The heartbeat of the Mapu
Documents and knowledge on the margins (02)
It has been labeled as primitive, shamanic, ancestral… It has been used by many foreign “creators”, without any respect, to give an “ethnic” touch to their jazz, classical, rock or New Age compositions… The music of the Mapuche people (from Mapudungu mapu, “land” and che, “people”) has had a great diffusion. However, paradoxically, it is among the least known and least understood of the southern cone of the Americas.
Mapuche sounds and rhythms are centuries old. And they have resisted attacks and external influences as much as their creators, who withstood the onslaught of the Inca hosts, the Spanish troops, the Republican armies and the Pinochet’s death brigades and are still there. Perhaps more dispossessed than at the beginning, but still standing, exhibiting a pride difficult to erase.
Their music is, unfailingly, associated to activities, ceremonies, rites and well determined moments. It is practically sacred. It accompanies dances of celebration and gratitude to the spirit of the heights, Ngenechen, or prayers for healing and cleansing, or intimate memories and wishes of love. But it also puts rhythm and melody to struggles, protests, claims, battles…
The beat of this music is marked by the kultrún, one of the two drums used by the Mapuche. It was said that this small membranophone summoned, called, opened the doors to the invisible world of the spirits. With its sound one cursed and healed. The kultrún took possession of whatever its interpreter named: if the interpreter said “rain”, the kultrún endowed that word with all its power.
And it rained.
Basically, it is a wooden kettledrum with a semi-spherical body, whose mouth is covered by a patch of peeled leather. It is used by the machi, the Mapuche (usually female) “shamans”. The machi are the ones who invoke the ancient spirits, who pray for rain and good harvests, who heal with herbs and prayers. And they usually do so by striking their kultrún.
On its head, the drum wears a characteristic design, which may vary in some details but generally respects a fixed structure. The circular leather surface is cut by a cross, which marks the four parts into which the Mapuche divide the universe. The arms of the cross end in the feet of the choike, the Patagonian ostrich, an animal always present in the legends of this people. The center of the leather head (and of the universe) is usually marked by a circle, which represents the community to which the machi who owns the instrument belongs. And in each of the sections into which the drumhead is divided, two stars, the sun and the moon are placed: the ones determining the weather and the seasons.
Building a kultrún is not easy. In the old days, it had to be made by a craftsman who knew the Mapuche tradition, at the express request of the machi. The artisan had to carve the body of the drum out of a piece of trunk of foiye or triwe, the sacred trees. These trunks had to be cut during the püken, the rainy season. Before chopping, it was necessary to ask permission from the ngen-mawida, the protective spirit of the forests. It was cut following the grain of the wood, to maintain the flow of the sap and not to interrupt the flow of life. Then a circular piece of trülke (lamb) hide had to be cut to boil, scraped with stones, softened and attached to the wooden body with strips of skin or braided horsehair. The kultrún had to be assembled, obligatorily, in the yard of the house of the machi who was going to play it. Before closing it, a series of objects were placed inside the drum, always in numbers of four or multiples thereof. Some small stones were placed to give it newen or power, some seeds for fertility, some cereal grains for abundance, some medicinal herbs for health, some white silver coins for prosperity, animal hair for good luck, some sacred earth… And then, the machi had to enclose inside the kultrún a puff of smoke, the superior energy of the fire, and her own voice. Thus she would put inside a part of herself, her power, her energy, and achieve a perfect attunement with her instrument. Sometimes she would shout Akutún, akutún, ayuwi ta ñi piwke! “Here I am, here I am, my heart is happy!” Other times she would say Küme newen nieaymi: “May it have good power”. The kultrún was later consecrated in a ceremony called ngillatún man kultrún.
Today, the kultrún still sounds, as it did in the past. It resounds on both sides of the Andes, in the Patagonia of Argentina and Chile, in the hands of traditional music makers such as Beatriz Pichi Malén, Luisa Calcumil or the Aflaiai group. It resounds with each one of the machi who continue healing, thanking and remembering in all the Mapuche communities. And it roars in all the demonstrations in which the Mapuche claim their lost and sullied rights: the right to land and water, air and life, food and school…
Because the kultrún, the old people used to say, gives power to what is named.
