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Article published In:
Creativity in Language
Edited by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Andrea Hollington, Nico Nassenstein and Anne Storch
[International Journal of Language and Culture 6:1] 2019
► pp. 195–216

Traversing language barriers

‘Witoto’ signal drums from Northwest Amazonia

| University of Regensburg
The ‘Witoto’ people from Northwest Amazonia practised long distance drum communication, used for relaying messages among their villages. The messages were encoded on a pair of hollowed-out wooden drums, and appear to have been ‘drummed codes’, with only some iconic relation to the sound structure of the spoken language. The practice of drum communication appears to be easily diffusible in contact situations. The Caquetá-Putumayo (C-P) cultural area is a case in point, as the Witoto drums were shared with other C-P groups including the Ocaina, Nonuya, Bora, Muinane, Resígaro, and Andoque. Today, the practice of long distance drum communication among the Witoto has been long gone, with just a handful of elders who are still able to recall some of the (once extensive) drummed signal repertoire.
Keywords: signal drums, manguaré, drummed messages, hummed messages, Caquetá-Putumayo, People of the Centre, Murui-Muina, Witoto
Article outline
  • 1.The People of the Centre and the ‘Witoto’
  • 2.The manguaré signal drums of the C-P groups
  • 3.Notes on ‘Witoto’ phonology
  • 4.‘Witoto’ signal drums
  • 5.‘Witoto’ drummed messages
    • 5.1Locality of sounds
    • 5.2Vocabulary of rhythms
    • 5.3Drumming and the humming practice
  • 6.Wooden drums in South America
  • 7.Summary
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00022.woj
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Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.
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[no author supplied]
2022. Linguistic Areas. In The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact, ► pp. 187 ff. DOI logo

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