Abstract

Ethnophonies is a concept that directs its attention towards the multiple relationships that ethnic groups establish with their sound environment, particularly when this is constituted as sound capital and is culturized in different narrative supports that are significant for the communities.

Ethnophonies depend on the human group that produces, listens to and reproduces them; therefore, they are not only constituent in the processes of ethnicity, but, since they involve culture, nature, memory and emotions, they should also be considered as a fundamental part of the biocultural heritage of peoples; a considerable number of cultural traditions are based on them. This article reflects on the relevance of the theoretical and practical use of the concept of ethnophonies for the study of diverse sonorities.

Keywords: cultural capital, sound capital, ethnophonies, biocultural heritage

ethnophonies: mexico's biocultural heritage

The article proposes “ethnophonies” as a concept for examining the myriad relations that ethnic groups establish with their sonic environments, particularly when these are configured as forms of sonic capital and are culturally elaborated in different narrative forms that hold significance for the community. Ethnophonies depend on the human groups that produce, hear, and circulate them. They are constitutive of processes of ethnic identification, but, because they involve culture, nature, memory, and emotions, they should also be understood as a central dimension of the biocultural heritage of these communities, around which numerous cultural traditions are organized. The article reflects on the theoretical and practical relevance of the notion of ethnophonies for the study of diverse sonic practices.

Keywords: ethnophonies, biocultural heritage, sonic capital, cultural capital, polyphonic resources.

Introduction

Ethnophonies is a conceptual proposal that suggests that the traditional music of ethnic groups is an accumulation of knowledge that goes beyond the sonority itself, that is, that it not only refers to sound, but also dialogues with other cultural spheres to consolidate as sound and cultural capitals of ethnic groups. It is a proposal developed from anthropology in dialogue with ethnomusical resources, so the interest is not only in the sound phenomenon, but in the interrelation between sound and cultural capital and how these require nature for their constitution.

The central objective of this article is to demonstrate that ethnophonies refer both to the sounds of an ethnic group and to a complex series of aesthetic, reflexive and epistemological processes on which an important part of ethnicity is based; for this reason, I propose to understand it as sound and cultural capital. Taking as a reference the concept of capital of Pierre Bourdieu (2000), sound capital refers to knowledge and forms of knowledge about the sound universes that incorporate, objectify and institutionalize the sounds articulated in specific languages that relate the human experience of being and being in the world. It is cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1998) because they are forms that express valuations and feelings; they communicate, transmit knowledge, require special technical skills, are markers of ethnic distinction and also of social stratum in the same group and are shared in intersubjectivity.

One aspect that distinguishes ethnophonies in their capital capacity is to consider nature as the essential element for the production of material and immaterial goods that, together with human labor, the use of natural resources and local technologies, allow the consolidation of musical instruments -material goods- and the creation of sound compositions -immaterial goods- that are part of the biocultural heritage of the communities.

Ethnophonies are aesthetic forms of sound that are distinguished for containing particular knowledge, that is, they are local epistemological systems that, in addition, require other polyphonic resources for their analysis, as I detail below.

In order to argue about the conceptual relevance of ethnophonies, I have divided this reflection into four sections. The first one presents the concepts developed from the sound studies that served me as a starting point and foundation in the conceptual proposal of ethnophonies; the second one theoretically exposes its pertinence and validity for the analysis of different sonorities in their relation with the biocultural heritage; in the third one I give some ethnographic examples for the use of the concept in specific contexts; in the fourth section, I present a couple of final considerations on the concept of ethnophonies.

Ethnophonies: a concept for anthropological analysis

The last fifty years have been particularly fruitful for research on musical phenomena. To explain them, the social sciences and ethnomusicology have established categories and methodologies of analysis to cross disciplinary boundaries and explain sociomusical phenomena in more detail. Among the most notable examples, Alan Parkhurst Merriam (1964) established that music is a human creation, it cannot exist by itself and, therefore, to understand it, human behavior where it is produced must be studied. It is interesting how Merriam developed a study proposal that analyzes the relationships established by music and musical knowledge with other fields of social life.

The contributions that arose from ethnomusicology, mainly after the The Anthropology of Music (1964), were substantial in the consolidation of the discipline worldwide; however, I consider that many of the studies that have been carried out delved into musical structures without considering the aesthetic, affective, sensorial and social elements.

John Blacking (1973) made important reflections on the study of music in social contexts: first by asserting that music is humanly organized sound that depends to a large extent on the constitution of the body and the relationship of human bodies in society. Second, because he proposed to explore the sensitive experience and the states of mind through which organized sound leads people. Third because, in his words:

Functional analysis of musical structure cannot be detached from structural analysis of its social function: the function of tones in relation to each other cannot be explained adequately as part of a closed system without reference to the structures of the sociocultural system of which the musical system is a part, and to the biological system to which all music makers belong (Blacking, 1973: 30-31).

Another key contribution was the study of the relationship between sounds and the understanding of the environment from a sound ecological niche based on theories of knowledge that allow the understanding of the world in an acoustic ecology that privileged the feelings and emotions that intimately relate the environment with people (Feld, 1982).

This background led me to become interested in the relationships established between the interpreting community, nature and the listening community, with the intention of reflecting on the sound and body experience of people in their relationship with their own environments for the conceptual formulation of ethnophonies.

It should be clarified that ethnophonies is not synonymous with traditional music (Stanford, 1979; Mendoza Gutiérrez, 1984), nor with popular music (Reuter, 1992); neither is it synonymous with musical cultures (Stanford, 1984; Luna Ruiz and Chacha Antele, 2018), nor with soundscape (Schafer, 2013; Truax, 2019; Olmos, 2024). However, it does bring together in a single concept characteristics of music, songs, dances and ethnic oralities that, as we can read in the different chronicles of the century xvi in New Spain, are closely linked to each other. In addition, they are intimately related to nature, since their source of inspiration comes from it and, in general, they are directed towards it.

As noted by Thomas Stanford (1984), “The indigenous concept of music, song and dance” does not isolate the expressions, but, based on the reading of primary sources of information, as well as on ethnographic examples of his own and of contemporary researchers, he was able to argue that they are inherent to each other and, therefore, the existing dialogue is intimate and in correspondence.

In its conceptual capacity, ethnophonies cannot be understood as the sounds of ethnic groups, since the interest is not precisely in sounds as physical acoustic phenomena, but in sonority; that is, in the quality of articulated sounds, in the human experience that involves auditory perception, subjective and mediated by a certain type of individual and, above all, collective interpretation. It is important to say that sonority implies a mode and that it is characterized because it has an intention, it is directed and has a meaning. Precisely because of this characteristic, it is subjective, since it has a value implication that is shared in a given cultural margin. Qualitatively, sonority is intensity, rhythm and culture (Olmos Aguilera, 2003, 2024; Cabrelles Sagredo, 2006).

Ethnophonies are sonorous expression and, at the same time, systems of knowledge that communicate, because they express the relationship between nature and culture and therein lies the communicative act and its meaning. Roy Wagner invited to reflect in this regard in order to avoid unnecessary dualisms: “Expression and communication are interdependent: one is not possible without the other” (Wagner, 2019: 123).

Schematically, ethnophonies are presented as follows: people perceive sounds coming from nature or urban environments, filter them sensorially and interpret them culturally; then they organize them coherently with a diversity of sounds that satisfy rhythmic and melodic auditory perception and associate them to certain sonorities that they will interpret with different musical instruments; these sound compositions are perceived by human and non-human agents that listen, feel and understand the sense of the forms. Finally, they reproduce, share and transmit them to consolidate fine and complex social and emotionally shared languages.

As can be seen, nature and its elements have diverse states that translate into multiple sound possibilities. For example, the roar of the north winds are not heard in the same way as the south winds that are lighter because they are not angry, as mentioned among the Nahua of the Huasteca Veracruzana to explain the reason for the more “violent” sonorities related to these winds during the Xantolo contexts (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Carnavalero. Source: Joel Lara González. Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz, February 14, 2024.

Or among the Nahua of Zitlala who during the festive context of the Santa Cruz mention that the tigers summon the air and the rains with a guttural bellowing sound that, behind the leather mask, they make while announcing their arrival and their confrontations (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Tigers. Source: Joel Lara González. Zitlala, Guerrero, May 4, 2009.

The sound environment is already a source of information (Schafer, 2013) that consolidates an acoustic ecosystem, but it should be clarified that this not only refers to the influence of nature and exterior spaces, but the environment -from its interior spaces- is also capable of producing sound motivations in people. For example, in some Tének communities of the Huasteca potosina, it is believed that with the passing of the years some posts that support the roofs of the houses begin to creak, in a sort of sonorous expression of being hungry and needing an offering. When the people, with the auditory sensitivity to perceive the creaking, realize it, they prepare the ceremony that consists of offering a little yuco (distilled agave), a rooster's heart, prayer and, in some cases, harp and rabel music or violin and guitar sexta.

From the approaches of Steven Feld (1982), Murray Schafer (2013) and Barry Truax (2006) on soundscape, an interesting sub-discipline known as acoustic ecology emerged, which studies the relationship between people, their environment and the particular sounds of the environments (Ferreti, 2006; Grimshaw and Schott, 2006).

I understand and share the importance of the soundscape category in musical and social research, I also agree in studying the relationships established between people and their environment; but I consider that the focus of interest is not in the sounds, but in the different sonorities created, interpreted, reproduced, shared and transmitted among the different members of a community.

This aspect is substantial because it does not imply a “natural” relationship between nature and culture mediated by sounds, since it proposes a relationship that is mediated by sonorities, insofar as they are narrative and expressive forms between nature and culture. In this relationship, it is important to consider those elements of nature that provide the motives of inspiration, composition, production, reproduction, transmission and diffusion of the sound capitals of ethnic groups.

A distinctive feature is that sound capitals are presented as a wide range of possibilities to take advantage of natural resources and transform them into ethnophonies. Therefore, sound capital is not synonymous with sound repertoire, but with how a relationship is established between culture and nature, which aims to maintain a balance between the two in order to have prosperity and well-being within the group. Thus, people offer sonorities and other narrative forms that accompany them in order to maintain a balanced relationship between nature, society and culture.

Ethnophonies are any sonorous expression of a cultural repertoire that sublimates a listening community by the type of epistemological content they contain and transmit. Oral traditions, prayers, political speeches, onomatopoeias, dramaturgies, dialogues, dances and music that synthesize human relations with different aspects of being and being in the world are examples of ethnophonic knowledge that is determined by the content and not only by the sound expression. For this reason, ethnophonies are not isolated expressions, they are always accompanied by other spheres of cultural knowledge: religious, ritual and political ceremonies, dances, theaters, textiles, plastic art, traditional medicine, food, memory and oral knowledge that, as a whole, constitute texts that document the existence and resistance of ethnic groups in the face of the onslaught of modernity. Like all musical and cultural expressions (Olmos, 2018), ethnophonies are constantly exposed to changes and transformations, so the emergence of new sonorities are an important resource to narrate the experience of being in the world.

Ethnophonies are long-lasting knowledge that do not settle and are updated according to the historical epoch and the socio-political conditions in which they are generated. They are narrative forms that express certain human phenomena that are significant and, in this transit, are projected as knowledge, since they raise, describe, denounce and teach how to live in different social environments resulting from phenomena such as human mobility, abandonment, displacement and occupation of territories, recreation of cultural identities, risk and exposure to soil, air and water pollution that forces people to compose, recompose or even forget ethnophonic, musical and cultural knowledge in general.

Under these circumstances, ethnic groups create, recreate, recover or lose their sound universes and, many times, there are no adequate strategies to safeguard ethnophonic or cultural resources, and they end up disappearing from the memory of the communities.

Ethnophonies are composed from processes of signification that begin with the perception of sounds coming from the environment; then, people culturally interpret those sounds that constitute motifs and associate them to the sonorities that they will reproduce with different types of instruments to consolidate compositions that materialize in discourses.

This aspect is substantial in anthropological analysis. It must be understood that discourses are expressions materialized in a communicative act; they are social practices between two or more persons and/or entities in specific contexts (Calsamiglia and Tusón, 2012). Discourses are coherently articulated compositions that synthesize particular visions of the world, arranged in a systematic way to express thoughts and emotions.

Sound discourses are intentional symbolic frameworks that enclose cognitive, social, religious, political and ecological elements, which seek to generate situations, interpersonal relationships, objects of knowledge, sacred relationships, as well as diverse regimes of alteration of the person, time and space. They are also a substantial source for the analysis of ethnophonies. On the one hand, they represent the contextual components of the communicative act (Hymes, 1974): situation, participants, purposes, sequences of acts, key, instruments, norms and genres; on the other hand, they allow us to analyze and understand the performative character of sound discourse.

In this sense, the analysis of ethnophonies is based on the study of sound discourses, from their contextual aspects, to the aspects that dramatize and make present (Díaz Cruz, 2008) realities and regimes of time, space and otherness that can be as distant as the creation of the world itself.

Ethnophonies are a creative force, that is to say, they bring into being and existence through their discourses put into action, be it through music, prayers, oral traditions, political discourses or diverse sonorizations of divergent natures; they are positioned as systems of knowledge that allow for the exploration, understanding and transmission of knowledge about the world.

I would like to close this section by presenting the following research question: what is the relationship between sounds and ethnic groups? This reflection has accompanied me in different fieldwork stays, recording and documenting oral, musical, corporal and textile knowledge among Yoremes groups from Sinaloa, Nayeri from Nayarit; Nahua, Tének and Otomi from Huasteca; Nahua from Sierra Norte de Puebla, Nahua from Montaña Baja de Guerrero and Zapotec from Valles Centrales de Oaxaca. With the ethnographic material documented, I have been able to reflect on the relationship between sound experience and ethnic group in order to propose ethnophony as a conceptual resource in anthropological research.

To rehearse a possible answer, and based on the contributions of Fredrick Barth (1976), I must first say that ethnophonies are an important element of identification and ascription among individuals, usually from the same social group. However, the sonorous borders between groups can be blurred and share similar sonorous elements, motifs and interpretations in the same cultural area.

Thus, ethnicity is a category that allows to experience and organize social relations with individuals of the same group, but also with neighboring groups and thus to ascribe or deny possible interactions. Relationships are even extended to elements of nature, saints, spirits, deities, and beings, both beautiful and ugly, with whom the world is shared. To establish or reject these relations, the sonorous speeches constitute a substantial principle and, thanks to the sonorous experience, they sustain a category of sonorous identification, of social organization and hierarchy, of sonorous organization, of principles of distinction in which the local interpretation of the people from their ethnic perspective cannot be dispensed with. This characterizes the concept of ethnophony, since neither music, nor sounds, nor sonorities, nor sonorous discourses, nor the musical phenomenon make it be, but the set of all of them with which the members of the ethnic groups reflect and affirm their ethnophonic resources.

The relationship between sound experience and ethnic groups, ethnophony, is based on those sensorial images that are invoked through the acoustic images developed in the sound discourses; while the sensorial ones are related to objects, beings, spaces and events that become present in each ethnophonies' action. Therefore, ethnophonies are knowledge systems that are the historical result of sensitive experience, memory and agency that promote and procure an intimate relationship between ethnic groups and their inhabited environments. As a concept of analysis, it is fundamental to understand ethnophonies from the following characteristics:

• This specialized knowledge goes beyond the interpretation of musical instruments, as it is associated with processes of health and illness, agricultural ceremonies, various festivities, petitions and thanksgiving, among others.
• They involve memory, are knowledge that comes from the ancestors and, many times, do not recognize personal authorship. They depend on memory and orality for their intergenerational transmission. They are interwoven in a sensitive experience that integrates the senses of hearing, sight and touch. They refer to other temporal and spatial regimes that make interpreters and listeners transit through alternative dimensions of existence. They are based on the deep knowledge of nature and based on the sounds coming from the sky, the stars, the sun, the earth, the fire, the water, materializing in sound sequences of the universe. They form a multisensorial experience: they sublimate humans and non-humans, sacred and nefarious entities, as well as those elements of nature and sound instruments that have their own agency. They constitute cognitive systems and, at the same time, they are a fundamental part of the historical processes and sound identities of communities. They produce musical, sonorous and cultural genres and subgenres that are intimate to the culture. The source of inspiration is in nature, specific sound languages are created to express this relationship. Also the technological development is manifested, since great part of the sonorous instruments come from a sensitive knowledge of the nature for their elaboration and interpretation. Ethnophonies are a fundamental aspect of the biocultural heritage of ethnic groups, since they refer to the knowledge of nature and, thanks to the diversity of sonorities, promote cultural repertoires that satisfy nature and sublimate those who listen. In their analytical depth, ethnophonies should be elements of cultural identification of both ethnic groups and related cultural areas; that is to say, they are elements of distinction and ethnic recognition.

Ethnophonies: biocultural heritage

Ethnophonic analysis studies how in particular contexts and situations sound discourses reveal cultural characteristics that are closely linked to nature in a dialectical relationship. Following Guillermo Sequera (1987), the central interest is in how diverse sonorities generate knowledge that is transmitted in different material supports and, in addition, narrate the sonorous experience of being and being in the world.

Sequera, in order to distance himself from Western musical culture, proposes the term cosmophony (1987, 2019) to talk about the sound relationship between nature and culture. In this sense, it is substantial to understand that ethnophonies generate ecological, technological, social, emotional, religious and cultural knowledge that are transmitted from different types of cultural materializations; therefore, ethnophony and biocultural heritage are inexorably linked.

A country's cultural heritage is made up of different elements that allow people to feel identified with a territory and with significant cultural emblems. It is divided into tangible cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage: the former groups together elements corresponding to material goods, while intangible heritage -also called living heritage- is made up of intellectual goods, knowledge and know-how such as oral tradition, cuisine, religion, traditional medicine, technology, textiles, festivals, music and dances, to mention a few examples.

A substantial aspect that Unesco (2003) does not consider as support for intangible heritage is nature, since it is the source of inspiration, composition and production of ethnophonies, as well as material resources that serve for the elaboration of instruments for the interpretation of sonorities.

For this reason, I am interested in establishing a dialogue between tangible and intangible cultural heritage and ethnophonies in their constitution as biocultural heritage in four ways. First, because they are inherited from previous generations, which provides historical depth and cultural belonging; second, because they are transmitted and shared, making people feel part of that heritage, not only as heirs, but also as possessors and co-responsible for the care and transmission of the heritage; third, because people generate dynamics that prevent the heritage from becoming obsolete and give it new meaning in order to keep it alive; and fourth, because ethnophonies are an intangible heritage that requires specific material goods for its creation and interpretation; being a point of articulation between tangible and intangible heritage and being closely linked to nature, it is possible to position them as biocultural heritage of ethnic groups.

Ethnophonies represent an arsenal of knowledge that links nature and culture and are characterized because the sound capital is related to various ceremonies or rites that are determinant in a society. The interpretation, composition, destiny and transmission of ethnophonies depend on different narrative supports. For this reason, it is proposed that they be investigated from a multimodal semiotic perspective that attends to oral, musical, sonorous, visual and corporal texts that are configured in a cohesive manner.

Multimodality (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001) resorts to the analysis of different modes of giving meaning in acts of communication that constitute networks of potential meanings and, at the same time, attend to the different human modes involved in communicative acts. For example, the human voice, music, body gestures, aromas, food, technological resources and, with the same importance -from within the Mesoamerican cosmovisions-, the elements of nature to which a certain sonority is also attributed.

When perceived by the human senses, they are expressed in cultural texts (Geertz, 2005). They reflect the human experience of inhabiting the world, that is, they represent the giving of meaning to human life itself. Ethnophonic analysis proposes an investigation that not only focuses on the sound experience, but also on the visual and bodily experience that allows linking people with their environment (Rappaport, 1987); that is, with those living organisms with which they generate certain exchanges that satisfy physiological, biological and spiritual needs in the same habitational perspective (Ingold, 2000).

The study of ethnophonies cannot disregard its relationship with other specialized knowledge, since the universe of sound occurs in specific moments in which people and the environment are part of the same system in which feelings, ways of learning and receiving knowledge and emotions are similar (Lammel and Katz, 2008). The relationship between environment and sound universe leads to broaden the view towards other cultural texts, such as dances, evangelization theaters, offerings, ceremonies and even sonorities associated with specific activities such as sowing or embroidery. To associate ethnophonies to these activities or to constitutive stages of the human being, means to deepen in the ethnophonic knowledge on which the memory and the biocultural patrimony of the peoples are based, which, in their own historicity, turn out to be a clamor that claims the respect to life, traditions, ways of historicizing and to the environment of which they are part.

To this universe of sounds are added sonorities that are inherent to the meaning of traditional music: prayers, onomatopoeias or cries of emotion in the verbal field; maracas, rattles and tapping, in the corporal field; stimuli and responses from nature and from the beautiful and terrible beings of each cultural group. These are some of the examples that constitute the ethnophonic field proposed here (Video 1).

These ethnophonies have an intimate relationship with the environment and nature and, in general terms, the source of inspiration comes from it. Their durability and transmission depend to a great extent on orality and memory; however, there is also room for innovation or cultural borrowing from other regions, other structures and even other ways of instrumentation that allow the sound universes to remain in force.

The importance and relevance of the theoretical and practical use of the ethnophonies concept refers to the sound phenomena in dialogue with other cultural capitals in relation to the cosmovision, composition, production, administration and transmission of the sound knowledge of the communities in their close relationship with nature; therefore, ethnophonies are one of the main biocultural heritages of the ethnic groups.

The concept of biocultural heritage refers to the knowledge generated in the connection between the biological and cultural diversity of ethnic groups. It refers to ecological practices in which ecosystems and biological diversity are fundamental to the permanence and survival of human groups and, at the same time, are significant elements of cultural identification.

Biocultural heritage starts from being able to “reinforce the uniqueness that emerges from the confluence of biodiversity and cultural diversity in local contexts and specific historical conditions [...] that emerges with the defense of the territory [...] from the biocultural heritage in the face of threats, risks and internal and external vulnerabilities” (Boege, 2021: 40).

Ethnophonies and biocultural heritage synthesize the dialectical relationships between nature and culture in determined biocultural landscapes (Boege, 2021) and that, from my argumentation, could be characterized by three aspects: on the one hand, the use and exploitation of local natural and technological resources for the elaboration of sound instruments; on the other hand, the recognition of what Víctor M. Toledo and Narciso Barrera Bassols have defined as biocultural memory (2014), which is expressed with the production, reproduction, transmission and perception of sound capital in ethnic groups of knowledge and environmental knowledge in different sonorities; finally, understanding how the sound experience is structured in different semantic fields (Nava, 1991) to, thus, establish a model that details the classification and conceptualization of sound capital and ethnophonies, according to the places and events in which they gain significance.

The above raises the distinction of semantic fields as follows:

• The relationship between sounds and the environment: means of inspiration, composition and sound production. This relationship incorporates knowledge of orality and musicality; it also analyzes the production processes of sound instruments and the use of natural and technological resources.
• The second relationship is between ethnophonies and contexts of enunciation, that is, specific contexts in which the sound capitals of ethnic groups are interpreted and consolidated as discourses. This relationship contextualizes sound genres and subgenres with other cultural texts within the generation of traditional knowledge.

It is worth mentioning that these relationships do not aim to become a miscellany of information or a folkloristic register of languages, but rather an analysis that combines cultural, sonorous, economic and political factors in the establishment of ethnicities, since knowledge, memory and cultural resistance are based on these relationships.

Before presenting some ethnographic ethnophonic examples, I would like to specify that the concept of ethnophonies is inspired by various works of ethnomusicologists and anthropologists with the distinction that ethnophonic knowledge is produced in the dialogic intersection between sonorities and other narrative forms of culture. From the acustemology proposed by Steven Feld (1982), which proposes sound as a way of knowing and being in the world and positioning the sensitive and emotional experience in the perception of sound, as well as the concept of cosmophony (Sequera, 2019), which proposes the sonorous relationship between nature and culture, ethnophony is added as a concept with two basic differences that, from my perspective, constitute its contribution.

On the one hand, to understand that ethnophonies are sonorous discourses put into action (in their performative condition) from musicality, orality and corporeality in determined spatiotemporal contexts. On the other hand, the ethnophonic understanding is not only directed to the sonorous expression, but to the explanation of the ethnophonic experience from the cultural margins. For this reason, it is based on a dialogic principle between ethnophonic discourses and the knowledge that constitutes knowledge and ways of being in the world.

Ethnophonies: Ways of Being in the World

As a theoretical-practical concept, ethnophonies deals with sound universes closely linked to nature that are constituted as discourses. In this section I present ethnographic examples associated with each ethnophonic process in order to show the relevance of the concept.

Among the Yoremes of Sinaloa, the drum is one of the musical instruments that have an important presence and with their respective differences in form, it is interpreted in the dances of pascola, of the coyote, among the Jews and it is also interpreted for political contexts with traditional authorities. Among these drums, the one that is used during the Holy Week among the juruezim or Jews is very characteristic (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Jews in Good Friday bullfight. Source: Joel Lara González. San Miguel Zapotitlán, Ahome, Sinaloa, April 15, 2022.

The bodies of the drums are usually wider since pieces of trunks with greater height and circumference were used; they are covered on both sides with a double patch of deer or goat leather that is fastened and tightened with strips of the same leather that joins the two patches. The sounds of the drums are low and are tuned so that they do not become sharp, since, within the ethical norms, this type of drums cannot be sharp because they are annoying.

To some drums to resonate -as compared to the Rarámuri drums- a thread is placed from end to end, with a small plastic sphere that rumbles when the drum is beaten with a drumstick with a head covered with some type of rubber, cloth or insulating tape. An aspect that I must emphasize is that this type of drums, like those of political uses, do not have musical qualities, as they do those interpreted in the dances. The sonorous uses have three functions: 1) to announce, as a kind of chimes, that the Jews are about to leave or are on their way, approaching a place of convocation and meeting. Its rhythmic quality, its pulsation speed, accompanies the walking march in a moderate mode; 2) in the runs or processions that are made on Fridays of Lent and during Holy Thursday and Good Friday, as well as in meetings in the temple during the time that Jesus is lying down, the sonority of the drums is in slow mode, with a mournful quality and of lamentation for the search and death of Jesus Christ; and 3) sonorities of excitement with a more accelerated rhythmic quality, which I can say border on aural stridency. This quality is presented in moments of corporal excitement, when the Jews, led by Pontius Pilate, look for the poplar crosses where Jesus is hidden in each plot; when they find him, they knock down the crosses and, when doing so, the pitero makes a mournful touch with his reed flute and loudly percuss the drums and play other sonorous instruments like ayales (maracas) and jirurquias (wooden scrapers) that accompany this type of moments (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Flute player. Source: Joel Lara González. San Miguel Zapotitlán, Ahome, Sinaloa, April 14, 2022.

Also on Ash Wednesday or the Wednesday before Holy Thursday at midnight, they look for the footprint of Jesus inside the temple; when they find him, they play again these sonorous instruments with the same quality. They are moments of fieriness that accompany the sonorous and corporal excitements that constitute the texts.

A substantial characteristic is the emotional perspective attributed to musical and sound instruments. The drums, depending on each use, have differentiated tunings that go from acute to grave. The drum used during the Holy Week has a grave tuning, and it is spoken with him to ask him that the emitted sound is always the suitable and required one. In case of not respecting the tuning and stretching the drumhead too much, the sound becomes sharp and this can bother the drum and, consequently, have a “drowned” sound or even lose the capacity to emit sounds. This issue is interpreted as an annoyance or anger of the instrument towards the person who made or plays it. It is very important, besides being a widespread resource among Mesoamerican ethnic groups, the extension of sensory, emotional, social and bodily faculties towards elements of the culture that are humanized to be able to understand them and share the world that is lived and coexisted (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Judezim or Jews. Source: Joel Lara González. San Miguel Zapotitlán, Ahome, Sinaloa, April 16, 2022.

Humanization processes extend the anatomical, physiological and sensoemotional characteristics of human beings to those cultural elements that are not human: plants, animals, musical and sonorous instruments, technological artifacts and tools, beings and representations of gods, saints and virgins of native and Christian pantheons.

Physiologically, the musical-sound instruments feel hunger and thirst and even share veiled languages with their interpreters. In the case of the Tének groups of San Luis Potosí, there is a musical dance genre called ts'akam son, a dance danced by men and women that is set to music by an ensemble composed of a rabel and a small 29-string harp, to which, at each performance and rehearsal, they are offered food and drink to keep them satisfied. In festive contexts, before being consumed by the people, they are fed. bolim (large tamale), they are offered yuco (alcoholic beverage), soft drink and/or atole and are usually given and poured into the head of each instrument.

At the end of the elaboration of the instruments, some carpenters (generic to name the lute players) offer a rooster's heart so that they have the necessary strength for the time they will be accompanying the musicians and, occasionally, the musicians, at specific times, repeat the formula so that their instruments are well (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Don Andrés making an offering. Source: Joel Lara González. Santa Bárbara, Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, December 22, 2012.

“Sometimes they feel afraid because there are many people who also keep an eye on them and scare them and we give them their heart so that they have the strength, we also put a red ribbon on them and throw a little garlic on them so that the bad airs do not come close and affect them” (Eduardo, arpero, Eureka, Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, October 2014); this care indicates that the instruments, given their humanity, are also susceptible to being affected by an ailment that puts them in danger.

In the dialogic relationships between human beings and musical-sound instruments, there are certain languages that generate intersubjectivity between them, they communicate so that, basically, the musicians can receive the message that the universe, by means of musical and sound instruments, wants to transmit. This is a nodal aspect in the constitution of ethnophonies in its processual character.

Prior to consolidate themselves as musicians, men are called in dreams, then they may fall ill and until they consult a ritual specialist to interpret the particular signs, they are made aware that they are being called for musical knowledge. In the socialization of the message, some member of the family or the community gives the instrument as a gift to the next musician so that he can rehearse and master the instrument; however, the structural knowledge -melodies, tonalities and rhythms- are transmitted to him, mainly, in dreams or, well, nature provides him, as a source of inspiration, with this constitutive knowledge. Undoubtedly, the processes of knowledge can also come from the imitation of other musicians, but there are oral-historical testimonies that indicate that in certain communities there were no certain dance or musical genres to imitate.

“To me my mother nature was teaching me the toques, here there was no teacher or someone who played the toques of the dance, to me they were coming in dreams and when I play, the toques are falling to me like the sereno falls on the earth” (José Andrés†, arpero, Santa Bárbara, Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, November 2014). The reference to sereno is an interesting reflection that is intimately related to the cultivation of corn. The sereno is a meteorological phenomenon that, during the early morning, produces a discrete spray of droplets that keep the plants hydrated and serves to nourish the soil, stalks and leaves (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Ts'akam son musicians. Source: Joel Lara González. Santa Bárbara, Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, November 22, 2014.

The metaphorical thought associated with nature is a constant. Among the Nahua of the Huasteca, there are two musical-sound instruments very present in customs and offerings that are metaphors of nature and good examples of how sounds become sonority not only because they have a cultural interpretation in which they are sustained, but also because, at the same time, they constitute forms of local knowledge. The first one, the tecomate rattle, usually filled with river stones and that accompanies the musical tempo and the corporal offering of the dance of men and women. Its importance is sonorous, but beyond that it is because “the sonaja represents the raindrops that fall on the earth” (Fabián, dancer, Sayoltepec, Chicontepec, Veracruz, April 2023). The second, the metallic bronze bell has a double association with nature; on the one hand, it represents and motivates the thunder to ask for rain; on the other hand, it represents the sound of the stars to keep moving the night and day (Video 2).

Regarding the administration and transmission of ethnophonic resources, oralities represent one of the most important sources: myths, tales, songs, poems, prayers and prayers allow access to other regimes of time, space and humanity. With the voice, ancestors, characters, places and moments from the most remote past to the most immediate present are summoned and evoked. Voices also move away, protect and keep from mouth to mouth, many of the most significant oral knowledge. The voice is produced when the air contained in the lungs passes through the vocal cords and makes them vibrate. By vibrating and emitting sounds, it generates sound waves that travel through the air to reach their addressee. The type of sound wave depends on the timbre, volume, age of the speaker, how the different organs of phonation are involved, such as the tongue, lips and teeth, or the intention and intensity of what is said and to whom it is said.

The following is a narrative about the importance of Apantonana, the tutelary deity of water among the Nahua of the Huasteca region of Veracruz; it should be noted that this narrative is based on a polyphonic principle, that is, there are several voices that form a unity of meaning around a central theme of the cosmovision of the Huasteca peoples. For the purposes of an agile reading, at the end of each idea, I place a footnote to give the corresponding credit, as well as any annotation that is important for the ethnophonic understanding of the narrative.

Those of old say that in this land there was a woman whose body sprouted fish. She would go to the river to wash and bathe and the water was salty.1 And when she went to wash, she used to stand on a bateya [batea] and when she got home, she would bring fish and her mother-in-law would say to her: “And why do you always bring fish, and I go to the stream and there is never any fish”. And they say that she saw her, she put her clothes on a clean stone and her mother-in-law was just spying on her and when she got home she scolded her very badly: “You are a pig and she scolded her and scolded her and became sad. When her old man came, she told him: ”I am not a pig, I come from the water and I leave, my home is here".2 Apanxinola, she is our mother, she feeds us, without her the plants do not grow, there is no life, food does not grow, there is no maicito, that is why we offer her, we dress her, we dance, we ask her forgiveness and we thank her.3 The water is alive, it is in the well, it is in the river, it is in the sea; the water also has its shadow, it has its body, it has blood, its mouth, it has hair and may it give us its blood, may it give us its milk and it is in the sacred court of our holy mermaid. And the first thing is to give her her offering so that she receives it and is happy to give us her milk and in a few days, the water will arrive and will stay.4 And when the mermaid comes to her offering, you hear and sometimes you throw [the water from the pot], that means that it is going to rain, that is how you hear that ch-ch-ch when they are dancing and sometimes they even jump, sometimes it gets wet and we feel and sense in our body when the mermaid arrives and we sense when her presence comes and suddenly you will feel like something is going to come out of your mouth that you have to talk to the mermaid and the trio too, what you say will play the sounds to the mermaid. Sometimes we cry for the mermaid to be with us, not to leave us, not to abandon us and sometimes we sing to her, I don't know the songs, that's how they come, they just come to my head and I sing them, like: “I don't know the songs, that's how they come, they just come to my head and I sing them, like:".“Amo choka, amo choka, tonana Xinola timosewi, tlamamala xochisones, akan xohitl timosewi”.5 The siren has her sounds, all of them are xochisones, but hers are halls, There is the son del aguacero, the son del pozo, the son de la llovizna or the son de la sirena. When it is the sound of the downpour, the dancers dance faster, they even hit it, because it is faster.6

As can be seen, the testimonies and narratives shared in interviews are also one of the main ethnophonic resources of the communities. Many of the mythical narratives and songs are transmitted within the communities, others are being lost with the death of older people and the lack of interest of the new generations. For this reason, I consider that the anthropological documentation of this type of narratives represents an adequate exercise of the cultural materials of the community to contribute to the safeguarding of the ethnophonic, oral and cultural knowledge of the communities in order to keep them alive in the memory of the people or, at least, registered and documented so that they do not become completely extinct. This does not imply developing miscellaneous mythological narratives or musical-ethnophonic compilations without support or context, but rather invites us to develop strategies for safeguarding cultural heritage, taking care of all the dimensions that surround it.

Final thoughts

What is the ethno of ethnophonies? I have already characterized the conceptual proposal in its theoretical-practical conformation, I would like to close this article with a reflection on the socio-political positioning of the ethnophonies concept, that is, the relevance of making a close analysis of what the people of the communities think, feel and interpret with respect to their ethnophonic knowledge, which constitute ways of being and being in their own worlds.

Precisely the ethno of this concept lies in the fact that, from it, it refers to “a type of history that is interested in groups whose knowledge, historicities or ways of being in the world were subjected to a double colonization, both material and epistemic” (Boccara, 2012: 41); for this reason, I consider it opportune to reconstruct processes of local historicity, from the diverse narrative forms, such as ethnophonies, in order to “demolish the debatable and rigid dichotomy between history and memory” (Boccara, 2012: 46) and contribute to the processes of construction and/or historical reconstruction from within the communities.

This reconstruction makes it possible to search for axes of study on the history of human groups in living archives, in bodies, music, dances, embroidery or other narrative forms in which ethnic groups have historically narrated and transmitted their alternative historicities (Boccara, 2012); that is, those non-hegemonic forms, constructed from their own cultural margins. Studying ethnophonies, as emerging forms of constructing historical processes, understands them as memories and ways of constructing knowledge from a collaborative dialogue (Rappaport and Ramos Pacho, 2012) to avoid continuing to impose interpretations far from the generation of knowledge from below (Thompson, 1964) and, also, to stop thinking of them under the categorical story, myth or legend, but rather as oral processes of the historical constitution of the genesis of ethnic groups (Audio 1).

Ethnophonies, understood as biocultural heritage, bring us closer to the understanding of ethnic realities and other cultural regimes that show how Western dichotomies are not part of their cultural repertoires, since nature-culture, myth-history, world-body are inexorably united and are a fundamental part of the constitution of ethnicities, privileging native historicities, knowledge and epistemologies, as daily forms of resistance (Scott, 2000).

The above does not imply understanding ethnophonies as a resource of marginal groups, but only to understand that, from within ethnic groups, ethnophonies are sound resources of positioning in which they narrate their experience of being and being in the world. Some from the religious and ritual sphere, others from the ethnic positioning, also as epistemological systems, and it is even pertinent to think that some sound discourses express certain forms of violence that have been historically imposed on ethnic groups.

One example is the desolate, descriptive and denouncing lyrics of some contemporary musical forms that -beyond the aesthetic form- find channels of transmission so that the history of dispossession remains present in the memory and invites people to remain in resistance and in the constant struggle for dignity:

A river of tears blooms
there in the Acteal site
and all the children who die there,
have never had Christmas.
Hunger sinks and sinks its fangs in
in Chiapas, Guatemala and Salvador
and the slaughtered brothers cry out
in the midst of war and pain.
No, I cannot remain silent, I cannot remain indifferent.
in the face of the pain of so many people, I cannot remain silent.
No, I cannot keep quiet, you will forgive me, my friends,
But I have a commitment and I have to sing the reality.7

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José Joel Lara González D. and Master's degree in Anthropology from the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (ciesas); ethnohistorian by the National School of Anthropology and History (enah). His research interests are ethnohistory and ethnicity processes, semiotic anthropology, body languages, ritual processes in ethnic groups, particularly in the Huasteca. Scriptwriter and director of Ethnophonies: water and rituality among the Huasteca Nahua people and his publications include phonograms 76, 72 and 60 of the Fonoteca del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (National Institute of Anthropology and History) (inah) on the documentation of musical and dance knowledge in the Huasteca. She is currently working on a postdoctoral research project at the enah on dreams as epistemological and ontological systems in the Huasteca.