Ashaninka women singers to perform ancestral chants in Lima concert

A unique concert in Lima, Peru, will showcase the ancestral songs of Ashaninka women, aiming to highlight and preserve the rich cultural heritage of this Amazonian indigenous community. Titled 'Inabe: Cantos Ancestrales de Mujeres Ashaninka' (Inabe: Ancestral Songs of Ashaninka Women), the event will take place at the Segura Theater.

The concert features prominent Ashaninka women, including former community leader Leticia Shonori Chaychay, elder Teodora Sánchez de Huaringa, and textile artist Claudia Chobiavante Samuel. They will be joined by musicians playing traditional instruments like the zampoña, sonaja, and drum. Notably, five-year-old Gael Chobiavante will make his Lima debut.

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'Inabe', which evokes the Ashaninka expression 'my mother', brings together the voices of former community leader Leticia Shonori Chaychay, elder Teodora Sánchez de Huaringa, and textile art teacher Claudia Chobiavante Samuel.

Singer Yéssica Sánchez Comanti, known for her work with the group 'Tampya' and the National Symphony Orchestra, will perform 'Ashibanti,' a song dedicated to the swallow, considered a sacred bird in Ashaninka cosmology. Sánchez has been instrumental in collecting and translating these songs, ensuring their preservation and accessibility.

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For the Ashaninka people, music, song, and dance are a means of communication with nature and the spiritual world.

For the Ashaninka people, music, song, and dance are vital forms of communication with nature and the spiritual world. Their repertoire includes sacred music honoring deities like Tasorentsi, their creator god, as well as everyday songs, such as lullabies, traditionally sung by women. The concert will present these ancestral chants in chamber music arrangements by Álvaro Ocampo Grey, Mark Contreras Waiss, and Diego Berrospi Gutiérrez, performed by soprano María del Carmen Rondón Málaga and mezzo-soprano Bettina Victorero Quiroz. The National Children's Choir of Peru will conclude the evening, passing this legacy to new generations.

Organizers, including the Center of Indigenous Cultures of Peru (Chirapaq), hope the concert will also bring attention to the issue of intellectual property rights for indigenous music, which is often considered public domain under current law. Chirapaq aims to ensure that legal rights for new arrangements of these ancestral songs are recognized and attributed to indigenous organizations.

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With this concert, Chirapaq seeks to put on the agenda the problem of intellectual property of indigenous music, considered by law to be in the public domain.