Tracing Hallucinations: Contributing to a Critical Ethnohistory of Ayahuasca Usage in the Peruvian Amazon (2011)
Bernd Brabec2011, The Internationalization of Ayahuasca
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Abstract
This paper deals with the question of what happened in the Amazon before the current trends of Globalization of ayahuasca usage. In most studies, some “traditional”, “ancient” (for hundreds or even thousands of years ), and “shamanic” use of the compound is taken for granted, although there is no evidence to support this assumption. The fact that many Western users and researchers legitimate their doings by referring to “millennial indigenous knowledge” instead of the actual powers or effects of ayahuasca provokes the questioning of this assumption. Therefore, the author embarks on a broad comparative approach to ethnohistorical, ethnolinguistical and especially ethnomusicological data from the Peruvian Ucayali valley. The historical sources and etymologies aside, the contextual music plays a most convincing role: While non-ayawaska-related songs usually sound very diverse and highly attached to the respective indigenous group’s aesthetic understandings, only specifically ayahuasca-related ikaro songs show structural similarities, transcending ethnic and geographic boundaries, pointing towards a relatively recent distribution of these songs and their context among these peoples. Thus, the “millennial tradition” of ayahuasca use, at least in the Peruvian lowlands, can not stand up against ethnohistorical analysis.
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