Three days by boat traveling up the Las Piedras River from Puerto Maldonado, our team at Xapiri Ground, along with invited sound artist Agricultura Celeste (aka Joan Rukmali De la colina Román), would arrive at the native community of Monte Salvado. Here they would connect with the myths and the customs of the Yine people.

For this CTF series #09, Agricultura Celeste shapes us into the environment that enveloped him those weeks.“...the roads in the jungle are rivers, where people, ideas, things, and gifts are transported." And like the rivers, his composition is a circuit of sonic elements; a collage of voices, feathering calls, serpentine creeks, and songs that awaken the myths of many years past.

Artist's text:

According to the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, knowledge was granted by mysterious beings of greater wisdom, matters such as fishing, hunting and art were not man's inventions. Being a people from time immemorial, they took on their animal form and other forms for posterity. Animal from the outside and man on the inside.

Getinero - a frog that croaks in the bush, there was a time when she was a beautiful woman expert weaver and a fine cook of ‘chapo’ and ‘masato’. The ceramic with its guardian Gayo who dwells deep in the earth, teaches his art with seriousness, does not like to be mocked or laughed at, or when children play too much in the river, the Gayo comes out to scare them away.

The community of Monte Salvado is returning to its memory, remembering itself, and as such modern myths are created. Gayo emerges as a vindicating figure of this noble clay artform.

Culture and nature blur their limits without discerning which is which, the Yine are in the oropendola bird, in the great curassow, in the macaws, in the armored catfish, in the tortoise, etc. and within their singing, laughing and conversations they are Yine, culminating into a communication excess.

Songs and art maintain the memory of these beings, reinforcing the bonds with their human and non-human society, cooperating amongst themselves, in order to give meaning to their destiny and to face the present times; a destiny that modern society has strayed from.

Agricultura Celeste is the name of the project of Joan Rukmali De la colina Román (Cusco, Peru); musician, sound artist, psychologist and social researcher, who began as a guitarist in the experimental band La Muka, and later had projects as ‘Alap’ exploring electronics where he released an EP independently and collaboratively. Presently, he focuses more on sounds of the Andean and Amazonian territory. His research draws interest from alternative spiritualities and their relationship with mystical tourism in the Cusco region.

To learn more about our work in the Peruvian Amazon visit: xapiriground.org