Music

While the spirit Bope-joku whistled a melody, corn rose out of the ground, unstoppable, luminous, and offered giant ears swollen with grains.

A woman was picking them and doing it wrong. Tugging hard at an ear, she injured it. The ear took revenge by wounding her hand. The woman insulted Bope-joku and cursed his whistling.

When Bope-joku closed his lips, the corn withered and dried up. The happy whistlings that made the cornfields bloom and gave them vigour and beauty were heard no more. From then on the Bororo people cultivated corn with pain and effort and reaped wretched crops.

Spirits express themselves by whistling. When the stars come out at night, that’s how the spirits greet them. Each star responds to a note, which is its name.

(from Genesis (Memory of Fire trilogy, part one) by Eduardo Galeano)

This is one of a number of creation myths on subjects from magic and mosquitos to laughter and the rain that make up the first part of Galeano’s history of the Americas. They’re harvested by the author from native stories penned long before westerners invaded the continent. On reading these texts I’m struck by their poetic beauty and inventive playfulness, but in their distance from the oblique concision of current scientific fact I’m also reminded of Laurie Anderson’s Hey Ah from the third part of United States Parts I to IV.

MP3:
Laurie Anderson / Hey Ah