Words for sounds in Pilaga society

GARCÍA, MIGUEL ANGEL

Astana

Conferencia; 43rd World Conference of the International Council for Traditional Music; 2015

Kazakh National University of Arts, Astana, Kazakhstan

The Pilaga inhabit in the Chaco region ?lowland of northern Argentina. Taking into consideration Michel Chion´s transensorial perception concept, the Pilaga environment could be divided into two areas: one diaphanous and one dark. Therefrom and from the chromatic zones that are in between, the Pilaga must decide how to rank and organize the senses of their transensorial perception. The day, the natural and artificial lighted nights, and the weeded spaces belong all to the ?diaphanous areas?. The night, the dense forest and, surface water belong to the ?dark areas?. In the first prevails the visual perception, in the latter the auditory perception. These scenarios are rapidly changing due to the advent of electricity and, consequently, the acquisition of electrical appliances ?mostly audio equipment. In Pilaga language, there are at least three words to encode the sounds coming from the social and natural environment, these are: lawel, labiliyak y nsamaga. The first ones are semantically close and are used to name different aspects of peoples? and animals? voices. To put it briefly, lawel is the sound that people make when they talk, sing and cry, and labiliyak is the sound that animals make when they howl, bleat, meow, cluck, etc. Quite different is the meaning of nsamaga; it is used to name the sounds coming from the wind, the water movement, the musical instruments and other objects. The paper approaches the meanings of these three terms by focusing on the sound and not-sound semantic fields in which they appear, and how they are used in the diaphanous and dark areas mentioned before. Moreover, some considerations on the researcher?s role are included.