This volume brings together extraordinarily rich essays on Amazonian music by fifteen different authors. The title evokes the role of wind as a carrier, not only of sound, but of memory, meaning, and attraction. All of the music analyzed is ritual music believed to make the spirit world aurally present. The essays are grouped into two primary sections: the first deals with how music mediates between the sounds of nature and the social communication of humans; the second with how music transposes social relations, particularly between the sexes.

One of the intriguing ideas laid out in a number of essays is that flute music can be understood as an extension of the language of animals. Since humans are actually making the sounds, these serve as bridges between animal and human language. In the Wakuenai case examined by Jonathan Hill, the flutes are said to be different parts of the body of the creator Kuwai through which he speaks his “words.” Yet these parts also correspond to different animals whose sounds are made by the flutes (99-101). Because the sounds evoke, but do not actually imitate animals, the flutes cause listeners to reflect on the remembered seasonal cries or movement of species evoked by the flutes.

The link between the meaning of the music and animal communication can be so strong that one of the authors, Marcelo Fiorini, seeks to understand Nambikuara music by examining how this community interprets messages from birds. The language of birds, he says has three layers of meaning: 1) the bird presents itself by saying its onomatopoetic name, 2) the bird carries symbolic meaning gained from its role as a character in origin myths, 3) personal historical memories are combined with the previous two levels to produce a message. Flute sounds carry these same levels of meaning (174).

Often a wind instrument makes only one sound. To make music two or more of these instruments are played together each evoking the aural presence in memory of different animals. The deceptively simple music can be very complex. Acacio Tadeu de Piedade examines a Wauja case where two accompanists play identical flutes that make a single note. The master flutist stands in the middle playing a different note in a complex rhythmical pattern. This master memorizes a large repertoire of rhythmic patterns that must be performed exactly, capturing different movements of nature or the spirits behind it (245-246). In one ceremony described by Hill the aerophones evoke the sound of a river full of bocachico fish moving up stream to spawn (108). The movement of the fish is said to be a kind of “dancing.” By evoking these sounds in human music, the instruments cause the animals to be understood as social beings who speak, sing, and dance.

The second great theme that runs through these essays is the role of flutes in mediating social relations, particularly relations between the sexes. In the background of the articles is a problematic reality: the flutes are played only by men while women are prohibited from seeing the flutes on threat of being raped by the flute spirits or men impersonating them (241). With such apparent misogyny, how can the flute ceremonies central to Amazonian religion have redeeming value? In one way or another various articles seek to answer this question. María Inez Cruz Mello shows how the male ceremony is paired with a complementary female ceremony called the iamurikuma where women sing verses understood to be the words to the instrumentals played in the male ceremonies. Just as women are the audience intended to hear (but not see) the flute ceremonies, men are the intended audience of the iamurikuma The purpose of the music played through this combination of male and female ceremonies is to mutually provoke uki or sexual “jealousy-envy.” According to one of Cruz Mello’s Wauja informants, this jealousy (and perhaps also the sense of sexual danger) is not bad but is rather “the spark that ignites relationships” comparable to the burning but delicious taste of red pepper (270-71).

In his chapter “Hearing without Seeing,” Nicholas Journet uses a linguistic feature of Amazonian languages to shed light on why women are prohibited from seeing the flutes. Several Northwest Amazonian languages require verbal suffixes called evidentials or perspectival markers that distinguish visual witnessing of the action from non-visual perception such as hearing. Based on this distinction, Journet argues that the purpose of allowing women to hear but not see the flutes is to allow them to participate without giving them authority to speak with the certainty of visual evidentials (140). One of the great things about all of these essays is that they are full of anthropological data that often suggest a variety of interpretations. In Amazonian oral literature the limiting of perspective is often used to heighten imaginative experience. It could be that the ceremonial blocking of women’s visual perspective is not meant to control information but simply leaves space for the women to visually remember the actual animals or spirits evoked by the flutes more vividly.

All Amazonian communities posit a social relation to nature which is, at least to some degree, sexualized. The spirits behind the plant and animal world are moved to assist human beings through an empathetic attraction usually portrayed as heterosexual. This erotic presence is aroused by the music as well as by sensuous communication and the trading of teasing insults between men and women. These articles not only shed new light on these aspects of Amazonian culture, but also open windows into new ways of thinking about music, sexuality, language, and the human relation to nature.

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[Review length: 934 words • Review posted on February 19, 2014]