Tracking Guarani songs: between villages, cities and worlds

For the Guarani, songs are one of the primary channels for acquiring shamanic knowledge and agency. Since the 1990s, some song modalities have also played a leading role in inserting Mbya and Nhandeva Guarani living in Brazil’s South and Southeast into the world of cultural events and projects. These songs are performed by child and youth choirs in shows and for CDs. My aim is to explore the shifts caused by the exhibition of these songs in relations with the jurua (whites). The strategy of ‘cultural invisibility’ once prevalent among the Guarani has been somewhat overtaken by efforts to display ‘Guarani culture’, providing it with recognizable and valorizable contours, thereby enhancing the power of the songs as a way to be heard on both the vertical and horizontal planes of existence.

Guarani songs; indigenous projects; "culture"; Guarani