música de la boca (cantos de Tierra del Fuego)

bit like Inuit chants, but at the other hemispheric extremity


(via Sound Poetry blog)

Lola Kiepja (born ? .... in Tierra del Fuego) was a shaman and singer of the Argentine selk'nam, known as "the last ona" or the "last selk'nam", because she was the last person to belong to the selk'nam culture (ona), in direct knowledge of the traditions, songs and arts of that millenary culture of Tierra del Fuego, in the extreme south of the American continent. In fact, it has been pointed out that Lola Kiepja was not really the "last one", and that that condition could fit Angela Loij, who died in 1974.
The death of Lola Kiepja has been linked to the genocide and marginalization suffered by the Selk'nam people and other indigenous cultures in America.


In 1964 the French ethnologist Anne Chapman to record the selk'nam traditions and songs, according to the testimony of Lola Kiepja. Chapman has related that the notion that Lola Kiepja could be considered "the last one", corresponds to the French archaeologist Anette Lamins, who conveyed to Chapman the importance of recording her testimony.
Chapman recorded the songs of Lola Kiepja on a tape recorder and several of those records were published on two discs produced by the Museum of Man in Paris, under the title Selk'nam chants of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina (Cantos selk'nam de Tierra del Fuego, Argentina).