Participant experiences of icaros (Amazonian curative songs) during a traditional medicine ceremony at the Takiwasi Center, Peru

Curative songs called icaros, used by traditional healers in the Peruvian Upper Amazon alongside the psychoactive plant brew ayahuasca, may aid healing by influencing self-referential processing, promoting decentering, and facilitating beneficial introspective or meditative states. An interpretive phenomenological analysis of six participants attending an ayahuasca ritual for personal and spiritual development at the Takiwasi Center in 2018 provides pointers toward a neurophenomenology of musico-healing experiences. The work contributes a medical ethnomusicological perspective to understanding how Amazonian curative songs function under the altered state of consciousness produced by ayahuasca.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract Musico-healing practices play a key role in indigenous and mestizo traditional medicine in the Amazon. The curative songs or icaros used by the curanderos (traditional healers) of the Peruvian Upper Amazon are administered alongside the psychoactive plant decoction ayahuasca in ritual settings. This Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis examines musical experiences of 6 participants attending an ayahuasca ritual for personal and spiritual development at the Takiwasi Center in Peru in 2018. Findings offer pointers towards a neurophenomenology of musico-healing experiences with ayahuasca, suggesting that the conjunction of icaros and ayahuasca may contribute to psycho-neurobiological mechanisms of healing such as self-referential processing, decentering, and facilitating access to beneficial introspective/meditative states. The study offers a medical ethnomusicological contribution to the phenomenological mapping of musico-healing experiences of Amazonian curative songs under the altered state of consciousness (ASC) produced by ayahuasca.