This article aims to analyze the native notion of authorship found in the Kapinawá Indian community, localized in Pernambuco, Northeast Brazil. Based on the notion of a historical anthropology, I analyze the authorship as an invented tradition that results from a political process of ethnic emergence. Through the ethno history of this Indian group, I present the context of construction of an Indian tradition - the Toré ritual - that legitimates itself by using categories pertaining to a religious tradition of Northeast Brazil called Jurema's complex. By doing so, I intend to show the relation formed between the Toré ritual and the emergence of a native notion of authorship constructed in it.
Northeast brazilian indians; invented traditions; ethnomusicology