The document provides an overview and analysis of recordings from ceremonies conducted by Peruvian shamans using plants like San Pedro cactus and ayahuasca. It describes the music, instruments, and rituals involved in the ceremonies, which are intended to induce altered states of consciousness and contact with spiritual beings. The recordings contain chants, songs, and effects from the ceremonies, which took place in locations like the Peruvian Andes and Amazon rainforest. The document also discusses shamanic traditions and beliefs in Peru, as well as biographical details about some of the shamans featured on the recordings.

1. The haunting, plaintive music of Peruvian shamans was recorded at
ceremonies in the Peruvian Andes and the Amazon rainforest.
The chants and icaros have an organic relationship to the medicine
plants, and are primarily intended as devotional music for a ceremony. It
is equally possible to listen to the hypnotically beautiful sounds in their
own right and simply enjoy them for their otherworldly beauty.

2. The CD contains chants and dramatic effects of six different ceremonies
with shamans. . Two ceremonies with San Pedro maestros working in
the atmospheric ruins of Puruchucu; two ayahuasca shamans, a man and
a woman, in separate sessions working in a jungle temple on the River
Momon, outside Iquitos; a Shipibo shaman working in Yarinacocha,
outside Pucullpa; and lastly, a despacho in the ruins of Pisaq, Cusco. In
addition there are three tracks of atmospheric music played on
pre‐Colombian instruments.
Shamanism in Peru
Of all the countries of Latin America, Peru is perhaps the richest in Indian
and Pre‐Colombian culture. The practice of shamanism anywhere in the
world is inevitably rooted in the culture’s belief system. In our encounter
with Andean and Amazonian shamanism we are brought into contact
with other worlds, and a cosmology diametrically opposed to Western
rationalism.
Tracks 1-3 San Pedro ceremony held in Puruchucu, at the head of the
Rimac valley. The ruins of this sacred site or huaca date back to pre‐Inca
times and have been accurately reconstructed. Setting the scene for the
ceremony, three musicians play replicas of pre‐Hispanic instruments.
Alonso del Rio says: ‘while keeping to their original tuning, we have
explored the instruments musical possibilities to give an idea of what the
music could have been like in pre‐Colombian times. The melodies came
to us through the ancestral memory evoked through medicinal plants
like San Pedro and Ayahuasca’. Instruments: the ceramic notch flutes of
the Chincha civilization, Nazca panpipes or ‘antaras’ with their special
tuning similar to Oriental scales, and Nazca drums.
The Mesa Nortena is a particular ceremonial tradition best conserved in
the region of ‘Las Huaringas’, high and remote sacred lakes in the
northern Department of Piura.
There are probably only a few good maestros who continue this ancient
tradition in Peru today. The rest simply work with the externalities of the
mesa, while giving their clients minimal doses of the visionary San Pedro

3. cactus. Originally more importance was given to the medicine, which
must be in the organism of the participants as well as the maestro for
the power to flow. The mesa then served to intensify the power of the
plant.
An altered state is needed to enter the symbolic world of the objects on
the mesa (the word refers to the altar as well as the ceremony itself).
The abundance of macerated plants, perfumes and smells employed in
the mesa function to move the feelings associated with one’s memories.
At a deep level, sensations are translated into vibrations which the
medicine brings to consciousness so that associated hurt and pain can
be ‘re‐membered’ again and a new attitude can emerge.
The singado, or absorption of macerated tobacco juice through the
nostrils involves another power medicine which is used to intensify the
San Pedro at regular intervals. The instruction from the maestro to pour
up the left or right nostril reflects the notion of duality found in
shamanic disciplines all over the world: masculine and feminine, hot and
cold, upper world and earth, expansion and contraction, flowing and
stagnant. Illness arises from one of these polarities loosing equilibrium.
The word singado comes from the Quechua word singa meaning nose
and is perhaps an Andean notion of Pranayama!
Also audible in the following two
mesas 4‐ 5 are the clicking of
chontas, or black bamboo sticks
used for cleansing people’s auras
and the spraying from the
maestro and assistants’ mouths,
of perfumes and plant
macerations over the
participants. The tendency to
commercialise a tradition is
inherent in urbanization and
seeing things for their utility and
business. For example mesas are
sometimes held so that lawyers
win legal battles. Piles of

4. documents are laid on the mesa so that the power works on them and
they win their case. In this way a shamanic ceremony is degraded to
folklore. We can try to reconstruct the original tradition to how it was in
pre‐Colombian times and remove the images of Sarita Colonia and the
other saints, crucifixes, photos etc., which have accumulated throughout
the centuries and evolved the mesa into the mestizo tradition which
survives today. Left behind are the ancient stones, magic plant brews
and the enchanted waters of the lakes of Las Huaringas, being the
original elements, which have survived underneath.
Track 4 Mesa with Alejandro Sanchez. Maestro Sanchez lives in Comas, a
distant suburb of Lima which began in the 1960s as a shanty town. It is
surrounded by impressive parched stony desert hills. The maestro’s
house is at the end of a road near the cemetery and overlooks this
immense settlement from where he draws his clients. Sanchez was born
in Sondorillo near the legendary sacred lakes of Las Huaringas. At age 11,
while still at school, he seemed to have perceptions and to be able
foresee things accurately. His astonished teachers thought he was
having hallucinations and called for maestro Florentin Garcia. Later
Alejandro became his apprentice and learned from him the secrets of
plants.
The other‐worldliness of these ceremonies can be seen as part of the
‘trappings’ of rituals in general. This ‘otherness’ serves to bypass the
rational mind so that it will not interfere with the subtle processes taking
place in the subconscious. When we are fully awake, things can indeed
seem strange… ‘people are strange, when you’re a stranger…’ as the
song by The Doors goes. A part of healing is recovering the lost gift of
perception, the feeling of being alive again.
Track 5 Mesa with Leopoldo Vilela who was also born
near the celebrated Las Huaringas in Radiopampa, an
extremely cold place at 3,500 meters altitude. He
was 90 years old and in very good health at the time
of this mesa which was also held in the ruins of
Puruchucu. At three years old he was sent outside to
look for herbs for his mother who was suffering from
a stomach ache; there he knew he would become a
curandero. He used to watch his father who was
clairvoyant and assisted people in his community to

5. find their animals when they were lost. He used tarot cards and looked
into bottles of aguardiente (firewater) with grains of corn of different
colours at the bottom. Don Leopoldo improvises sessions for groups and
individuals, which may continue for hours. These are full of idiosyncrasy,
and characterized by warmth, dedication and playfulness, which is quite
touching at times. The seemingly endless sequence of bottles of tastes
and smells and other procedures are often extremely weird while his
inadvertent remarks and caresses on his guitar (of his own manufacture)
often provoke smiles and laughter in all present.
Human beings have an instinctive awareness of other people’s conscious
states of mind. When another person, a shaman, is authentic and
spontaneously creative in the moment, this has the power to focus the
mind, stopping it from verbalizing and rationalizing. A sense of pure
wonder is evoked.
Track 6 Closing calls. The conch shells or pututus, still used in Andean
communities today, are handed down from the Incas who obtained
them from the Caribbean. They are used for convening meetings and
ceremonies.
Tracks 7-9 Shipibo icaros of Mateus Castro, a shaman living outside
Pucullpa in Yarinacocha. The arts of the Shipibo, especially textile
designs, are closely related to ayahuasca icaros. The words of the chants
are symbolic stories telling of the ability of nature to heal itself. For
example the crystalline waters from a stream wash the unwell person,
while coloured flowers attract the hummingbirds whose delicate wings
fan healing energies etc. You might see such things in your visions but
the essence which cures you is perhaps more likely to be the
understanding of what is happening in your life, allowing inner feelings
to unblock so that bitterness and anger con change to ecstasy and love.
To awaken from the ‘illusion of being alive’ is to experience life itself.
Tracks 10-16 Dona Cotrina Valles was born in Agua Blanca, Department
of San Martin. She apprenticed herself to a maestro in 1979 and later
came to live in Iquitos with her husband. Today she lives alone with her
children. It is very unusual for a woman to be a shaman in urban
situations although they do exist amongst indigenous peoples. Amongst
other limiting beliefs, it is thought that women break taboos as they are
unable to take dieting seriously because of demands from their

6. husbands and that when they go shopping in the market they will have
contact with menstruating women or people who are mal dormida, (ie. a
person who has been making love all night).
The diet is a vexed question in the city as the temptations of rich spicy
food as well as sex are greater than in the rainforest. As all shamans will
tell you, Dona too, says that sex is bad. The ‘mother plant’ loves you and
if you make love to another person, you are being unfaithful to her. For
this reason it is often said that Ayahuasca is jealous, and if you do not
respect her, she makes you ill instead of healing you. You will also not be
able to see any visions. The ill effects from not respecting the diet are
called cutipa and range from a sense of trauma and stress to skin
problems.
Dona’s chants are sung in Spanish and Quechua, as also are the chants of
Javier Arevalo which follow. Both Dona and Javier are mestizo shamans,
that is to say their ancestors moved to the Amazon from the Andes,
rather than being indigenous to the Amazon as the Shipibo are. The
melodies of mestizo icaros have an Andean structure and are sung partly
in Quechua, a language of the Andes.
Track 17 Despacho to Pachamama in the ruins
of Pisaq. A despacho is an offering to the Earth
Goddess, Pachamama, which nurtures all life
on earth. The ceremony symbolizes the
reciprocity of nature and speaks back to her
saying ‘we understand the message and we
have the same attitude’. The word despacho
was mistakenly translated into Spanish after
the Conquest as pago, meaning payment, to
imply a satanic pact with dark forces.
As each participant made their contribution to
the despacho convened by the Curandera Doris Rivera Lenz. The
renowned traditional Andean musician Kike Pinto, played pre‐Colombian
instruments. The first piece is a Harawi from the Department of Cusco

7. played on a quena, or notch flute, made from the wing bone of a condor.
This little melody has been handed down from Inca times, thanks to its
incorporation into Catholic mass in Colonial times. The second piece is a
Haylli from San Pedro de Castas, Department of Lima, played on a
ch’iriqway, or antara (panpipes), made from condor feathers. The
melody also has pre‐Hispanic roots and has survived in a form played on
the chirisuya, kind of oboe, of probable Moorish origin. This track is
ended with some calls on the putu, or conch shell.
Kike Pinto is a lifetime musician and researcher of traditional Andean
music. He has recorded several CDs and is curator of his own Museum of
Andean Music in Hatunrumiyoq, Cusco.
Tracks 18-26 Javier Arevalo comes from Nuevo Progreso, a community
of 50 families on the Rio Napo. Many
generations of his family before him
were shamans and already at 17 years
old he knew this was his future.
However when he was 20 his father
died from a virote (a poisoned dart in
the spiritual world) sent by a jealous
and malicious brujo (sorcerer) who
lived in his community. Soon after, he
began his two‐year retreat in the
rainforest with his maestro grandfather,
dieting many plants, later to become
his ‘doctors’. During his time in the
wilderness he realised that it was
better to leave God to punish the brujo
who killed his father, and he decided to
be a healer not a sorcerer.
There are several different kinds of
icaros, at the beginning of the session.
Their purpose is to provoke the
mareacion or effects, and, in the words of Javier, ‘to render the mind
susceptible for visions to penetrate, then the curtains can open for the
start of the theatre’. Other Icaros call the spirit of Ayahuasca to open
visions ‘as though exposing the optic nerve to light’. Alternatively, if the

8. visions are too strong, the same spirit can be made to fly away in order
to bring the person back to normality.
There are icaros for calling the ‘doctors’, or plant spirits, for healing,
while other icaros call animal spirits, which protect and rid patients of
spells. Healing icaros may be for specific conditions like manchare which
a child may suffer when it gets a fright. The spirit of a child is not so fixed
in its body as that of an adult, therefore a small fall can easily cause it to
fly. Manchare is a common reason for taking children to ayahuasca
sessions.
Tracks 18 Llamada de mareacion in which the spirits of various healing
plants are called, here the huacapurana, a tall tree with hard wood,
whose bark is used for arthritis. Huacapurana (campsiandra angustifolia)
is also used as an arcana, or spirit to protect the body. Also the
remocaspi (Aspidosperma excelsum) the bark of which is used to reduce
fever and cure malaria.
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