Abstract:
This article examines the role of ritual songs in sustaining contemporary multilingualism among the Murui-Muina of the Colombian Northwest Amazon. Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic research, it shows how selected ritual genres operate as forms of memory, linguistic presence, and ritual continuity in a context of progressive shift toward Spanish. Rather than restoring a former linguistic order or translating meanings fully into contemporary categories, these songs activate relations of recognition and alterity, as well as forms of social and cosmological connection. In this framework, ritual song allows languages that are no longer fully mastered by some younger participants to retain presence, value, and social effects. The article therefore proposes rethinking linguistic continuity not only as the full transmission of a linguistic code, but also as a relational, situated, and ritual practice grounded in co-presence, ceremonial action, and shared history.
Keywords: Murui-Muina; Witotoan language family; ritual songs; multilingual ecologies; Colombian Amazon.