Musical Body of the Universe: Unity and Multiplicity in the Spiritualized Cosmos of the Hohodene

This paper explores the meanings of ‘Body’ and ‘Spirit’ in relation to one of the most important personages in Hohodene cosmology, the spirit “Keeper of Sickness and Sorcery”, named Kuwai. [“Yurupary” in lingua geral] This Great Spirit is an extraordinarily complex synthesis of the Hohodene (and other Baniwa, northern Arawak-speaking peoples) worldview. His ‘Body’ was full of holes from which the breath of his soul produced a very large range of sounds, melodies, and song. All of these sounds correspond to primordial ancestral songs; they refer to core values and processes in Hohodene society: kinship vs affines, sorcery vs healers, the first ancestors (who were not yet fully human) and their relations. Taken as a whole, the Body of Kuwai, later transformed by the Creator Father Nhiaperikuli into sacred musical flutes and trumpets, can be understood as the means for reproducing ‘society’ and the ‘universe’. Thus, this paper explores the Hohodene musical body of the universe. In my interpretation, I seek to unravel multiple layers of meaning related to this figure by utilizing native exegeses that connect narratives, graphic representations (including petroglyphs), shamanic cures and visions, sacred geography, and sacred chants. I hope to show that Hohodene notions of Self, Cosmos, and History are intertwined in an allencompassing multiplicity of living entities into one material and spiritual ‘Body’.