“Voices of the Earth”

Reflections on an Experience of Songwriting in an Indigenous Language with a Group, Community, and Intercultural Perspective to Honor the Territory

Abstract

This article aims to convey, in a clear and simple manner, the different approaches that music therapists can take when working with indigenous communities. It is an approach to a methodology, outlined from empirical evidence, with successes and mistakes, that arises from different experiences in which I have participated for more than ten years and which is explored in depth, above all, in a special project called “Pecnetao Huanamina–The Song of Mother Earth.”As music therapists, when working with indigenous communities, we have two valuable and transformative resources: the use of the voice and songwriting. These are indispensable in our work, which focuses on accompanying the rediscovery of ancestral memory and indigenous identity and on making the indigenous presence in our territories visible.

Editorial Comment

How do we connect with the people and communities we want to care for? How do we relate to them, assuming our positions of privilege? What makes us equal and what sets us apart from them? For the author, being a music therapist requires us to be present, “with open, attentive, and deconstructed listening,” knowing that the mistrust perceived in the first encounters (after all, we are the others, the outsiders) can later be transformed into a space of mutual care.Indigenous identities are a distinctive partof Latin America. Often silenced, they find in songs a resource to revitalize their native languages