Three Lacandon Songs
Keywords:
oral tradition, religious rites, incense burners, ancestral religion, Lacandon chantsAbstract
The present article is a short historical, ethnographic and ethnomusicological introduction to the repertory of vocal expressions which Didier Boremanse recorded in 1974 among the Lacandons of Lacan, ja' Chan Sayab, Chiapas, Mexico. It places Special emphasis on the cultural differences between the Northern and Southern Lacandon subgroups, differences which tend to blur today but were Still strongly marked when the recordings were made. Songs and chants from both subgroups were described, transcribed or recorded repeatedly during the last century, beginning with Alfred Tozzer's seminal study from 1907, but to the knowledge of the authors, textual and musical transcriptions have not been published so far together with the actual recordings. The three songs presented here are historical dcuments of a Southern Lacandon oral tradition, not just because of the more than 30 years which have passed since their recording, but also because they are no longer performed today.
References
Boremanse, Didier. 1995. "Orígenes de los lacandones actuales. En Historia General de Guatemala", Tomo 3: Siglo XVIII hasta la Independencia. (Jorge Luján Muñoz, director general; Cristina Zilbermann de Luján, directora del tomo). Asociación de Amigos del país, Fundación para la Cultura y el Desarrollo, Guatemala, pp. 393-398.
Boremanse, Didier. 1998. "Hach Winik. The Lacandon Maya Of Chiapas, Southern Mexico", Monograph 11. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, SUNY-Albany, Albany.
Davis, Victoria Dale. 1978. "Ritual of the Northem Lacandon Maya". Tesis doctoral. Department of Anthropology, Tulane University, New Orleans.
Seeger, Anthony. 1987. "Why Suyá sing. A Musical Anthropology Of an Amazonian People". Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Tozzer, Alfred Marston. 1978. "A Comparative Study of the Mayas and the Lacandones". AMS Press, New York.
Tozzer, Alfred Marston. 1982. "Mayas lacandones. Un estudio comparativo" (prólogo y traducción por Alfonso Villa Rojas). Instituto Nacional Indigenista, México.
