Download or read book Keepers of the Sacred Chants written by Jonathan D. Hill and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Wakuenai of the upper Rio Negro region in southern Venezuela employ a form of singing called malikai for ceremonies of childbirth, initiation, and healing. This ritual chanting is a rich amalgam of myth and music, and serves as a means of integrating individuals into a vertical hierarchy of power relations between mythic ancestors and human descendants. Jonathan Hill here shows how the musical and semantic transformations of everyday discourse in malikai integrate the everyday world into a poetic process of empowerment.