Analytical survey of the recordings made by Martin Gusinde, Wilhelm Koppers and Charles Furlong with the Tierra del Fuego aborigines between 1907 and 1923

GARCÍA, MIGUEL ANGEL

Berlín

Conferencia; 3.Netzwerktreffen der Thyssen-Humboldt-Kurzzeitstipendiaten/-innen aus Lateinamerika; 2010

Fundación Alexander von Humboldt

The Phonogramm-Archiv at the Ethnologisches Museum (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) holds the wax cylinder recordings made by Martin Gusinde, Wilhem Koppers and Charles Wellington Furlong of Alakaluf, Selk´nam and Yagan (or Yamana) aborigines of Tierra del Fuego. The collections consist of 78 sound recordings made in situ between 1907 and 1923, which were sent to the Archive for preservation and for Berliner musicologists to study and add the conclusions to their speculations on the origin, evolution and diffusion of what at the time was termed “exotic music”. These sound recordings are undoubtedly of great importance for anthropological, ethnomusicological and historical studies. First and foremost because they are the earliest recordings made in Tierra del Fuego. Also, their worth becomes self-evident considering they are the earliest testimony of the music and language of three ethnic groups who could not survive the harshness of colonization and the indifference and blind-eye of the states. Finally, they also offer most interesting clues as to the methods employed by men of science in the early 20th century to validate their knowledge and portrait peoples alien and exotic to their cultural universe. Sound recordings are particularly relevant to unveil the epistemological framework adopted by the collectors, since their making involved not only technical procedures but also esthetic, ethical and theoretical choices. Based on all the above, the purpose of this project is to study the three collections of cylinders and attached documents in order to attain two different kinds of knowledge. On one hand, to analyze the procedures of collection, classification and analysis of the data each of the three scholars adopted in order to understand how they built their object of research and how they helped to shape the image of exotic otherness. On the other hand, to understand the place of these musical testimonies in the social, cultural and religious systems of the Fueguian peoples based on anthropological and archeological research done after Gusinde, Koppers and Furlong.