Heart and Soul: Future shaman

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As a shaman, Sipa Melo is the beating heart of tribal faith and culture in a remote corner of north-east India, tucked in the shadow of the Himalayan Mountains. He's a healer, a story-teller and a protector of the natural world. Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent joins Sipa for a week of ritual, performing ceremonies to mark deaths and births and maintaining taboos that help preserve this mountainous region's indigenous culture and its rich wildlife. She hears about his determined efforts to encourage a new generation of trainee shamans and his worries about the changing values of the region as roads and hydro-electric dams end its isolation from the booming cities to the south.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Who is your pick for the all-time greatest African Miffilda?
0:03.6	He's the most naturally talented player that I've played with.
0:05.8	See if your choice made the list on match of the day
0:08.0	Africa Top 10 from the BBC World Service.
0:10.6	Find it wherever you get your BBC podcast.
0:15.8	Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service
0:19.2	with me Antonio Bollingbrookent.
0:21.2	This is Heart and Soul
0:23.0	where we explored different approaches to faith around the world.
0:26.2	Today I'm in the far northeastern corner of India
0:29.8	to meet a shaman who provides the spiritual link between his people
0:33.8	and the region's extraordinary wildlife.
0:37.8	There's a little group of flycatchers. Do you know what type of flycatchers?
0:41.8	Hello Billy Quinn.
0:42.8	Yellow belly.
0:44.8	This is the northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.
0:47.8	A remote mountainous area where India, Tibet and Myanmar collide.
0:52.8	More tribal groups live here and more languages are spoken than anywhere else in South Asia.
0:58.8	It's also home to India's largest remaining tracks of tropical, sub-tropical and temperate forest.
1:05.8	I'm just ducking through tunnels of bamboo.
1:09.8	I know these trailing sort of vines which are thick with the most lethal forms.
1:14.8	Catching on us.
	...

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