At the beginning of 2011, the Araweté began to use the pen-drive radio to reproduce their songs. This immediately resulted in a surge of Araweté interest in record- ing and listening to songs, and a surprising increase in the number of shamans among them. The songs, traditionally sung only once by a male shaman in a ritual context, could now be reproduced at any time. The Araweté say that a dead relative only sings through shamans who knew them when they were alive, which begs the questions: what happens when a dead person’s voice can be reproduced after these shamans have passed away? What happens when the dead can sing forever? This presentation will reflect on these questions – particularly on their implications for the concepts of forgetting and discourse in anthropology – through a description of how the Araweté came to use pen-drives and the impact this had on their shamanic practices.

Panel: De-Centering Approaches to Discourse in Native Amazonia, organized by Janet Chernela and Javier Carrera Rubio.

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