A música como mediadora de saberes dentro e fora do ritual religioso

Abstract

The tea ritual known as Ayahuasca has been re-signified in urban contexts for over eight decades, especially after its expansion, initiated by religious movements. The experience - deriving from the people of the Amazon rainforest - has surpassed geographical and cultural boundaries, constantly re-invented by cultural mediators (Gruzinski 2004). The doctrinal line known as União do Vegetal - UDV, on which my work focuses, has been gaining ground in European countries. Over 17 thousand people worldwide currently participate in the ritual, which characteristically involves music as a mediatory tools for transmitting the doctrinal principles after drinking Ayahuasca. Usually the UDV masters use phonograms of various musical categories, which thus acquire symbolic and functional dimensions during the ritual. The established community in Portugal – the focus of my research - brings elements that include, more generally, the entire União do Vegetal
community. The main objective is related to the possibility of observing this doctrine as a place of systematic and formal knowledge - in itself, a science. Thus, departing from Albuquerque’s proposal (2011), which explores an epistemology of non-academic knowledge, I aim to understand the role that music assumes as a mediator of doctrinal knowledge in the context of the UDV community.