Pàrkô jarkwa: cosmoacústica e cantoria no Cerrado Mẽhĩ (Krahô)

Abstract

For the Mẽhῖ (Krahô), an Indigenous people living in the Brazilian central plateau, the notion of the Earth as a living body resembles the Maracá (Cotoj), which is also systemic and breathes; their mythical-musical repertoires accompany the planet’s organic cycles, which in the Cerrado alternate between the two great cosmological halves, Wacmẽjê and Catàmjê, linked to the dry season and the rains. Pàrkô jarkwa is the cosmoacoustics of the Territory — the songs/speeches of all the alterity that exists within the three layers of the terrestrial biosphere. Through a collaborative and dialogical ethnography developed with Krahô teachers and masters on their me increr (musicalities), it was possible to understand that the organization and dynamics of the ancestral Songs coincide with certain configurations and functions of the Cerrado itself; the repertoire of Cantos da Madrugada taught by Pêhàre (the Xexéu bird) brings a feminine perspective to the scene, populated by species, epistemologies, and original principles connected to the Gourd-Women and the Catàmjê half, associated with the Moon and the waters. Songs, narratives, and explanations allow direct contact with an ontology grounded in diversity, networked relationships, and refined notions of ethical coexistence among beings; for the Mẽhῖ, the cosmoacoustics of the Cerrado — Pàrkô jarkwa — manifests itself both in the ecosystems and in the various families of songs that still structure and move the Krahô villages today.