Singing White Smoke: Tobacco Songs from the Ucayali Valley

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Singing White Smoke: Tobacco Songs
from the Ucayali Valley
Bernd Brabec de Mori
en kano choronon / chorochorobainkin
pishayaketaananronki / nokon rome sheina
rome shei mediconin / medicina ayonxon
rome shei ininti / medicina aboxon …
I am going to release the world-in-the-song, and releasing, I am advancing;
after unfastening it, they say, I am going to convert my rolled-up tobacco,
the rolled-up-tobacco-physician into medicine.
The scent of my rolled-up tobacco I will entirely transform into medicine …
(Beginning of a song by Shipibo healer Gilberto Mahua,
performed on 22 January 2006)1
Ikara purutsu nanin katupitsara …
Let us sing this cigar …
From a Kukama magical song for shing in Rivas (2004: 103).
Introduction: Tobacco is not important (any more)
Someone living in a so-called developed country, maybe in Europe, East Asia or
North America, who wishes to acquire some data on how traditional medicine is
conceptualized among the Western Amazonian indigenous group Shipibo-Konibo
(mostly shortened to Shipibo) will probably grab his or her smartphone and type
some keywords into a search engine. Results pop up as an incredibly long list.
Surprisingly, most entries are in English rather than Spanish. They tell about
medicine retreats in rainforest lodges, presenting healers called ‘shamans’ who know
how to cure diabetes, cancer or even AIDS; the holistic experience of being part of
a millennial chain of mystical knowledge can be purchased online, and all-inclusive
In: Russel, Andrew & Elizabeth Rahman (eds., 2015),
The Master Plant – Tobacco in Lowland South
America, pp. 89–106. London: Bloomsbury.

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trips to study jungle medicine with the most renowned shamans of true master-healer
ancestry are fairly easy to book and may seduce the unwary (fees are mentioned
later). Delving deeper into this database (maybe also feeding a video portal with the
same keywords) one may discover that the Shipibo safeguard amazing techniques of
how to sing songs encoded in embroidered geometric healing patterns (which can
also be ordered online), patterns rendering what the shamans see in their visions
induced by the ‘entheogenic’ or ‘sacred’ (or even ‘divine’) drink called ayahuasca.
One who drinks ayahuasca – you will probably find out that within weeks an
ambulant real shaman will also offer ayahuasca ceremonies very close to where you
are – will be able to see incredible things, achieve illumination, and so on and so
forth. Watching videos, one may also observe bone fide shamans blowing tobacco
smoke, both over cauldrons full of boiling ayahuasca brew, as well as on the head
and hands of an uneasy tourist suffering (and vomiting on) the effects of the brew.
However, no tobacco-retreats are offered, no smoke-ins, and information about the
traditional use of tobacco is rather hard to obtain. First comes ayahuasca. Next in the
search engine ranking come the geometric designs and the songs called ikaro and far
behind a few other ‘master plants’. Somewhere far below – a few words on tobacco.
This chapter redresses the imbalance between the representation of ayahuasca
and tobacco not only in contemporary search engines but in the literature. Much
has been written about ayahuasca (especially among the Shipibo), for example,
Luna and Amaringo (1991), Metzner (1999), Luna and White (2000), Labate and
Jungaberle (2011), to mention only a few. Many of these publications are influenced
by an ideology of ‘psychedelics’, mainly describing beneficial effects, or the
‘white side’ of ayahuasca use, including its applicability in biomedical contexts.
Works offering a more critical scrutiny are rarer – but see Gow (1994) and Fotiou
(2010a, b) among others, including some of my own and my wife’s work (Brabec
de Mori 2011, 2013 and 2014; Brabec de Mori and Mori Silvano de Brabec 2009a
and 2009b). In contrast to the vast and still expanding research on ayahuasca, there
is no publication I know of that is explicitly dedicated to tobacco use among the
peoples of the Western Amazon. Titles may suggest it, such as Baer’s essay ‘The One
Intoxicated by Tobacco. Matsigenka Shamanism’ (1992), but even this then goes on
to deal with ayahuasca rather than tobacco. Wilbert’s seminal work, Tobacco and
Shamanism in South America (1987) is somewhat superficial in its coverage of the
Ucayali populations. It seems that writing about tobacco in this region is in some
way impeded by the striking experience offered by ayahuasca, especially when
approached in participant observation (and maybe by the allure of a much larger
readership for authors who write about an exotic and spectacular hallucinogenic drug
rather than one better known and less romanticized in the Western world). However,
the present chapter may further explain ayahuasca’s steady ascent by analysing the
decline of the use of tobacco.
The first section of this paper will summarize some historical data about the
use of tobacco in former times. It appears that tobacco seems rather ancient (while

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ayahuasca does not). Thereafter, the role of tobacco in indigenous songs will be
analysed with a series of examples from different indigenous groups of the region.
An ethnomusicological approach to ethnopharmacology is seldom applied but can
contribute to deepening knowledge about indigenous understandings of relations
between magical action, substances such as tobacco, and the conceptualizations of
cosmos and personhood. Song is the preferred mode of interaction and negotiation
between human and non-human entities in the region. By combining results from the
analysis of song texts with historical analysis and by taking into account the relative
moral implications of tobacco and ayahuasca use, the chapter concludes with some
thoughts about the influence of cosmopolitan attitudes to tobacco and ayahuasca
on substance use in general and specifically tobacco in the context of drug tourism.
An almost historical review: Why Tobacco is (still) important
Archaeological data in the Western Amazon is scarce, and evidence of substance
use from the archaeological record is hard to obtain. The often-cited archaeological
‘evidence’ for ayahuasca use around 2,400 BC. by Naranjo (1986) is invalid, as a
careful reading of the source article reveals (cf. Brabec de Mori 2011: 24; Beyer
2012). The situation does not change when tracing prehistoric uses of tobacco.
However, by analysing contemporary modalities of usage, reviewing the historical
record and comparing linguistic and musicological data it appears that ayahuasca
use in the Ucayali region is unlikely to be older than around 300 years (which is
already a generous estimate, see Gow 1994; Bianchi 2005; Brabec de Mori 2011;
Beyer 2012), while tobacco use among the same people is almost undoubtedly
much longer.
One obvious line of enquiry is to look at the etymology of words for tobacco. Baer’s
(1992) essay ‘The One Intoxicated by Tobacco’ is based on a literal translation of
serip’igari, the Matsigenka term for medical and ritual specialists, commonly called
‘shamans’.2 This term is closely related to sheripiari, the corresponding Ashaninka
word, literally meaning ‘tobacco drinker’. To complete the review of Arawakan
languages spoken in the Ucayali valley, the Yine know such persons as either kagonchi
or monchi. Though not obvious, Peter Gow suggests (personal communication) that
monchi is likewise related to the ‘drinking’ of tobacco. In Panoan languages, the
picture is less clear: the probably oldest Shipibo term for such specialists is yobé
(i.e. ‘power-charged seer’), along with meráya, a term probably derived from the
Kukama clan name Murayari, and also present in Huni Kuin terminology as mukroya.
However, it is interesting what these specialists were once reported as being able to
do: they drank tobacco juice or licked tobacco paste and with that were able to change
their shape (e.g. to transform into a jaguar), to enter the river and operate under water,
or even to vanish and become ‘spiritized’ (yoshina in Shipibo terminology). This
is similar to accounts from the abovementioned sheripiari, monchi and serip’igari.

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Shepard (1998), for example, recounts an intriguing story about his own experience
of ‘eating’ opatsa seri, a tobacco preparation, with a Matsigenka healer. In the
following, I am going to review some accounts about techniques of médicos reported
to me during my fieldwork by the specialists themselves. I will concentrate on the
Shipibo, among whom I had most contacts, and I also draw on insights into their
language. However, as outlined above, these concepts are shared among the whole
Ucayali population including the river-dwelling mestizos (ribereños).
Indigenous people in the Ucayali valley prior to the European conquest probably
did not smoke tobacco. The cigar (rome shei, see the initial quotation for this
chapter) was probably introduced to them by Europeans, perhaps by those who had
observed this practice among other indigenous groups. If this is true, the tobacco
pipe (shinitapon in Shipibo, kashimbo in the regional Spanish dialect called
Loretano) is not an ancient item among these people. About one hundred years ago,
pipes were often carved in a way resembling elements from Western architecture
(see some beautiful drawings on plate 26 in Tessmann 1928, see also Figure 4.1)3,
maybe hinting at a connection to Europeans.
These ‘architectural’ elements are nowadays out of use. However, this does not
mean that smoking could not evolve into a sophisticated practice, as will be shown
in this chapter. The Shipibo term for pipe, shinítapon, for example, may carry a
hint about some prior significance of tobacco use: it denotes the root (tapon) of a
specific small palm tree (shiní), which was used for carving wooden splinters called
yobé (synonymous with the ritual specialists). Such splinters, or darts, were used in
sorcery, along with other palm tree darts such as those from the wanin palm (Bactris
Gasipaes, Palmaceae; chonta in Loretano, see an illustration of a dart in Tessmann
1928: 187). In order to use such splinters, a sorcerer (yotomis, i.e. ‘power shooter’)
had to snap or blow them toward his victim, in a literal or symbolical sense – the
splinter is the material manifestation of a magical energy that can travel much further
distances than its material counterpart. Sorcerers carried such splinters in their chest;
more precisely, the splinters were part of, or embedded in their kenyon (mariri in
Loretano), a magical phlegm that was also regarded as a magical person dwelling
in the specialist’s chest. Having kenyon was the prerequisite for being a sorcerer or
healer, because only by harnessing kenyon could magical darts be acquired, used, or
removed from victims.
The healer Armando Sánchez (1937–2009) gave me a detailed account4 on how
to acquire kenyon, which I will present here in a shortened, somewhat streamlined,
English translation:5
There is a tree that grows in the tahuampa [oodplains], its stem thick like this (shows
c. half a metre) with yellowish fruits that the gametana sh loves to eat. In order to
‘diet’ the mariri [=kenyon] you have to carve a small hole into the stem on the side
where the sun rises, before breakfast. Below the hole you fasten a small tin can with
‘tobacco water’, [that is, water in which tobacco has been seeped for several hours],

Singing White Smoke r 93
Figure 4.1 ‘Tobacco pipes, framed by [glass] pearl collars: Fig 1–5, 7–11 Tobacco pipes. Fig 6 Tool
for insufating tobacco dust into the nose. Fig. 12 Empty palm nut for storing tobacco dust. (Scale [of
original print] 1:2.4)’, translation by author, from Tessmann 1928: 100.

94 r The Master Plant
and this must be carefully monitored. If a worm appears in the mixture, you can
remove the can and take it home with you that same evening. Before that, however,
you have to prepare another tobacco water. You take two females and two males of
the white worms – don’t take the black ones, they might kill us! – and put them into
the new tobacco water. When you start your diet, you drink that with all the tobacco
and the worms, and it will make you heavily drunk. The tree is called inon atsa xeati
[‘the jaguar’s manioc beer’].
After one week of strict dieting you take your pipe and smoke tobacco. You
have to swallow the tobacco smoke. With the smoke, the worm will come out, but
you swallow it again. With more tobacco from your pipe, the other worm comes,
already big – you have to do the ‘diet’ for six months, or maybe that’s too much, three
months– or better ve. After that, when you want to bring forth your mariri, you
swallow tobacco and it comes out. But it also can be nasty, when you smoke tobacco
just like this [we were both smoking cigars], it eats the tobacco inside. And they ask
you for more, they want their food.
When you then treat a patient, and suck out the dart, you must not swallow it, it
may still be alive, you have to burn or bury the darts. They live, like the mariri itself, it
is alive! When it wants more food, it bites you inside your chest, so you have to drink
some tobacco juice, and it will become docile, having gotten its food.
This account shows the direct link between sorcery darts and tobacco use. For the
aforementioned treatment involving sucking a dart out of a patient’s body, tobacco
is likewise required. I observed several sucking treatments and was able to film6
one conducted by Manuel Mahua (1930–2008), probably the last ‘old-school’ yobé
among the Shipibo. Manuel did exactly what Armando told me: he first whistled
a melody (koxonti) while holding his pipe close to his mouth. Then he lit it and
swallowed the tobacco smoke. After a few drags, he produced the most astounding
sound, like that of a growling jaguar, repeating this as the kenyon gradually came
forth. When the slime was in his mouth, he sucked several times at the patient’s
affected part of the body. When he got the dart, he growled again and his son blew
smoke over his whole body. Manuel then took the magic object out of his mouth and
showed it to the audience before he buried it outside. At this occasion he produced a
tooth and a worm-like little snake he called kapókiri.
Armando also instructed me in how tobacco is used as food for living stones
called inkanto. Such stones can be obtained by various means and they circulate
among sorcerers, but usually they conceal them and are wary not to show them to
anyone. It is said that these stones can transform into jaguars or other predatory
felines during night-time and attack their victims (in a physical as well as magical
way). Inkanto stones should be kept in a bowl half filled with tobacco water, so they
can ‘drink’ it when they want to – they are likewise fed with tobacco.
Although the abovementioned techniques are – at least officially – out of use today,
one more connection prevails, although it is somewhat cloudy in its consistence: the
human voice (and sound in general, Brabec de Mori (forthcoming a)) is considered a

Singing White Smoke r 95
substance in indigenous thought. A médico’s song may turn into matter in the world
aspect (‘perspective’) of spirits. However, its substantiality is not obvious in ‘our
world’. In the whole Peruvian lowlands, magical songs are commonly termed ikaro
(or ikara). As a verb for ‘singing magical songs’, the pseudo-Spanish icarar is very
often used or likewise pseudo-Quechua ikaray/ikarana. Pieter Muysken (personal
communication), a renowned linguist, told me that the word was not Quechua or
northern Kichwa, although it is often mentioned as such, and figures in the Summer
Institute of Linguistic’s dictionary, together with a noun: ‘ikara s. rito(s) m. mágicos(s)
utilizando tabaco. […] ikarana v.t. curar o hacer daño a una persona fumando y
repitiendo fórmulas mágicas’ (ILV 2002: 109).7 Here, ikara is the name for any
magical action (‘rite’) using tobacco, and the verb combines to expound the chanting
of magical formulae. In line with Muysken, I doubt this etymology, and I prefer to
derive the term from Kukama ikara which means ‘song’ (cf. Rivas 2004, eluded
to in the opening quotation from Rivas; ikara is used for any songs, like drinking
or courtship songs; on the central Ucayali, Kukama magical songs are most often
referred to as mariri). Following this hypothesis, Kukama magical techniques using
song spread through missions during the initial phase of conquest, proselytizing in
the Peruvian lowlands during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Kukama,
Kukamiria and Omahua (who all spoke a closely related language) were among the
first groups to be ‘reduced’ into the missions of the Marañon and Upper Amazon,
which were some of the largest and most influential. These groups were then used
as ‘indios cristianos’ in order to conquer, ‘reduce’ and baptize other surrounding
indigenous populations. At the same time, missionaries tried to establish Quechua (the
Inca’s language) as a lingua franca among these groups who spoke many different
languages (see Ardito Vega 1993: 69). Possibly at the same time, smoking was
introduced or re-introduced to the region by Europeans (remember that indigenous
people used to drink tobacco juice or paste). As was shown by Peter Gow (1994),
magical techniques (and specifically ‘ayahuasca shamanism’) were spread among
different indigenous groups via such missions and later in rubber taper’s camps. The
possibly older association of tobacco use and magical chanting has probably taken
on new forms in these places.
The analysis of indigenous songs shows that those indigenous groups who spent
most time in or were in more or less stable contact with missions use very different
musical styles today than those who were not (see also Brabec de Mori forthcoming b:
705). The melodic scales used by the Kukama, Shipibo and Yine, who since conquest
dwelled on the main Ucayali River, are mostly pentaphonic, while the scales used by
‘backwood’ groups are triphonic or even amorphous. Another indicator is given by
intonation: microtonal intervals, formalized speaking and excessive use of glissandi
are very common among the interfluvial peoples, while the fluvial dwellers use a
very ‘clear’ intonation in the sense of European tempered tuning. A strophic structure
to almost any song is evident among them while virtually absent among interfluvial
dwellers. This points towards a strong interaction between missionaries, the Catholic

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Mass and the general singing style of the peoples in question. Remarkably, ritual
songs among the Shipibo, Yine and Kukama are either closer to the interfluvial
styles in almost all cases of songs performed outside of the ayahuasca context or
even more complex in intervallic structure, using hexatonic or heptatonic scales, for
example, and much longer sequences of phrases in the strophic structure, in the case
of ayahuasca songs. Therefore, it appears that tobacco smoking, ayahuasca drinking
and a synthesized singing style were ‘co-invented’ in this missionary context. Gow
(1994: 107) also observes that the ‘ayahuasca curing session’, whose origin he places
in exactly this social milieu of christened indigenous people in missions, ‘implicitly
parodies the Catholic Mass. This is most dramatically evident in the way in which
the shaman blows tobacco smoke over each little cup of ayahuasca before it is given
to the drinkers’.
Given that the Kukama were among the first to be ‘reduced’ in missions, followed
later by the Shipibo and Yine, it can thus be explained how a Kukama technique
(song – ikara) became adjunct, and even synonymous in ritual use, to tobacco
smoking and consequently entered tradition as a (pseudo-) Quechua term in the
whole region via the diffusion of ayahuasca use.
The ‘Spanish’ verb icarar is, however, most often applied to a magical technique
obviously related to song but which is more specific. It is what Manuel Mahua did
with his pipe before throwing up his kenyon: one holds a cigar or pipe close to one’s
mouth while whistling a melody. Some médicos insist that it is crucial to think the
corresponding song’s lyrics while whistling (cf. Olsen 1996: 259–260 for magical
songs with ‘imagined’ lyrics or Piedade 2013 for spirits that are able to ‘hear’ human
thoughts). When the cigar is then lit, the smoke is blown into the direction of the
patient or victim in order to allow the song’s efficacy to unfold. The cigar may be
smoked by the same médico, but it can also be handed to another, taken away, kept
for later and smoked by somebody else. The magically efficient song will still be ‘in
the smoke’ which can be blown by anyone.
Today, ikaro or ikara are commonly understood as ‘ayahuasca songs’ and are
assumed to be age-old by the majority of authors. As indicated at the very beginning
of the present text, most scholars dealing with ayahuasca and almost the entire
popular and international ayahuasca community have appropriated the corresponding
terminology without giving much credit to their tobacco-using predecessors and
tobacco-related fundaments for the phenomena and techniques they are researching
or (ab)using.
Spirits of the past: Tobacco songs
The most remote, in the sense of a Westerner the Upper Amazon, use of tobacco may
occur among those few indigenous peoples who remain ‘voluntarily isolated’. There
is evidence (see Huertas Castillo 2002; KrokoszyĔski et al. 2007, among others)

Singing White Smoke r 97
that many hundreds of individuals live along the Peruvian-Brazilian border, avoiding
contact with towns and villages and, consequently, globalization. In 1958, a group of
27 individuals living in such circumstances and calling themselves the Iskobakebo
was contacted and deported to the Callería River by US Protestant missionaries (see
Brabec de Mori forthcoming b: 332 passim). I worked with the last few members of the
Iskobakebo group, taking song recordings and translating these. The elder Winikera
remembered magical songs that were performed before contact by the leader (healer/
sorcerer) of this group and later by his deceased elder brother Meraketa. Winikera
explained that the healer drank tobacco juice, sometimes together with an extract
from toé (Brugmansia spp.). In this drunk state (pae) he started to communicate with
non-human entities by singing. Winikera theatrically performed some of these songs.
One of these is analysed in Brabec de Mori (forthcoming b: 350 passim), and shall
just be briefly sketched here:8 the singer repeatedly produces a sound mimicking
the drinking of tobacco juice in between singing various passages in four distinctive
musical forms: one form is marked by the syllables jiji and sung ‘by the human’,
another two are sung ‘by the macaw entity’ and the fourth form is ‘spoken’ by the
macaw. In the first part of the song, the human singer describes the macaw entity
descending from a liana. The macaw then performs the healing, as perceived from
its own perspective. After its successful intervention, it is given farewell. Returning
to the perspective of the human singer, he mentions that they drink tobacco together
to celebrate:
sakoboko ininon jiji It ascends [again] along [my] liana,
nokon ibo shinira jiji my master power.
chejebata irora jiji The tobacco juice is good.
keshoroko rimaki jiji We give us to drink each other,
taroko imai jiji the [master power] gives me to drink [tobacco].
aunribikaista jiji Thus [the master power] leaves again,
noko ishten menike jiji I have already shared my happiness
nokon ointiroko jiji from my very heart,
tayora menike jiji … so the ill person is saved …
Tobacco here it is named chejebata, literally ‘black-sweet’. It is unclear if this is
a poetic metaphor or the ‘original’ Iskobakebo term for tobacco juice.9 The macaw
entity is not named but called ‘my master power’ (which is my free translation
from nokon ibo shini). However, it is revealed in the parts sung ‘by itself’ (or by
the transformed healer): it calls itself jawan, the common Iskobakebo term for the
macaw. The following rendering of drinking tobacco juice is however clear and
explicit. Here, tobacco juice, as Winikera explained, has the same function as maize
beer in ‘secular’ Iskobakebo festivities: the healer and the macaw entity drink
it together in order to celebrate. It is the spirit’s maize beer – maize beer is also
considered a basic nutritive among traditional Iskobakebo. Tobacco again is the food
of the spirits.

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However, the Iskobakebo do not perform healing or sorcery rituals anymore. They
are so diminished in number that they are demographically swallowed up by the
surrounding Shipibo and Spanish speaking population. Winikera’s rendering is but a
remembrance from a remote time and place.
The next example was performed by the aforementioned ‘old-school’ Shipibo
yobé Manuel Mahua. When he performed the sucking of magical darts described
above, he usually held his tobacco-filled pipe close to his mouth while whistling and
thinking the appropriate lyrics before lighting the pipe and swallowing the smoke.
When I asked him to do so, he agreed to openly sing the song so I could record the
lyrics.10 It is also a very long song so here again I only present the beginning and a
short later excerpt:
ani ani míriko This very big physician [médico]
nai xama meraya this meráya [master healer] from the heaven’s summit
koshi koshi míriko this very powerful physician [médico],
bewa kenékeneya I will bring, by the power of my well-patterned song,
shinitapon xamanbi into the very centre of my tobacco pipe [shinítapon]
bewa xanichintaanan and in there I will place the song accordingly.
jana rebon yasanai Therafter, I will set up the
maririka makina mariri-machine at the tip of my tongue,
yasanakebainxon And after I have set it up there,
makinanin yatanxon the machine will grab
tsinkiáketanbanon anything it attracts from all around …
…
shinitapon tokantin My tobacco pipe growls,
tonkari mariri it growls forth the mariri,
ani ani mariri the very big mariri,
toyoyoyo mariri the mariri is elastic when I slurp it [onomat.]
cararara mariri the mariri does kararara [onomat.]
piapia mariri the mariri does piapia [onomat., or ‘arrow-arrow’];
tinkotinin tsekarai growling I bring it forth
yora meranoakan from inside [my] body,
naman tsekaxonbanon from the inside I will bring it forth.
The song describes in detail the process of summoning the mariri – the slimy
entity dwelling in the singer’s chest – by the means of his tobacco. Once brought
forth into his mouth (the médico threw up several times producing a growling sound),
the médico would suck at the patient’s body and thus extract the object he thereafter
showed to the people present.
In the first few lines, it becomes obvious that the ‘miriko’ (S: médico) the singer
mentions must be the tobacco he puts into his pipe. But it should be noted that it
is also the song which is placed in the pipe, so here the song, the tobacco and the
physician are synonymous. During the rest of the song, which is not transcribed

Singing White Smoke r 99
here, Manuel mentioned many different kinds of splinters (wexá) that will be
attracted and grabbed by his mariri machine, for example stone splinters (hinting
at the inkanto stones), wooden splinters (hinting at shiní and wanin darts), rotten-
wood splinters, among many others, most notably also snake and worm splinters
(kapókiri).
Remarkably, the melodic-rhythmic structuring of this song is not entirely
compatible with common Shipibo song style. It carries various references to
downriver-dwelling Kukama singing style, including onomatopoetic syllables that
are rare in Shipibo singing (including magical songs) but often excessively used
by Kukama and Quechua médicos – another connection to the historical process
mentioned above that connects singing, smoking and healing (or sorcery).
The third example song I recorded far upriver among the Yine on the Upper
Ucayali. It is a love magic song, which should likewise be performed (sung or
whistled) while one holds a cigar or cigarette close to the mouth so it would be
‘charged’ with the song. This song is short and is printed here in full:11
jiweyogatyawaka Into the whirlpool [in the river]
nutakanru nayirpowa I put my tobacco [cigarette].
kapana gogompukote Below the kapana-tree [species],
nutakanro mpotsiwate I put the alcalde-bird [species].
kapana gonroteno High up in the kapana-tree,
nutakanru katajiru I put my brillant,
katajiru nkoshichite brillant bird.
My Yine research associates explained that ‘putting the tobacco into the
whirlpool’ would mean that the singer, charging his cigarette, would then blow the
smoke on a spot in the river where the water is whirling – this whirlpool, which
may also be considered a magical entity, then would ‘take care of’ the correct
distribution of the song’s power which is contained in the smoke. The persons who
should be connected by love magic are mentioned as the two birds who are placed
on the same tree.
The structure of this song is likewise remarkable, though in another sense.
Among the Yine, there are two very different magical singing styles in use: First,
the ikara, sung in ayahuasca sessions, always with foreign lyrics – mostly in
Quechua-Spanish code-switching, but sometimes also in Ashaninka or Shipibo
language – whose musical structure appears fairly similar to downriver Kukama
or Quechua style singing. Second, songs like the one quoted above which come
much closer to Yine shikalchi (‘song’, usually performed by women), although
they are structurally distinct also from those. Most are sung in Yine language but
unknown languages (‘the spirits’ language’) also occur. These magical songs
are not connected to ayahuasca; some of them are loosely linked to tobacco, as
in the above example, or toé. These songs may be sung by anyone, they are not

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restricted to trained médicos. However, any singer has to perform ‘correctly’. This
means that the singer has to reproduce melodic and rhythmic structure along with
the lyrics in a consistent way. This does not mean that only one structure exists
which is sung by all people who know the song. On the contrary, each singer
may use his own interpretation, but ‘correctness’ refers to internal coherency of
these structures (cf. Brabec de Mori forthcoming b: 222–227). Another important
factor for being effective, as my research associates pointed out, was ‘to put faith’
(poner fé) into the performance. Here, neither specific training nor any altered
state is considered a prerequisite for efficiency, but a high degree of concentration
and serious dedication by the singer. These songs are for curing, for love magic,
for summoning or protection. It seems that this tradition of magical singing was
already established when ayahuasca was introduced together with ‘its’ songs from
the downriver Kukama and Shipibo.
Another example from the Ashaninka may complement this:12
sherisherityawako Tobacco, tobacco, tobacco,
tziwankrokrokrorkro tsirootzi-bird [onomat.],
tziwankrokrorokro tsirootzi-bird [onomat.].
sherisherityawako Tobacco, tobacco, tobacco,
tyawako tyawako tobacco, tobacco,
tziwankrokrorokro tsirootzi-bird [onomat.]
The song is a simple summons, and the singer explained that it was sung in order
to communicate with the tsirootzi, a bird often referred to as an ambassador or omen
and a favourite used by médicos for diagnosis and other means. Note that, along with
the name of the bird merged with an onomatopoeia of its call, the lyrics mention
tobacco in both its Ashaninka ‘original’ sheri and ‘Ashaninkazized’ Spanish tyawako.
The singer further explained that the former sheripiari (médicos, ‘tobacco-drinkers’)
sang such formulae when licking tobacco paste, but contemporary médicos could
also sing similar formulae or songs during ayahuasca sessions.13 Another research
associate, César Caleb, explained to me that Ashaninka médicos, in former times,
only used tobacco paste.
The final example stems from Shipibo singer and healer Rosa Valera and is taken
from a night-time ayahuasca session. She sang for a young man living in urban
context in order to ‘open’ him to receive good luck and commercial success in his
working life. It is one of the rare occasions where she explicitly worked with her
tobacco, and it is a very beautiful musical expression:14
nokon rome shei My rolled-up tobacco
nete narakameya (2x) lights it up from the inside.
min jakon kanobi (2x) [It lights up] your beautiful world-in-the-song
kanoni rome shei which is expanded by the rolled-up tobacco,
nokon rome sheikan by my rolled-up tobacco.

Singing White Smoke r 101
min yora xaman The interior essence of your body
mia soi axonon (2x) I will make soft [like velvet],
ani suerte bitibo so that it may receive the good luck.
en mia axonon this I will do for you …
…
ni tsonrabi Not anyone
jaweatimakinkan will be able to harm you.
earonki bewai I, so it is said, am singing.
nete reshin tsoawa The light-full and adorned tsoawa-bird
metsatira bewai is singing beautifully.
ani kanoxamanbi Inside of the immense world-in-the-song
panini rome shei the rolled-up tobacco is hanging from the centre-top
nete narakameya and it lights the world from its inside.
joi jakon tsitsoya The beautiful words intertwine
rome sheitoninra by the means of the cigar.
metsa rome sheikan I am singing, so it is said,
earonki bewail the beautiful rolled-up tobacco.
merayai bewail I transform into a singing meráya [master healer],
inin santo raina into the fragrant sacred queen,
rainara bewai the queen is singing
min yora axoni in order to cure your body.
In the first section of the song, Rosa describes how her glowing cigar lights up
the sonic landscape she constructs by singing.15 This landscape is expanded by her
tobacco, that is by both its light and by its scent, which likewise extends this ‘spiritual’
landscape which is then identified within the patient’s body. In the following part,
not transcribed here, she mentions various instances from the patient’s life and work
which shall be improved as a result of her treatment. Then – like in the Iskobakebo
example, it is again by the power of the song that transformation occurs. ‘It is said’
that Rosa was singing. With that she hints at the fact that this is being observed
while she is already somewhere else, and somebody else. She describes herself as a
singing tsoawa (a beautiful local bird species (zool. n. id.) which is often referred to
by singing médicos). In the following passages, the cigar in her world-in-the-song
intertwines with the sung words themselves; the tobacco becomes the song. Finally,
the singer becomes a meráya (master healer) and joins this homunculus – the song,
the scent, the cigar, the singing queen are all one entity who bestows its magical
power on the patient’s body.
In this series of tobacco songs, it may be noted that tobacco may be a person itself–
as Gilberto Mahua in the opening quotation mentions a ‘rolled-up-cigar-physician’,
his elder brother Manuel calls the tobacco in the beginning of his song ‘a very big
médico’, which is also synonymous with the song itself. Rosa finally transforms
into the tobacco, impersonating it. However, when transcending the worlds as in

102 r The Master Plant
Figure 4.2 ‘Jaguar transformation’, painting by Milke Sinuiri (acrylics on canvas, 2007); reproduced
with the kind permission of the Collection Ethnomedicine, Medical University of Vienna.

Singing White Smoke r 103
the Iskobakebo lyrics and the last example, tobacco is still a cigar, or a juice to be
drunk (cf. Lima 1999: 102, where she describes that the Juruna shaman smokes a
cigar together with the ‘peccary shaman’). In the western Amazon, the perspectivist
view of the world (Viveiros de Castro 1998; Lima 1999) is fairly consistent and
plants are understood as persons as well as animals, spirits, and certain entities like
lakes. However, tobacco is flexible. It transcends perspectives, still being a medium
to smoke or drink for humans, peccaries, macaws, and spirits. At the same time it can
be a person, usually a revered healer.
This last musical text further illustrates how tobacco and ayahuasca use may
go together. However, the prior examples are now a reminiscence: both Armando,
who instructed me how to acquire kenyon, and Manuel, who knew how to use it
for sucking darts, are dead. They were among the last ones who actually held and
practiced this kind of knowledge. The Iskobakebo Winikera only imitated his dead
uncle and brother with his performance, and he taught nobody. Among Yine, I was
told, there are still some people who know how to sing these magical songs but these
persons are few and far between, and the remaining Ashaninka and Shipibo healers
who still use tobacco are growing old. The younger ones generally turn to other
things.
In the place of a conclusion: A painting
Instead of explaining in words how the transition happened from tobacco magic
to ayahuasca commerce, I invite you to look at a work of art (Figure 4.2). It is a
painting by Milke Sinuiri, a young Shipibo ayahuasca specialist who enjoys painting
what he can see in his ayahuasca visions as well as themes from mythology and
popular knowledge. He painted this picture in 2007 and it is now in possession of the
ethnomedicine collection at the Medical University of Vienna. It was also reproduced
and analysed in its artistic context in a prior publication (Brabec de Mori and Mori
Silvano de Brabec 2009a).
The painter explained that this picture is about the good and the bad, about healing
(curanderismo) and sorcery (brujería). Interestingly, the healer and the sorcerer
are one and the same person, which is definitely evident in traditional indigenous
medicine. However, the ‘good’ side on the left shows the person’s human face, and
at the lower left, an ayahuasca vine is naturalistically depicted. Above, a colourful
‘mythical anaconda’ crosses the dark blue sky (or outer space), a theme inspired by
Pablo Amaringo, a well-known painter of ayahuasca visions (cf. Luna and Amaringo
1991). The left side, the ‘good’ side, is the ayahuasca side. On the right, the person
shows a jaguar’s face and smokes a tobacco pipe. On the top a big toucan looks
down, a bird the Shipibo mostly associate with sorcery. Below it, two men face each
other, the left one covered with white traditional Shipibo patterns. The one on the

104 r The Master Plant
right appears covered by irregular red spots (measles?) – the healer and the sorcerer
confronting each other in battle. Below them, a bunch of snakes emerges from the
central person’s chest, like the splinters mentioned by Manuel Mahua: snake splinters,
living darts, the worms we swallowed during Armando’s instructions. While the
left side’s background is the sky, the right side is bathed in red and yellow flames.
This picture, better than a thousand words, demonstrates that nowadays healing is
associated with ayahuasca while sorcery smells like tobacco.
I must turn to words again in order to further examine the moralities associated
with each of these two remedies: ayahuasca and tobacco. Although in current
ayahuasca tourism, there are cases of abuse reported (Peluso 2014), referring even
to witchcraft (Fotiou 2010b), the general stance is to view the substance as a healing
one, linked to romantic images of ‘noble savages’ and spiritual growth as reported
at the very beginning of this chapter. It is the image on the right side in Milke’s
painting, the element that contemporary healers and ayahuasca entrepreneurs try to
fend off, keep at bay, or at least ignore: sorcery.
In Amazonian reality, however, sorcery is always close at hand. This can be
conceptualized if one considers that most Amerindian societies are based on
a reciprocal understanding of the cosmos as described in many anthropological
classics as well as more recent work (see for example Århem 1996; Fausto 2002;
Halbmayer 2013, among others). In the case of ‘medicine’, one has to bear in
mind that within what Descola (2005) calls an ‘animic society’ or a perspectivistic
cosmos (Viveiros de Castro 1998), to heal means also to harm (see also Whitehead
and Wright 2004). In the Ucayali region, a healer may cure a person who is ill –
which implicitly means that the person was bewitched by a malign spirit, a powerful
animal or plant, or by a human sorcerer. In any case, the healer has to overthrow
the original cause of the illness in battle. In successful cases, the witchcraft is
returned and will afflict its originator. Therefore the healer is simultaneously, from
the other’s perspective, a sorcerer. By the way, if the healer cannot overthrow the
originator of the illness, he may return the witchcraft to one of the latter’s relatives,
in which case the episode can start again, reversed: the relative falls ill and consults
a healer, who again …
This reciprocal view is incommensurable with the image nowadays pursued by
western Amazonian specialists who frequently withdraw from work as médicos
among their peers, to provide sensational experiences to drug tourists or to ‘shaman
apprentices’ from so-called developed countries instead (see also Brabec de Mori
2014, among other essays in the same volume edited by Labate and Cavnar). This
profound moral and cosmological dichotomy is further underlined by the Western
view of tobacco as an addictive drug. I am reminded of a time when I assisted Gilberto
Mahua in a daytime-consultation and curing session in 2007, one that did not involve
ayahuasca. A young man consulted Gilberto because of his problems with addiction
to other drugs. Gilberto took a perfume flask (agua florida), opened it and held it to
his mouth while whistling (icarar, as described above), while I did the same thing

Singing White Smoke r 105
with a cigarette. Gilberto finished his song, took some perfume into his mouth and
blew it over the patient’s body, while I lit my cigarette and blew smoke onto the
patient’s head and hands, something I had seen as regular practice in Shipibo tobacco
healing rituals. We concluded the treatment, and then Gilberto took me aside and
started earnestly to instruct me: ‘you cannot use tobacco when treating somebody
with an addiction problem, because tobacco by itself is an addictive drug!’ This
was a concept totally alien to traditional Shipibo uses of tobacco. It was a fragment
of song lyrics by the same Gilberto, performed in January 2006, which opened this
essay. Between performing this song and the aforementioned instruction, Gilberto
had travelled outside Peru for the first time, conducting ayahuasca sessions among
Westerners.
Notes
1. All song lyrics presented in this text are taken from the author’s eld recordings
which are archived at the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of
Sciences. The corresponding archive number for the recording from which this
quotation is taken is D 5576.
2. I prefer not to use this introduced term because of its many popular connotations
as well as its shrouded denition in anthropological discourse. In the Ucayali
valley, Spanish-speakers usually call these people curandero (healer) or brujo
(sorcerer). Indigenous people, besides using respective vernacular terms very
often use the reinterpreted Spanish word médico (physician, doctor), even in
rst-language-discourse. I adopted the later term here and in other papers. I
use male forms for médicos throughout, because what I describe here was and
mostly still is considered exclusively the duty of men (although there appears a
female médica later in the paper: she used to work together with her husband,
which occurs sometimes).
3. On the same plate an object (marked as ‘Fig. 6’) can be seen, which was used
for blowing tobacco powder into a peer’s nose or even into one’s own nose. This
process is also shown in Harry Tschopik’s lm about the Shipibo, dating from
1953.
4. Recorded interview dating from September 19, 2003, archived at the Vienna
Phonogrammarchiv under le D 4667.
5. The ‘diet’ mentioned by Armando refers to a general method of learning well
known in the western Amazon: one applies some substance (e.g. drinks a
decoction from a tree bark) and then retires into the wood or into a closed house
observing strict alimentary and social (e.g. sexual) restrictions. During this
period, the ‘dieter’ will get in contact with the spiritual aspect of the substance
he used (e.g. the tree’s ‘owner’) in order to learn diverse techniques, including
songs, from this entities. After concluding the ‘diet’, the ‘dieter’ will thus be able
to achieve things previously unavailable to him.
6. The lm is archived under le V 1755 at the Phonogrammarchiv.

106 r The Master Plant
7. ‘Ikara is a magical rite that uses tobacco; ikarana means to heal or harm a person
by way of smoking and repeating magical formulas’.
8. Performed by Pablo ‘Winikera’ Sangama in 2004, Phonogrammarchiv le D
5365.
9. To date, the Iskobakebo language is largely undocumented. The Iskobakebo I
was working with spoke Shipibo almost uently, and given that both are related
Panoan languages, Shipibo deeply inuenced their own way of speaking. The
glossaries we recorded and translated appeared closely related to Shipibo, and
that is where tobacco was translated as rome, which is also the Shipibo term.
However, the language Winikera and his peers used in song appears different,
and we suspect that it is closer to how they spoke before contact.
10. I observed the procedure several times, one of which I also lmed and for another
I produced an audio recording: performed by Manuel ‘Iskoniwe’ Mahua in 2004,
Phonogrammarchiv le D 5351.
11. It was performed by Marcelino Gonzales in 2004, Phonogrammarchiv le D
5366.
12. Performed by the médico Meyanto Vásquez in 2004 (D 5416).
13. There is a commercial CD recording available which was produced by an
Ashaninka community on the Upper Yuruá River in Brazil (Apiwtxa 2005). It
contains, among other tracks, an extensive recording of an ayahuasca session,
and the songs performed in this session either sound very similar to Meyanto’s
song quoted above or like the Kukama or mestizo style songs from downriver.
14. Excerpts from a performance by Rosa Valera in 2001, Phonogrammarchiv le D
4601.
15. The Shipibo term kano (which I translated as ‘world-in-the-song’) is too
complex and its use in magical singing too sophisticated to be fully explained
here; see instead Brabec de Mori (2012 and forthcoming b: 606 passim). It
may be described here as the physical, material manifestation in the ‘spirit
world’ of what is sung in ‘our world’. That is, any magical song manifests as a
‘landscape’ in the spirit world, and this can be perceived by a médico under the
inuence of ayahuasca, but also in any altered state induced e.g. by fasting, or
by drinking tobacco juice. Conversely, a song performed by a spirit in the ‘spirit
world’ can manifest in ‘our world’ e.g. as a thunderstorm (cf. Brabec de Mori
forthcoming a).
Reference list included in the book, pp. 215–43.