"Vamos laçar nossos xerimbabos": a estética da captura dos instrumentos sagrados de Jurupari dos Baré do alto Rio Negro (AM)

Abstract

The present article deals with the problem of ownership and mastery/owner of xerimbabos in the Amazonian northwest, the focus will be given to my ethnographic material with the Baré, Aruak people, speakers of nheengatu (a kind of general language) and Portuguese, of the Rio Negro basin. The Baré, like other peoples of the region, are recognized for perpetuating a ritual tradition that revolves around a central person of the rionegrina cosmology called, among other names, Jurupari. The most salient aspect of these practices of ritual knowledge derives from the secret relationship of “care” that initiated men have to have with “musical instruments,” called by the xerimbabos by the Baré, which women, men and children not initiated are forbidden to see but they can hear them. I intend to show the variation or configuration that the relational categories of owner and xerimbabo assume in the ritual context, in short, the aesthetics of the capture of the sacred instruments of Jurupari of the Baré.