Creation and Creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America

Ernst Halbmayer is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Institute for Comparative Cultural Research, University of Marburg, Germany. Among his recent publications are Indigenous Modernities in South America (Sean Kingston, 2018), and Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo-Colombian Area (Routledge, 2020).

“This volume is an outstanding piece of scholarship, which, from the standpoint of the processes of creation and creativity, accomplishes, in a good measure, a critique and reassessment of current styles on analyzing Amazonian sociality.” • Juan Alvaro Echeverri, Universidad Nacional de Colombia

• List of Figures, Ilustrations, Tables and MapsIntroductionAnne Goletz and Ernst Halbmayer Part I. Creation and the Original Conditions of BeingChapter 1. Creation, Creativity, and the Times of Origin: The Multiplicity of Transformative and Transcreational Processes in Amazonia and the Isthmo-Colombian AreaErnst Halbmayer Chapter 2. The Maize Bringer’sCreative Potentials: How People and Maize Co-actively Ensure the Continuous Existence of Maize in the Yukpa Territory of Sokorpa, Northern ColombiaAnne Goletz Chapter 3. What Does it Take to Be a Singer? Ritual and Creativity among the Pume People of VenezuelaSilvana Saturno Part II. Creating and the Genres of TransmutationChapter 4. How to Charge a Voice with Power? Transmuting Non-Human Creativity into Vocal Creations in the Western AmazonBernd BrabecChapter 5. From the Songs without Names to the Stories inside a Name: On the Poetic Creation of Normativity among the Ayoreo from the Northern Paraguayan ChacoAlfonso Otaegui Chapter 6. The Chant-Owner and His Music: Musical Creativity and Verbal Artistry in the Ritual Life of an Amazonian CommunityJonathan D. Hil Chapter 7. How to Transform the World(s): Generating Transactive Timescapes through Myths, Songs, and Magic Formulas in the GuianasMatthias LewyPart III. Creativity and Shifting the Context of SignificationChapter 8. Basketry, Mythology, and Shamanism in the Amerindian Cultures of Venezuela: An Ancestral “Art” Facing InnovationMarie Claude Mattei MullerChapter 9. Yurupari’s Disappearance: Women’s Laughter and Organology without Musical Instruments in VaupésJuan Carlos Castrillón VallejoConclusionErnst Halbmayer and Anne GoletzIndex