Estonia meets Amazonia. We all come from the forest
Una Meistere
An interview with Brazilian-born/Estonian-based musician and producer Eduardo Agni
Last summer, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto wrote to me to ask if I knew that there was a concert going on in relatively nearby Tallinn – a joint project by Estonian, indigenous Amazonian, and Brazilian musicians, including his friend Txana Bane, one of the leaders of the Huni Kuin tribe. Needless to say, I knew nothing about such a project. This is not a rare occurrence – sometimes it’s just easier to spot things from a distance.
As it turned out, the project itself had an even more unusual origin. It was the brainchild of Eduardo Agni, a Brazilian musician who has spent many years studying indigenous Amazonian music but has been living in Estonia for the past several years...and not because of any personal entanglements but purely because ever since he first visited the country for work, he has felt at home there. As he later came to realise, the link between these two seemingly disparate cultures – Estonian and Amazonian – is the forest. “The language is similar, because Estonian sounds a little bit tribal,” Eduardo says in our conversation. He previously lived in Norway for several years, where he founded the band Amazon
Ensemble, and with which he has been disseminating Brazilian indigenous music world-wide.
The 100 paged book and CD Metsa Kene - Estonia meets Amazonia. Photo: Ruudu Rahumaru
In the project Estonia meets Amazonia. Metsa Kene – which is available in both book and CD format, as well as on various streaming platforms, including Spotify – Estonian singers interpret 15 indigenous songs from different Amazonian tribes. Some of them are songs that form an integral part of the ayahuasca ritual, while others are simply traditional folk songs. In addition to Estonian musicians, the project also features the aforementioned Txana Bane as well as Txai Fernando, a Brazilian multi-instrumentalist and producer of enchanted world music featuring vast musical influences, an innovative soundscape, and a unique universal style. Fernando currently lives in Oslo and is a producer at Nixi Music Studio, collaborating with many artists such as the Amazon Ensemble, Astral Flowers, Ayla Schafer, and Curawaka.
The title of the project – Metsa Kene – is a combination of “metsa”, the Estonian word for “forest”, and “kene”, which – in the Hatxa Kuin language spoken by the Huni Kuin tribe living in the Brazilian part of Amazonia – denotes ancestral geometric patterns inspired by the forces of nature, a crucial element of their culture. Essentially, it is the meeting of two forests – the Amazon Rainforest and Europe’s Boreal Forest. The alchemy of two cultures in the language of sound. A total of 40 musicians have taken part in the project, and proceeds are donated to help indigenous tribes in Brazil as well as to aid in the drawing of attention to the importance of preserving forests and natural habitats while emphasizing the cultural role of indigenous peoples as their custodians.
Eduardo Agni says that indigenous music, especially the indigenous songs we call sacred or ritual songs, have interested him ever since he was a teen. His journey into the primeval forest and the indigenous song tradition began thirty years ago, and it continues to this day. And just as the old songs include “everything” – human life, the evolution of people and the creation of the whole world – the same can be said about the primeval forest. Both embody mystery, beauty and wildness; both the forest and music hold something beyond human understanding.
Agni and Laulupesa interpreting Nhamandu, from Guarani people. Photo: Ruudu Rahumaru
“Brazilian indigenous music was unveiled to non-indigenous people at the dawn of the 20th century, but still remains a cultural secrecy buried in the deepest regions of our archetypes. Most of their traditional chants are in archaic languages – some of them extinct – making a complete and accurate translation virtually impossible. However, the ancient chants are still present in rituals, where they are carefully intoned as a sort of ‘mantra’ in which the sound vibration of a word is somehow more significant and inspiring than its literal meaning,” writes Agni in the book’s introduction.
How did your interest in indigenous music and ritual songs begin? What is it that draws you to them? Is it their spiritual aspect, or the power of the songs in themselves?
It is a sort of spiritual connection that I have long had with Brazil’s indigenous people. When I was a kid, from time to time I would find photos of indigenous people in magazines, and they intrigued me. I would tell myself, I really want to go to visit them in the Amazon one day.
In 2004 I was invited by Brazil’s Ministry of Culture to work in a cultural project in Amazonas state involving the indigenous nation of Sateré-Mawé. By then, I had met many indigenous people in São Paolo, where I lived, and we had become friends. I was constantly trying to learn something from their songs and about their cultures. Then, finally, I had the opportunity to go and live with them in the Amazon. I stayed there for three years, working to help them preserve their culture – mostly their musical culture and also dance, of course, because they naturally go together.
How did Metsa-Kene come about? How did you end up in Estonia?
I came to Estonia for the first time in 2011, together with the Amazon Ensemble. We were invited to perform a concert in Tallinn and a ceremony in the Estonian countryside. It was just one weekend, but I felt a very deep connection with the Estonian people. You know, I was on stage performing, looking at the audience, and I had this feeling that I am at home and that I am together with my family. As in, that one could be my uncle, that one – my sister, that one – my grandfather, and so on.
We finished the concert, and the next day, when we were supposed to go to the airport, I said to (Txai) Fernando, I’m not going back to Norway. I want to stay here. He asked why, and my answer was, Because I have found my people. Fernando was like: No, you’re crazy. We have a ceremony and a concert this weekend in Norway. Then we had a discussion and he convinced me to go back to Norway.
Some weeks later, I went back to Estonia and my relationship with this country and the Estonians began. The Estonian people have something very special. I will tell you something interesting. When I first landed in Tallinn’s airport and stepped out of the plane, I said to Fernando: The astral plane here is really very clean. I’m experiencing the same feeling that I used to have when I was living in the Amazon. But it’s just a feeling, so maybe it’s very subjective.
A year ago, my friend Txana Bane [a Huni Kuin tribal leader currently living in Germany – Ed.] came to Estonia to do some concerts with Indrek Tammoja, Txai Fernando and me. It was not his first visit, and this time he also brought along his father, who is the main leader of the Huni Kuin people. I went to the airport to pick them up, and upon arrival, the father said: Wow, the astral plane here is very clean.
Exactly the same phrase I said to Fernando when I came to Estonia for the first time, almost ten years ago.
There is something in the astral field here that is very special and that I haven’t felt in any other country in Europe. And when you start to live with the people here, you see that they have something quite similar to that of the Amazonian people.
What is it? From the outside, they appear as two completely different societies. Only after I had lived here for a while did I understand what this unifying element was. You know, Estonia is the only country in European history that was not really converted to Christianity. Of course, there’s a minority here that is religious, but most people here are still much the same as the ancient pagan Estonian people were.
What do I want to mean with “pagan”? It does not mean that they are atheists. They believe in God, however they are not connected to any organized religion because they have such a deep connection with the earth, with the forest, and with nature in general that they don’t feel this need to go to a church and pray for something that is up there and not here. What is sacred for Estonian people is nature. And it is exactly the same for indigenous people in Amazonia.
The Brazilian shaman and musician Txai Fernando meets Rein Jarvelill, king of Seto people. Photo: Ruudu Rahumaru
I remember when I started collecting indigenous songs in Brazil, in order to understand a bit deeper the meaning and the purpose of the songs, I went to Fernando and asked him, I really don’t know why all these indigenous ritual songs are considered sacred. They are not about sacred things – most of them speak only about nature. They are very beautiful poems, about the wind and the rivers, the blue sky and the forest, and the perfume in the air... Because what is sacred for indigenous people is nature; it is not something abstract that they cannot see, cannot reach, or cannot contact in a direct way. And then I understood. They have sacred rivers, sacred forests, sacred mountains, and when they mention these sacred spots in a song, then the song also becomes sacred. This is really very beautiful. When you start translating the songs of the Huni Kuin, you see that most of them are extremely poetic. They’re always about nature, but in a very poetic way. And this is sacred and something that they can experience, feel with their senses, and enjoy. This kind of connection with the sacred is much more positive than traditional religious connections because it’s not creating division. Because we are nature. It is not possible to say: Oh, I’m not of one mind with you because you believe in nature. I don’t believe in nature. That is simply not possible – we are nature. Or, when religious people say, Your God is not the true one, my God is the true one. With nature, it is not possible to say that – nature is just the one.
Then I realised that this connection, this similarity between these two very distant cultures – Estonian culture and indigenous culture from Amazonia – is this connection with the forest.
Viva Estonia, Viva Amazonia! “Estonia meets Amazonia”… It just came into my mind, and I thought, I’m going to develop a project that shows this connection between these two cultures. I shared this idea with Indrek Tammoja (whose artistic name is Rändaja). Like me, he has his own experience of living in Amazonia with the indigenous people. He is still very connected to the Huni Kuin and Yawanawa cultures, and he helped me a lot in developing this project here in Estonia. My idea was to have very renowned, famous Estonian singers interpreting authentic songs from different peoples living in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. Indrek helped me find the right people, the right musicians, and the right singers – Estonian artists who also share this same mentality and are connected to nature. He was a basically the curator of the project.
I started production of the project in November 2019. It was a long process – we recorded very carefully, one by one, checking their pronunciation, etc. Finally, in September 2020, we released it in Estonia’s largest concert hall. It was a really great event.
Did you also find similarities between Amazonian indigenous songs and Estonian folk songs?
The language is similar because Estonian sounds a little bit tribal. When Huni Kuin shamans come to Estonia to perform a concert or ceremony, Estonians say that they have the impression that they can understand half of what they’re saying. Not literally, but on a certain level of consciousness they are absorbing that information and understanding. And the songs are quite similar as well. The third track on the CD is a song from the Ikolen people (they live in the eastern part of the state of Rondonia in Brazil) interpreted by a group of Seto singers. The Seto are an indigenous people in southern Estonia. By the way, Rein Jarvelill, the current king of the Seto people is a member of this ensemble. When you meet Seto people, you feel this similarity between Estonia and Amazonia because they are also indigenous. Of course, they have a different modus vivendi, a different way of life. There is no need to live like in the old times anymore. Life was very difficult then – why not have some comfort, some infrastructure now? But the Seto people still keep their culture alive, especially with the new king. He is the one who is reviving Seto culture.
“Metsa” in Estonian means “forest”, and “kene” means something like “dear” – “dear forest”, but the idea actually came from the Huni Kuin word “kene”. For the Huni Kuin people, “kene” denominates ancestral geometric patterns inspired by the forces of nature, which are a crucial element of their culture. They have “kenes” representing all the animals. The most important “kene” is the tree of life.
What is interesting is that the geometric patterns used in traditional Estonian clothing are very similar to Huni Kuin “kenes”. In the old times, all civilizations developed very similar graphic patterns. Anyway, sometimes when I see some Estonian pieces of clothing, such as sweaters and pullovers with patterns, for me, they could be Huni Kuin “kenes”.
I decided to contemplate on all these similarities, and I started to see a connection between these two cultures. And that’s how I came up with the idea of doing this project.
Do you think you will stay in Estonia?
Yeah, I really like Estonia. I think this is the place where I’m going to live out the rest of my life. At least, I have this feeling that Estonia is going to be my base camp. Of course, I cannot be here all the time because I used to travel quite a lot when developing projects in other countries.
Right now, for example, I’ve been invited to collaborate on making the documentary film Cantos de Terra, which is being produced by Brazilian film director Rafael Andreoni. I’m going to be following the team and recording songs from four different Brazilian indigenous peoples. By the way, at the moment, we have about 900,000 indigenous people in Brazil. That’s nothing compared to the whole population, which is more than 220,900,000. When Brazil was discovered by Europeans, the indigenous population was 11 million. Now there are less than one million, and you know why. These 900,000 are divided among 300 ethnic groups speaking 250 different languages. That’s quite a lot of languages, and they are all still alive. But we used to have more.
I have been researching indigenous cultures for a long time, but sometimes, like in the case of this documentary, I find out about a certain people I had never even heard about. The idea is to go to the jungle and make field recordings, as I did a long time ago. But back then I did it alone.
The Estonian singer Triinu Taul interpreting the Huni Kuin chant Noku mana. Photo: Ruudu Rahumaru
Did you find an answer to what makes indigenous sacred songs so powerful (to you)? I recently had a conversation with sound researcher Alexander Tannous, who spent many years with different Amazonian communities. He said that the Shipibo shamans told him that “the icaro is the one that does the work through ayahuasca. You can heal with the icaro by itself, but not with ayahuasca alone.”
I personally have had this experience of feeling my mind being altered by just listening to those songs. Especially Huni Kuin songs. It didn’t happen often – just on rare occasions. Yes, I think they have some kind of power because they are really old traditional songs and they bring lots of history together. It is not possible to explain these songs in rational terms – there is an element of mysticism.
Regarding your deep connection with Amazon indigenous peoples, I suppose that you have certainly had experiences with Ayahuasca. How could you explain to someone who has never had this experience, what is ayahuasca? Besides the chemical part of it, of course.
Well, I can say that it is a very powerful tool for self-knowledge as well as of connecting with nature. I really don't have enough knowledge to rationally explain exactly how it works in your brain. For me, this is not all that important. Because for me, it is not explainable. How can I describe the experience with ayahuasca when it opens up a completely different dimension, something that I don’t have the words to describe? Because it is something completely different from everything I have experienced before. It is a portal to the unknown.
But why, from the whole range of teacher plants, has precisely ayahuasca become so popular on the global scene? As Canadian anthropologist Wade Davis once told me, “If you had asked me forty-five years ago which of all the obscure psychedelics would hit the zeitgeist and be used ubiquitously in Europe, the United States and Canada, I never would have guessed ayahuasca.” What is your explanation?
We have LSD, for instance, which is also a great expander of consciousness. And I have used that as well. By the way, I used to say that the function that LSD had during the 1960s and 1970s, during the hippie movement, is the same one that ayahuasca is having now. Now it is ayahuasca’s turn. Of course, LSD culture is still alive, but the world is specially interested in ayahuasca nowadays. Especially in the last ten, fifteen years, ayahuasca has spread around the whole world. Every country I go to, and I have been to more than 40 countries, I find people who are connected to the local ayahuasca movement.
I think that’s because ayahuasca is more natural – it is like a tea. You have the combination of leaf and vine; it is not something made in a laboratory like LSD is. And it connects you to nature in a very magical way. We cannot explain magic because it is magic. Even the indigenous peoples don't have any scientific or rational knowledge about all the medicines they use. And it is not only ayahuasca – there are other medicinal plants as well. They don’t care about finding explanations; they just want you to live, to experience, and to surrender to that so spiritualizing experience.
The concert counted on the remote participation of the Huni Kuin leader ande shaman Txana Bane. Photo: Ruudu Rahumaru
From the creative side, what could be the cultural impact of ayahuasca?
I think it is very positive, because ayahuasca has already helped so many people. Most people living on this planet are so stuck, are so deeply conditioned by society, that the only way to free themselves from this conditioning is by having an experience with LSD or ayahuasca – something that is really able to break that old psychological structure and to open up their perception.
Do you have the feeling that the old indigenous knowledge is still alive and flourishing, or is it slowly dying out?
It depends on the people, on the tribe. We can see now that people who have a very strong sense of
spirituality and a very solid culture are the ones who are surviving. Those who do not have a strong culture fall apart very easily because now they want to live like us. And why not? Like, why should they have to stay in the forest, living a very difficult life? And it is a difficult life. We in Europe used to romanticize the lives of the people who live in the jungle, but it’s a very hard life. And very dangerous, too. That's why these medicines – like ayahuasca, jurema, hapé – are so important, because when indigenous people use these healing plants, they help them to connect to the forest and to nature, and they help them understand why they are there.
I have spoken with some indigenous leaders, and they say that their people are still surviving in the jungle only thanks to all these medicinal plants. Otherwise they would not be living there because now they know that they are not alone. They know about the white people and they see them driving beautiful cars, living in huge houses and having lots of comfort – iPads, iPhones – and they want to have the same.
Peoples like the Huni Kuin and Yawanawa are now using technology to promote their culture. Whereas some other indigenous people, who don’t have this strong tradition and this deep connection to nature, end up going to live in the cities. But they don’t have much of a chance once they’re there because racial prejudice in Brazil is strong and they end up living in slums, in favelas. Most of them become alcoholics and they get totally lost. But they want to at least try. They really believe that if they go to live in a city, they are going to have a more decent life – they are going to have an iPhone, a car, etc. They are dreamers as well. Unfortunately, most of them end up as beggars because they don’t find any opportunity. It is different, for instance, if they are sent to study at university while still young – then they have more of a chance of surviving in white society. So, except for this approach, in general, they end up living in very poor conditions.
The Estonian artist Randaja (Indrek Tammoja) interpreting the Yawanawa song Okaserin. Photo: Ruudu Rahumaru
It’s clear that if we want a sustainable future for the planet and humanity, we need dialogue between indigenous traditions and modern science. How do you see this collaboration taking place?
It is happening, but on a very small scale. Now in Brazil, with the Bolsonaro administration, we are actually going backwards. As they see it, indigenous people are vagabonds; they are not productive. They are lazy, they don’t do anything. The economy has to grow, and the Amazon has to be developed. And they need to remove these vagabonds from the forest in order to develop the Amazon. This is the prevailing mentality at the moment, and that’s why I feel kind of hopeless – sorry.
But all this integration is happening. For instance, people like me, like you, we are more open minded, we have a kind of spiritual inquisitiveness. We look at indigenous people and recognise that they are wise people, wiser than us in many aspects. And we want to learn from them about how to live in harmony with nature and how to live in balance with our mind, body, and the ambient environment. But, unfortunately we are part of a very small group, which is not much significant compared to the whole population.
Metsa kene project involved the participations of 40 renowned Estonian musicians and singers. Photo: Ruudu Rahumaru
Wrapping it all up, what are the three most important things you have learned from all those years spent with indigenous people?
You know, when I went there for the first time, in the middle of the forest, I visited the main leader of the Sateré-Mawé people. I was invited to a meeting with him, and to spend some days there because, firstly, he wanted to know my real intentions. I was working for the Ministry of Culture, but for him, being a representative of the ministry doesn’t mean anything. He wanted to know my soul, my heart, what I wanted to do in the jungle, my intentions. And then he told me, Before you start developing the project, I want to spend some time together with you, show you my people and my family, and feel your energy.
When I got there, the first very deep feeling that I had was: why have I been struggling to survive for my whole life? We don’t need to struggle because we don’t need anything to survive. This was the first feeling I had – that I don’t even need clothes because the temperature is so high. And sometimes, if you feel overcome with the heat, you just go to the river and wash yourself; there is always nearby a way to refresh your body.
And then I felt: Oh, now I’m going to live here. I will just enjoy life, enjoy the present moment. That is when I understood what I had read about in books when I studied history: that when the Portuguese began colonising Brazil, they tried to make the indigenous people work for them as slaves, but it didn’t work out because indigenous people aren’t used to work. It is not part of their culture to struggle. As in, I’m living a good life, but I could definitely have a bigger house, so I’m going to struggle and work a lot in order to get this bigger house. Indigenous people don't think like this. Instead, they think, Okay, enough is enough. I’m happy. I’m not in danger. I’m protected. I’m feeling good, so let’s just live like this. And I was caught up in this feeling. Of course, it's not all that romantic. But this is the first lesson I learned. In our society, we create lots of needs that are not real and are not necessary, and we struggle our whole life to achieve something we don’t need. Of course, we need to eat, we need a house. Otherwise I will freeze to death here. But I don’t need more than this. And then we started to create other needs that I call “psychological needs” – they are not real needs, they are only psychological because I feel that I can identify with that. And then I need to show my friends that I have that thing... It is something more psychological, more related to the ego, to personality. And the problem is that we suffer quite a lot to achieve all the things we think we need to achieve. I think this is the first lesson I received.
Photo: Ruudu Rahumaru
The second thing I learned, or perceived, is that without the help of these medicines, these powerful healing plants, they cannot survive. Some people say that these are just hallucinogens, but actually, they are their spiritual teachers. It is possible to understand this only by being there and realising that indigenous people really need these medicines to survive, even physically. Otherwise, I don't know what would happen to them. They can become sick very easily, they become weak and they can loose their connection with nature if they don’t have the help of all those medicines.
What else? It’s a beautiful culture. I’m a musician, and I really like to go there. I appreciate indigenous music and indigenous dances very much. And even being a professional musician, with lots of knowledge about harmony and musical theory, I learned how to appreciate the simplicity of the indigenous songs. And to recognize that in these songs, there is huge power. We cannot find the same power in the music of Beethoven, Mozart, Shostakovich, or Stravinsky. It is about something different; it’s something more irrationally elaborate. In indigenous music, as we discussed at the beginning of our conversation, there’s something special – there is something we cannot see. We cannot understand rationally what is happening, but it is happening. It’s changing our state of mind. And it somehow expands our consciousness, which is a really good thing.
As a musician, I used to be very rational. And for me, it was really a big challenge to accept the simplicity of indigenous music and to see that this power is there precisely because of its simplicity.
Moreover, this simplicity is not that simple – there is another completely other, wider and higher dimension to it.
