Label: Quartz Publications – !QUARTZ 004
Format: Vinyl, LP
Country: UK
Released: 1980
Genre: Folk, World, & Country
Style: Folk
In the eternal quest to discover the most extreme, other, unusual, singular sound recordings, the road really ends at this Yąnomamö shamanism publication.
The story goes that David Toop travelled to Southern Venezuela down the Orinoco river to stay with the isolated indigenous Yąnomamö people, known for their unique shamanic practices. These involve a hallucinogenic snuff called epena that’s made from tree bark mixed with ash and saliva which is then ground down into a power and ingested within the nose through use of a 3ft blow pipe. Very quickly the shaman enters a trance, enabling contact with the ancestral spirit world and inducing a variety of intense chanting and gesticulating. Intense is an understatement. The rawness of these recordings, lacking any musical accompaniment or dilution of any form is profound. Just the constant hum of rainforest wildlife, the occasional slapping sound on skin of the group killing mosquitoes and what sounds like a person loosing their mind. Luckily the accompanying notes on the reverse goes into extensive detail about the anthropological context of this practice, and as an aside there’s an amazing passage in David Toop’s Ocean Of Sound book that talks about this journey more. Quite simply the best cover we’ve ever seen. (NM/NM - top collector's copy)
Tracklist
A Dayari-Teri - Group Healing 24:30
B Torokoiwa - Solo Shaman 20:17
