The final galley is signed and publication is imminent! The richly-illustrated Spanish language book my research collaborator, Dr. Jorge Luis Acevedo Vargas and I wrote, Cosmovisión y Expresiones Estéticas de los Pueblos Originarios en la Actualidad Costarricense, is ready for publication by the Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica! it documents the current rapid acculturation of small indigenous groups using original material gleaned from dozens of field excursions into remote parts of Costa Rica, working with several small and rapidly acculturating indigenous tribal groups, for me starting nearly 40 years ago.  

 

Jorge's work started much earlier with celebrated Costa Rican professor, anthropologist and sociologist Dra. Maria Eugenia Bozzoli.Jorge, famed composer, musicologist, operatic singer, esteemed professor emeritus and former Dean of Fine Arts at the University of Costa Rica and I stared our friendship and and artistic collaboration when I was embarking on a mural cycle at UCR on indigenous tribal groups during my first visit to Costa Rica as an exchange professor from Linfield University in 1986. Jorge was kind enough to take me on the first of many excursions to learn something first-hand about these tribal cultures. Jorge and I clicked as a team and so I later continued the work as a Fulbright Scholar and beyond. We are not anthropologists, but found that by attending to art and musical art forms valuable insight into tribal identity and forms of animism was ripe for original scholarship.  We worked mostly with thew Boruca, Maleku, Cabécar, Bribri and Terrace tribes, and to some extent with the Chorotega.

 

By looking at how music, ritual dance and object-making relate to diverse conceptions of how the natural world meet spiritual notions and, as a result, forms of shamanism we found keys into neglected aspects of Costa Rican anthropology. This research spans, for me, two Senior Fulbright Scholar awards (1987 and 1994), a National Endowment for the Humanities grant (1999), and three large mural cycles on two University of Costa Rica campuses (San Pedro and San Ramon) and at the Escuela de Artes Integradas in Santa Ana. Still incomplete when I retired from Linfield University as Professor Emeritus of Studio Art , it has finally reached maturity. Over the years, I have been able to share field experiences with family, Linfield students and colleagues, such as Dr. Jeff Peterson, sociologist. For me, this has been a rich and rewarding chapter in my life. It has enriched my approach to making my own art in subtle and profound ways. It informed my own spirituality and practice. Sustaining this friendship and collaboration in Spanish has been challenging and satisfying. The many contacts and friendships formed with indigenous folks has been, well, heartwarming.

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Also see a pdf bilingual summary LIVING INDIGENOUS CULTURE OF COSTA RICA.

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Special thanks to all who supported our work for so many years, including family, individuals and institutions such as  Linfield University, The School of Music of the Universidad de Costa Rica, the Fulbright Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities, specifically the Oregon Council for the Humanities

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