a generic ancestral machi. As Bacigalupo indicates (2010a), the limits and the identification of the spiritual entities mentioned, the filew, the machi püllü, and Ngünechen, is complex, as they can be the same or differentiate themselves depending on the context. This is due to the relational mode of the condition of the person that the machi treat, especially during the possession and the ecstatic journey in complex rituals such as the datun.

9 I completed a total of three periods of fieldwork: the first, between January and March of 2018; the second, between December 2018 and July 2019; and the third, between February and March of 2020.

10 José Velásquez (2017: 254–55) also has dedicated a few brief commentaries to the character of the machi songs accompanied by the kultrung during the ulutun.

11 Ñanculef (2005) indicates that eventually the machi can achieve a brief trance.

12 See, for example, Anthony Seeger (2004), Bernd Brabec de Mori (2015), Bernd Brabec de Mori, Matthias Lewy, and Miguel A. García (2015), or the special issue of Ethnomusicology Forum, ‘The Human and Non-human in Lowland South American Indigenous Music’, edited by Bernd Brabec de Mori (2013).

13 For information about the four-part deity system, its generational characteristics and gender duality, and the levels of its relation with the machi, see Bacigalupo 2003.

14 According to Juan Ñanculef, ‘the meaning of the four rhetorical songs … that the machi sings in a ceremony … are more or less equal … it’s the beseeching of this reciprocity that the spirits are giving to her’ (Ñanculef, interview, March 16, 2018).

Additional information

Funding

My ethnographic research was made possible thanks to the program Becas-Chile, part of the National Agency of Investigation and Development, Chile. The Postdoctoral FONDECYT (#3220452) from the same organisation, and the support of Millennium Nucleus in Music and Sound Cultures (CMUS), ANID-Millennium Science Initiative Program NCS2022_016, has enabled me to bolster some of the ideas that I develop in this article.

Notes on contributors

Leonardo Díaz-Collao

Leonardo Díaz-Collao received his PhD in musicology and Master's in Hispanic Music from the University of Valladolid, and he holds a Bachelor’s in music theory from the University of Chile. He has completed ethnographic research on sound, music, and ritual practices in Wallmapu and has collaborated on other projects related to Mapuche music. He one of is the 2022 recipients of the Latin American Prize of Musicology Samuel Claro Valdés. Díaz-Collao is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Music at the Alberto Hurtado University. His current research explores, in collaboration with Mapuche musicians, the relations between identity, sound, music, and listening in Santiago de Chile.