Amazonian Band Kayatibu Transmit the Forest’s Voices

It’s not every day that the rich tones of a remote Amazonian commune find their way up the sonic ladder to a global audience. The Indigenous Brazilian music collective Kayatibu bring us to the nucleus of their world on their stunning sophomore album NI HUI – Voices of the Forest. Kayatibu is comprised of young musicians from the Indigenous Huni Kuin community in Jordão, in the northwestern Brazilian state of Acre. They formed in 2013 and released their first album, NI ISHANAI (Future Forest), in 2022. 

NI HUI is an album of encounters—between human societies, humans and animals, plants and humans—proudly infused with the life force of the Amazon. In the midst of increasing existential threats to Indigenous life and land in Brazil and worldwide, Kayatibu stand at the frontlines of cultural preservation. NI HUI is an encounter worth sticking around for. 

Rita Huni Kuin, one of the group’s founders, explained that “the voice of the forest is the main source of communication through music between indigenous and non-indigenous people”. It is a fitting moniker for the project, which was born from a symbiotic partnership between young Huni Kuin musicians and the globe-trotting Brazilian musician and producer LUIZGA (Luiz Gabriel Lopes), whose rich and sensitive arrangements lend the record a “world music”-esque gravitas while keeping the core of the traditional music intact.

The opening track “NI HUI” pours forth, gathering a symphony of these voices: croaking frogs, warbling songbirds, the rain-like patter of hand drums, and a meandering guitar riff drenched in Doors-like psychedelia. The album warms as it advances, presumably, deeper into the forest. A shimmering percussive soundscape, ecstatic vocals, and a driving, straight-from-the-blues bassline form the basis of early tracks like “KUXIPA KAYAWAY” and “TERE ANA PAIMA”.

“NAI BASA MASHERI” and “YUME AWA KAWAYNAY” are the closest Kayatibu get to dream pop. Yaka and Parans’ vocals (respectively) nearly evoke the ethereal warmth of Mazzy Star, complemented by laidback strumming, shimmering keys, and a light percussive drizzle.

Comparisons aside, the circularity of Kayatibu’s music is distinct from the linear shape of much Western music. In the Huni Kuin community, there is a central cosmological concept known as “yuxin”, which connotes the spiritual or vital force that permeates all living things on earth. The lyrics and song titles detail and pay homage to this ecosystem. “NAI BASA MASHERI”, for example, means “colorful monkey”, and derives, as do all the album’s lyrics, from Huni Kuin poetry and chants that praise what the community considers the “enchanted beings of the forest”. 

Kayatibu are not built atop rigid scaffolding; there is no band leader or lead singer. Rather, the project shifts and oscillates in tandem with the rhythm of life in the community. Contrary to the excessively romantic, orientalizing portrait too often painted by Western onlookers of indigenous societies, the community is not static or “untouched” by time.

While remote in its location and culturally distinct from the more “Westernized”, urbanized areas of Brazil, the Amazon rainforest is not an alien planet, and the Huni Kuin community is not impermeable, static subjects. Kayatibu make this evident in the numerous “encounters” throughout NI HUI. On the delightful “EN ESKA NERUMA”, uptempo cavaquinho strumming lends the track a Samba-tinged vigor over a grooving bass line. On “DAUTI”, traditional chanting is peppered by twinkling synth keys and signs off with a bona fide arena-rock electric guitar.

Kayatibu see themselves not only as a musical project, but a social one, too. The Huni Kuin people are suffering the brunt of hyper-extractivism: an ecological crisis characterized by rapid deforestation and worsening wildfires, the maximization of logging and mining industry profits at the expense of indigenous rights and sovereignty. In this era of precarious and deepening assaults, Kayatibu’s efforts to preserve and promote the music of their people put them on the frontlines of cultural preservation. It is the rainforest against the world, but they also need the world to stand with the rainforest. NI HUI delivers on its mission of transmitting the voices of the forest, including its people.