Laboratory

What has Amazonas Music Theater done for the Yanomami? How did it go down in Germany? And in Brazil? Sociologist Laymert Garcia dos Santos on Yanomami culture, European preconceptions and a warm reception in Brazil.


Professor Garcia dos Santos, at the University of Campinas in São Paulo you work on the sociology of technology. Since the 1980s you’ve been advocating for indigenous communities in Brazil. How did you first come into contact with indigenous peoples? Was your interest purely scientific?

Laymert Garcia dos Santos: What motivated me at the outset was the political work. We advocated for the equality and recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples. Then I began looking at how shamans work with images. The Amazonas Music Theatre production put me in personal contact with the Yanomami, which reinforced my interest. The nexus between the shamans and the Centre for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe gave me an opportunity to analyze two completely different methods of using images and sound.


Are you happy with the way Amazonas Music Theatre went? Do you think the project had any effect on the plight of the Yanomami?

I’m very happy with the way the project went – both aesthetically and politically. Amazonas Music Theatre succeeded in aesthetically bringing out the complexity and intellectual depth of Yanomami culture. This kind of recognition is vital to achieving the political aims of the Yanomami. Now, after the project, we know the Yanomami are not a people of the past. On the contrary, their society is just as complex as ours, albeit in a completely different way.


Many critics were discontent with the piece. Why do you think Amazonas Music Theatre failed to win over much of the German media?

I don’t know German, so I’ve only heard some of the critiques. But I think the criticism is based on typical European preconceptions, which took two forms. First of all, people expected the shamans to take the stage and play themselves. That is utterly unthinkable. No work of music seriously concerned with shamanic culture would put the shamans themselves on stage.

Secondly, it’s the assumption that Yanomami culture is not a contemporary, but an archaic culture, so any attempt to work it into and juxtapose it with a contemporary avant-garde music project is doomed to aesthetic failure. And the contention that the second part of the opera gives only a fragmentary view of the philosophy of the Yanomami is dead wrong. No other cultural project has ever had such a fruitful lasting dialogue with the Yanomami, for three years, to stage their vision of the world as accurately as possible.

It seems to me than many of the critics just didn’t get the key dimension of the third part either. Peter Weibel and his team’s effort to convey the rain forest as molecular music, with the whole density of information it contains, has a revolutionary core. Another thing misunderstood was that the conference shown in the third part brings an element of tragedy into the piece. The world has long been discussing solutions to save the rain forest, but at all those countless conferences, there just doesn’t seem to be the political will to stop the deforestation.


Does that mean your approach has failed, your efforts to overcome the clichés about indigenous peoples of the Amazon in the minds of European viewers?

Only the viewers themselves can do that. As in any complex contemporary art form, if the public won’t make an effort to understand the work, then that approach is bound to fail. In this sense, many critics in Germany were just as complacent as the critics in Brazil: they didn’t take the time to thoroughly background-research the Amazonas Music Theatre project.


And what were the reactions in Brazil?

The reaction in the media was very disappointing. There was hardly any serious coverage. The Brazilian journalists didn’t come to grips with the issue. Many seemed not to realize that this is about a vital Brazilian issue. Although at the press briefings we tried to tell the whole story of the project.

The public, on the other hand, was thrilled. Many wanted to see the production but couldn’t get tickets anymore. And even now I still meet people who found the shows very good.


Amazonas Music Theatre is also to be shown in Manaus. Why is that location so important to the project?

The two-tiered view of the Amazon presented in the piece – the technological-scientific level and the parallel view of the Yanomami – really needs to be presented in the Amazon region. That would drive the message home to the establishment there that indigenous culture is part of our contemporary culture.


You’re planning a new project these days, what is it about?

I’ve been offered an opportunity to set up a research centre, focussing on key culture and technology issues, particularly the connection between digital and non-digital cultural networks. That will also mean carrying on the work with the Yanomami shamans that we began for Amazonas Music Theatre.