Entre o medo e a saudade: imagens da caça nos cantos de kotkuphi, conforme exegeses de Toninho Maxakali

Abstract

The present work deals with one of those about ten repertories held and practiced by the Tikmũ'ũn-Maxakali, populations that comprise approximately 2,000 people, inhabitants of the extreme northeast of Minas Gerais and speakers of the Maxakali language. It was intended to transcribe and translate some chants from a version of a kotkuphi party, investigating details of the structuring of the series of chants, their themes, as well as the stories associated with kotkuphi. Kotkuphi is, at the same time, the inedible line of cassava and an agent found by the Tikmũ'n in the forest in the past. Since then, they have often come to the villages, having been gradually tamed by the fundamental support of women, their mothers, who feed them. The Tikmũ'ũn maintain relations with them characterized by hunting, commensality and music. Besides being great allied hunters, who always bring to the villages what they hunt along with the men, their parents, also come with their chants. The songs, myths and ethnography of some versions of the festival indicated that kotkuphi thematizes, besides hunting itself, violence, death, fear and nostalgia. More specifically, it presents images of the animals, which are appreciated by kotkuphi and exalted by their skins, their movements, their habitats. The link with kotkuphi also means learning, experience, a specific mode of sociality, in which it is important to take care of the gesture, self-control of anger, group life and, above all, of the practice of a non-look.