Flowers Are Our Garments

This song sets tlatoani Nezahualcoyotl’s poem “Flowers Are Our Only Garments” to progressive death metal, reframing the Aztec Death Whistle within a decolonial sonic history of the Anthropocene. By redesigning the whistle to augment metal vocals, it rejects the bloodthirsty tropes assigned to the instrument that justify genocidal violence against Indigenous peoples. This reinterpretation instead highlights Nahua philosophy’s high literature and spiritual symbolism, contextualizing Plantationocene capitalism through the Orbis Spike. The piece invites Western audiences to reevaluate the instrument’s mythologized historical context, moving beyond unfounded pop cultural narratives and fostering a deeper engagement with Indigenous contributions to environmental and cultural discourses.

This song was selected for the New Museum of Networked Art’s Sound of Anthropocene exhibit in 2024.

Lyrics

Flowers are our garments
Songs make pain subside
Diverse flowers on Earth
Ohuaya, ohuaya.
My companions will vanish
When I lie in that place – I, Yoyontzin, Ohuaye!
In that place of song and of Life Giver,
Ohuaya, ohuaya.

Do we know where we’re going?
Do we go to God’s home, or
do we only live here on Earth?
Ah, Ohuaya.

Princes, eagles, and jaguars
We won’t be but a moment
Till we go to the Life Giver’s home
Ohuaya, ohuaya.