32.
Singing Multifaceted Songs
Hungarian anthropologist Vilmos Diószegi conducted a year-long study of Siberian shamans. One day he persuaded a shaman called Kizlasov to make a recording of his songs. To do this, they left the shaman’s isolated log cabin and traveled to a sawmill equipped with an electric generator, to power the anthropologist’s tape recorder. (Battery-powered tape recorders did not come into their own until the 1960’s.)
The machine is already humming, the old man raises his voice. Like the murmur of a faraway waterfall, the monotonous noise of the generator pervades the room. It blends with the song of the shaman, until the forceful intensity of the song does not overpower the sound of the machine.
It is true that I am hearing a shaman’s song recited viva voce for the first time in my life, I witness this performance for the first time, I have never before seen how they conjure up the spirits, but I have to confess, rather embarrassedly, I was immensely impressed by it.
And this is just a simple demonstration.
There is no devout congregation watching the shaman and truly fearing the invoked spirits. The playful reflections of the fire are missing, there is no flaming or glowing fire here, casting strange shadows upon the walls of the yurt, suggesting the presence of the assembling spirits. Nobody throws twigs or branches and weeds into the fire, so that their overpowering smoke might let the clouded eyes see all that the shaman is singing about. Kizlasov has no drum, suggesting with its faster or slower, stronger or weaker beats, whether the mounted shaman gallops or ambles only, whether he is coming or going, further and further away. The ceremonial garb is lacking too, with its innumerable metal bells, straining the nerves with their tinkling, jingling sound and whose several hundreds of coloured ribbons make the human likeness of the whirling shaman improbable with their fluttering. There is no dance, the movements of which help to represent and explain all the shaman wants to indicate and depict. And, last but not least, I have absolutely no faith in the supernatural power of the shaman and no faith in his spirits, which have been instilled in every Sagay from the cradle on. And still . . .
It was an unforgettable experience.
Hardly had the old man begun his song than he was entirely immersed in it. There was no drum in his hands but with his right hand he kept beating out the rhythm as if he were holding a drumstick, slowly first, then faster, then in syncopated time. The voice filled the empty room, it echoed from the bare walls and it poured forth incessantly from the shaman’s mouth, first slowly, then it became sputtering, then it was conversational, then it grew into a song again, then it was a monologue, after that it formed questions and answers, now it was soft, and after that resounding, it was high-pitched and then a deep bass, once it was only like a soft whistle, another time it was like the neighing of a horse.
I realized it now: no pencil, no tape recorder can ever capture this. This should be exempted from oblivion by a sound-film. However, it could never be the same without the original environment and that does not exist any more.
Very probably, the shaman could not remain indifferent any more than an actor could if he performed to an enthusiastic audience and not to an empty room. What an enthralling force shamanizing might have been about fifty or a hundred years ago . . . we can only imagine.
But the text, the heretofore entirely unknown Sagay shaman-song had at least been recorded. Science will, no doubt, be able to make use of it. The only question is, shall we ever be able to interpret it correctly? The rhythm of the text, the melody and the meaning of the separate words may be captured, but would we ever grasp what is behind them? The inner tension, the secret meaning of the different melodious motives and the innermost, hidden significance of certain expressions might remain an eternal mystery.