A new shelf opens with ten short texts of the Kagaba — the Kogi people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in the north of Colombia — recorded by the German ethnologist Konrad Theodor Preuss during his expedition of 1914 to 1919, and printed with his German translations in the journal Anthropos between 1921 and 1927. The tellers named in the book are the Kagaba priests Miguel Nolavita and Jacinto Garavito of Palomino, and Alfonso Auigi of Noavaka. The English you hear is a fresh rendering of Preuss's German, made for this shelf.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
These are myths of the world's first ordering. The Mother Sibalaneuman, mother of songs, of the rivers, of the fire and the rain, leaves the songs and dances as her memorial. Sintana has Seizankua blow nine times on the golden flute, and the black earth is made and spread to the horizon, so that the plants come up. Seizankua makes the first iron tools — twice, for the first had no holes to take hold of. Sun-Surli speaks to the directions of the sky so that they do not fall in, and calls the rain and ends it. Taiku fashions all the priests' gold. Namsiku settles where the ant shall live. At Noavaka the Sun-Taiku Mask asks for four days of rain, and the crops are danced to so they do not wilt. And three brief tellings close the part: how the deer were once the daughters of a temple-mountain, and how the white salt and the green salt came down to the people who eat them.
Of the texts screened in book order for this part, ten are told here. Set aside by name under the house rule — each because its plot turns on depicted killing, fighting or cruelty, or on matter that cannot be told as printed — are the Fight with Chief Zántana, the Burning of the World, the Flood, Sintana and the Sun, Sintana's Contests with Namaku the Puma, Bunkuéi (both parts), Hiuika Brings the Diseases, Niudlue and His Father-in-Law Taimu, Kasindukua the Puma, Chief Sofigela, Grandmother Suzauban, the Giants Who Tore the Priests by the Hair, the Path of Souls, the Chimila, the War of Kanzibuhu, and the Fights of Namsiku, together with the closing verses of Taiku and of the Salt (Text 61). The ritual songs and invocations of the corpus are not tales and are not counted. No more than that is claimed.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:56 The Mother of All Things
3:28 The Creation of the Black Earth
5:50 The First Iron Tools
6:30 Sun-Surli, Lord of the Directions of the Sky
8:14 Taiku, Lord of Gold
10:07 Namsiku Settles Where the Ant Shall Live
12:03 Nuitaiku, Lord of Rain and Drought
14:01 The Deer
14:41 The White Salt
15:29 The Green Salt
Konrad Theodor Preuss, Kagaba texts from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Anthropos XVI/XVII–XX (1921–1927) — public domain. Fresh English translation made for KacheliTV.
Narrated by Bruno. Music: opening and closing theme, "The Cello's Unfinished Promise" — heard at the introduction and the close only; the tales themselves are read dry.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
Colombian folk tales · Kogi Kagaba myths · Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta · Konrad Theodor Preuss · South American folk tales · creation myths · world folk tales · free audiobook
