SHOUTS - Music from the Rooftops!

Native peoples have their own sound

Photo of the group Jashnan, used with their permission.

In the Sibundoy Valley, a mountainous zone of the department of Putumayo in southwest Colombia, Jashnan, a music group composed entirely of Indigenous women of the Kamëntšá people, uses music as a form of recuperating their ancestral culture and strengthening the Kamëntšá language, a language isolate unique in the world.

The Kamëntšá are the ancestral inhabitants of the Sibundoy Valley, which they call Tabanok, meaning “sacred place of origin.” Since time immemorial, Tabanok has been a place of intercultural exchange and contact between the Andean highlands to the west and the Amazonian lowlands to the east. This has given rise to the highly syncretic and unique culture of the Kamëntšá, which features Andean and Amazonian roots as well as unique local elements. Perhaps this is the reason for the high degree of preservation and cultural survival of the Kamëntšá compared to other Indigenous peoples. Even after 70 years of indoctrination and misrule by Capuchin missionaries, Kamëntšá culture remains vibrant today. However, the community continues to face cultural, political, and ecological threats on multiple fronts, such as the construction of roads and extractive infrastructure in the community’s ancestral territory.

One of the ways the community has resisted external threats and reaffirmed its right to cultural autonomy and difference is through its colorful musical tradition, part of the Andean-Amazonian genre that combines melodies and sounds typical of their territory.

Read more about female and non-binary musical figures singing about their identity: Five songs to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day

In this interview, Kamëntšá musicians Natalia Jacanamijoy and Angela Jhoana Jacanamejoy share the history and cultural significance of Jashnan—a Kamëntšá word meaning “to heal”—in the context of Kamëntšá cultural survival, the role of women in Kamëntšá society, and the revaluation of ancestral wisdom.

Rowan Glass: When and for what reason was Jashnan formed? How has the group developed since its founding?

Original Quote

Jashnan: This process was born within the ancestral territory Tabanok (Sacred Place of Origin of the Kamëntšá people). It began in 2021 and was formalized in early 2022. The group was formed for several purposes: as a tool to strengthen unity within families and our Kamëntšá people and as an instrument for strengthening our ancestral forms of knowledge, including music. We are Kamëntšá women, of different ages, with different backgrounds, and this process of weaving has allowed us to recognize our essence as Kamëntšá women, heirs of a great legacy, which speaks of caring for ourselves, for the territory that is life itself. We have banded together along the way. Now we are seven women who make up the music group Jashnan.

RG: What is the importance of music within Kamëntšá culture?

Original Quote

J: Native peoples have their own sound. Music is in every moment, it is in the spaces we inhabit, even in the sound of our steps, in the beating of our heart. That sensitivity makes us musical beings.

The Kamëntšá people are sonorous and colorful. Music is present in everyday life, in rituals, in the territory, in the chagra [garden], in the singing of birds, the sound of animals, the wind, the rain.

It is important because it is part of ourselves. It allows us to connect with our heart, our body. From an early age we have been related to music: in the womb listening to our mother’s heartbeat, with the sounds of the territory in the walks that our mother made through the chagra, listening to her singing on the Great Day Bëtsknaté [a Kamëntšá festival celebrated on the Monday before Ash Wednesday] and during Uacjnaté [a Kamëntšá festival related to All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day]. We experienced it later in the healing songs of our grandmothers. In other words, music has always been present and is important to connect us with what we are, a sonorous people.

RG: Can music be a way to strengthen and recover the Kamëntšá culture and language?

Original Quote

J: Ancestral knowledge has been transmitted orally and has been shared from generation to generation. Music and song are bridges of orality that wisely allow us to strengthen and recover the ancestral legacy of the Kamëntšá people: memories, words, weavings, experiences, feelings, rituals, sacred places.

RG: Jashnan is composed solely of women. Why is it important to make music from the perspective of Kamëntšá women?

Original Quote

J: Leadership has been more associated with the male figure, but with the participation of women we begin to revive the love for what we like to do. As women we exist in various roles: caring for the home, in the chagra, weaving, serving the community, and all these spaces are not always available for us to claim our voice. It is important to listen to us and sing what we carry inside. It is a way to support each other, to break the mold and inhabit different spaces.

RG: Jashnan sings sometimes in Spanish and sometimes in Kamëntšá, and the lyrics often represent the Kamëntšá cosmovision. What is the link between language and music?

Original Quote

J: Music is a fundamental part of ancestry; in it is the identity of the people. There are lyrics in Spanish because you cannot deny a feeling if it is in one language or another; what matters to us is the expression. We also sing in our language as a way to revitalize the Kamëntšá language. We also work in a communitarian way among ourselves, learning and sharing this knowledge with other people, with more of the women and girls of our community.

RG: Today many groups in the Kamëntšá community use music as a form of cultural and linguistic strengthening and recuperation. What is the impulse behind this movement?

Original Quote

J: The struggles that we Indigenous peoples have had to confront at different times in our history are not at all unknown. Colonization brought about a territorial, spiritual, and cultural rupture, with stories of dispossession and violence. It is very important to ensure that the present generations, in the midst of so much information and external factors, have the opportunity to know and strengthen the Kamëntšá legacy.

Jashnan is a part of this new musical commitment, taking our successes with gratitude and humility. Many of our Indigenous brothers and sisters are looking for the same purpose and are promoting it through music.

“Jashnan” is a word which in Kamëntšá means “to harmonize.” It is the path of connection with the spirit. From the moment you arrive to the territory of Tabanok, you feel the spirit of the territory, compounded by the mountains, animals, rivers, streams, plants, and the ancestral memory of the Kamëntšá and Inga people who have inhabited the territory for millennia.

RG: What do you want people unfamiliar with the Kamëntšá community to know about it? What impression do you want to leave through your music?

Original Quote

J: As women of the Kamëntšá people, we feel that the most important thing is to recognize ourselves as the children of mother earth—that she is the source that gives us life and we are beings in constant change and connection with the spirit.

Our project was born in the territory of Tamabioy. In its lyrics and songs are carried the essence of women, weaving, care for plants and seeds, care for the territory, and the work of our community.

We would like the whole world to know our sonority, our color, our weaving, our territory.

Jashnan’s first studio recording was recently posted on YouTube; listen to it here.

This article was written by Rowan Glass and originally published on the Global Voices website on 20 December 2023. It is republished here under the media partnership between Global Voices and Shouts – Music from the Rooftops! and a CC BY 3.0 Deed license.

Language and songs go hand in hand

Walters, Oklahoma on July 18, 2017. (Photo courtesy Renata Yazzie)

This article was written by Renata Yazzie and originally published by Source NM on May 31st, 2022.

Songs are historical documents, narrating the histories of our origins, geographies, relationships and more. Songs and language are so intimately tied and their survivance depends on each other.

“Kiowa people sing Kiowa more than they speak Kiowa,” said Maxwell Yamane, a Japanese-American Ph.D candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland.

The sentiment is also echoed by Native musicians across genres, including by Mato Wayuhi, Lakota producer and composer most well-known for scoring the hit TV series, “Reservation Dogs.”

“Being Lakota, [song] is so integral to the culture,” Wayuhi said in an interview. “Even if you don’t sing or play anything, the musicality of the culture is so formative on kids growing up.”

The Native American Languages Act (NALA) was passed by Congress back in 1990, allowing Native American languages to be used for instruction in schools and affirmed the right of Native American children “to express themselves, be educated, and assessed in their own Native language.”

Just last year it was amended by Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to request federally mandated evaluations that ensured NALA was being carried out appropriately. The evaluations track the status of Native American languages every five years, and the results guide federal financial resources for language revitalization projects where they are most needed.

Yamane is researching how songs are used as a tool in response to calls for language reclamation and revitalization, and how federal policy such as the NALA is shaping the future of Indigenous sonic sovereignty.

Yamane describes all the ways songs could be used as a tool for language learning. Language teachers have options to teach songs from their community passed down from generations ago that are both composed in the language and musical style of their community. Other teachers opt to teach English songs that have been translated into a Native language. Sometimes there is an associated dance or instrumental accompaniment taught, but the core of the lesson is in participatory singing.

The elders in the Kiowa community that he joins in prefer to use hymns for teaching words not commonly found in everyday conversation, Yamane said. Kiowa hymns are entirely lyrical and usually do not contain vocable syllables (think: “fa la la la la” in “Deck the Halls”) like songs from other genres might. The hymns were composed primarily by Kiowa contributors and often contain lyrics that promote better understanding of Kiowa worldviews and philosophies — despite originally being written for Christian contexts.

“Songs and music are woven into the fabric of an Indigenous communities’ cultural ways. Songs are often viewed as being their own entities capable of interacting in sonic relationships with listeners of all backgrounds.”

And songs govern. They provide structure and protocol for a variety of events and situations. Songs heal and bless, functioning as both medicine and prayers. Together, they form the center of socialization and the cornerstone of our lifeways. Because songs are so important to the continuance and affirmation of cultural ways, one would think that it is within the best interest of tribal governments to claim sovereignty over the sonic realm of their communities.

Trevor Reed is a Hopi citizen and associate professor of law in the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. Reed completed a Juris Doctorate and a Ph.D in Ethnomusicology simultaneously from Columbia University in 2018. His research focuses on Indigenous sovereignty and creative production.

He broke down exactly what the Native American Languages Act meant for Indigenous sovereignty. “It doesn’t really produce any enforceable rights for individuals, but it does reaffirm the inherent sovereignty of tribes to pass laws or make law in the area of language. So that means individual tribes can exercise their right to govern language.”

The right of a tribe to govern their language has been most recently exercised in Standing Rock Sioux tribal courts with the banning of non-Lakota linguists and their organizations — Jan Ulrich, Wilhem Meya, the Lakota Language Consortium and The Language Conservancy — for a long list of offenses including, “breaking of traditional protocol,” ”breaking Tribal laws in the collection of our language,” and “commodifying and copyrighting our sacred language.”

In an article Reed wrote for the “Journal for the Copyright Society USA,” he states that “Congress has remained silent as to whether or not it intended copyright to apply on Tribal lands, and whether it intended to pre-empt Tribal laws occupying the same field as copyright.” The few cases addressing copyright issues on Tribal lands were split, he said, and did not offer a consensus.

Reed reminds us that, “music and sounds, it’s much different for us [Native Nations]…it could mean something totally different from what we think of when we’re thinking about something that’s copyrightable, like an album or a piece of sheet music.”

While enforcing copyright law would protect the sonic cultures of Native Nations from outsiders who have intentions to exploit, it could also suck the life out of them through overcomplicating bureaucratic measures. A copyright law encompassing all 574 federally-recognized Native Nations would be reductive, as each Nation has their own distinct laws, lifeways, languages, and sonic cultures.

Reed is a staunch advocate for tribes to claim sovereignty over their sonic expressions in a way that best fits their respective communities. As language and songs go hand in hand, “just like how the Native [American] Languages Act says that tribes have inherent sovereignty over language, I think tribes also have inherent sovereignty to govern music and it would be wonderful if more and more tribes exercise their rights in that area.”