Among the Ayoré of the Chaco, one genre of music is separate from all the rest: irade, narrative songs whose themes always revolve around unrequited love, warrior deeds, or a shaman's vision. These songs are opposed to other sung or narrated forms in the following ways: a) they are publicly executed in an emotional fashion and received in an emotional manner by the public; b) they narrate happenings which are acknowledged by the members of the community as having occurred; and c) they have no curative, propitiating, or cursing dimension. A review of the cognitive sciences, musical memory and the songs in question permits us to see that the Ayoré have made a judicious cultural choice regarding the irade's performance: the conditions under which the songs are sung aid their insertion into the audience's memory, creating in this way a form of "shared collective memory" at the local group level.
Ayoré; Chaco; Songs; Musical memory; Cognitive sciences
