The authors discuss their methodologies for creating and relistening to recordings in collaboration with Indigenous People in Peru and Venezuela and contextualize them within the discourse about overcoming power structures that shape divides between the Global North and South, in both urban and rural trajectories, and in Western and Indigenous knowledges. When it comes to giving back or sharing sound recordings, we suggest the term resocialization rather than restitution or repatriation. In Indigenous lifeworlds, sound works much differently than in modern conceptualizations of music as art or entertainment. Indigenous theories of sound complement frameworks of copyright, which are still mainly based on modern views of human creativity. Working in archives and exhibitions, we seek collaboration with Indigenous experts when archiving, publishing, displaying, or playing recordings. We show how Indigenous and European specialists can foster eye‐level bilateral knowledge transfer by fruitfully cocurating sound and multimedia installations in exhibition contexts.

Firstly, the focus is on the classification of the entity Kanaima in the multiverse of the indigenous group of Pemón (Venezuela / Brazil). Secondly, the historical and current recordings of Kanaima songs are presented, whereby the functions of these songs are examined with regard to the body/soul administration and the associated (re)-transformation processes. Finally, the peculiarity of this anti-human entity in the Guianas is discussed in comparison to the animistic ontologies of the Amazon.

This is a short essay introducing some thoughts the professional fields of ethnomusicologists working within an ethnographic museum. It is of utmost importance to consider the growing responsibility of any kind of musicologists in the context of a wider presentation of historical facts and social relationships that are the contents of exhibitions in museums. This short report reviews some basic ideas and tries to instigate discussions.

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