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Transcription: [00:22:23]
Yeah
{SILENCE}
[00:22:25]
we can join in in hoping that would come true.
{SILENCE}
[00:22:35]
The tattoos men would get on, on different occasions um when they would go off to fight a battle,
[00:22:43]
they would get tattooed to make their skin strong so that bullets or knives wouldn't penetrate.
[00:22:48]
If someone was gravely ill, they might get tattooed in order to be healed.
[00:22:54]
A young man might get tattooed in order to impress the girls with his, like just like American or I mean Western sailors impressed the girls with your tattoos.
[00:23:05]
Um, The Kmhmu also believed that anyone who died and hadn't been tattooed anywhere would turn into a worm and would never be properly be buried and would never be properly, um and his soul would return as a worm.
[00:23:24]
These are Khmu people from Laos living now in Stockton and Richmond, California.
[00:23:30]
So, we need to return now to our other duties we have a Kmhmu garden and a number of different Kmhmu craft traditions and we invite you to come and see us there or come back in the next couple of days. Thank you.
[00:23:44]
{APPLAUSE}
[00:23:50]
{SILENCE}
[00:23:58]
Music Plays

[00:24:06]
February or something

[00:24:08]
Music Continues

[00:24:11]
Duncan Earl: Good afternoon, we are here to uh, discuss Maya culture in the context of the festival of American Folklore and specifically cultural conservation.
[00:24:26]
My name is Duncan Earl, I am an anthropologist from Dartmouth College. And with me is Hudanemo Compenseco, a Concubal Maya.
[00:24:37]
Previously from Guatemala, now from Indiantown Florida. And we brought with us a musical instrument we've been playing or that they have been playing at the main stage.
[00:24:54]
The marimba is but one of numerous observable aspects of the culture which we are concerned with conserving.
[00:25:06]
But, in fact it is only an artifact like the weaving, which there is a weaving exhibit over there to the left and many crafts in fact in the craft tent which you can buy, which you can purchase.
[00:25:22]
However, in cultural conservation we're really not talking about those artifacts, the artifacts are only tools, they are only mediums, they are only, uh, in certain way vessels, they are something that carry culture.
[00:25:38]
And when we talk about culture as anthropologists and its conservation, we're not talking about conserving things. We're not even really talking about conserving musical recordings, although that is a part of the activity that in cultural conservation one does, or preserving tales and so on.
[00:25:58]
What we're really talking about is preservation of people, and not just in a biological sense of survival but survival as communities and survival of the integral nature of those communities when they find themselves, for one or another reason, endangered.
[00:26:16]
Many people, and most of the exhibits here at the cultural conservation area, find themselves endangered by the encroachments of Western society.
[00:26:26]
in a kind of an incremental sense, the loss of interest oftentimes in young people in preserving traditions of their parents and grandparents, the loss of language, the influence of schools that don't take their language into consideration, television, and so on.
[00:26:43]
The situation for the Maya is somewhat along these lines but it is perhaps one of the most extreme cases of endangerment because, uh, rather than being influenced by the outside culture in a sort of incremental way, they have, particularly in the last 5 years, found themselves endangered in a very, uh, sudden, very abrupt fashion.
[00:27:11]
Here is a culture that goes back 6 thousand years and which despite the devastations of the conquest, invasion by the Spanish in 1524 still maintain a high degree of cultural integration and maintain 22 of their original Mayan languages,
[00:27:36]
maintain a musical tradition, dance tradition or dance theatre tradition, a calendric tradition, a very complex calendric tradition involving two different cycling calendars,
[00:27:50]
a tradition of Divination, of herbal and spiritual curing, of, um, folk wisdoms of various sorts, having to do with plants, having to do with the rain cycles, agricultural knowledge, some of it very subtle agricultural knowledge.
[00:28:13]
Uh, classifications of plants that are more precise than the Linnaeus classification, for example.
[00:28:19]
All of this diverse form of information, preserved over this great period of time, is not preserved in the sense of a museum or preserved in the sense of things written down, but preserved in a dynamic sense, preserved as something that lives inside of a living community. And that is also the nature of the Marimba, the Marimba doesn't live as something people recall and play exactly the notes they played 200 years ago, but it lives as a dynamic, um, piece, or an expression of what Maya culture is, and that changes sometimes, it elaborates itself sometimes. And in fact, there have been a lot of influences by the musical traditions of Latin America, other parts of Guatemala and Latin America, on the marimba and marimba playing. The tendency has been to divide the musical genre up into more and more parts.
[00:29:24}
Such that some of the traditional music that was played all the time is now only played in certain, sacred contexts where the outside music and the outside influenced musical styles become secular music for dances or weddings and so on and so forth.
[00:29:42]
We have a great opportunity here as well because of one of our Marimba players who is here is capable of playing some of these sacred songs which we might like to hear of a little bit. But first I thought maybe I would turn it to Hironimo since Geronimo is in a unique position because of being a Maya himself, he is also well versed in the Western world and has a degree in anthropology. I believe he is the only Maya from Guatemala with such an advanced degree, and so he is able to see and we have a perspective from both inside and outside at the same time. I thought he might like to comment a little bit on the whole issue of preserving Maya culture.

[00:30:34]
Hudanemo Compenseco: It is a pleasure to be with you, and to share with us our thoughts about what we think as Indians, um, you know before the arriving of the Europeans in Central America.
[00:30:57]
We, the Mayans, we were living our lives, our war, our special way of life, as Indians. But the, when the violent contact came, we submit them by force. To accept the other culture, and of course, on the other side, uh, the colonizers didn't want us to be as them because we only could be some kind of uh giving to them in form of slavery, our work, our labor force, and to work for them.

[00:31:47]
But anyway, the countries, because of the, uh, decisions of the colonizers, we were divided in artificial states, and the Mayan nations were divided also in this way.

[00:32:14]
So, despite of that, the Mayan were now, were living two way of lives, the way of the outsiders and our own way. The way of the outsiders because uh, they needed us to communicate in order to serve them and to be as I said in these last times, a labor force. But finally, because the Indians trying to leave this way of life and bring this way of life of the outsiders to us like the Indians started to, to build a better life for us, like cooperatives, like the agriculture, and all the things the government of the Ladinos started thinking that we are going to be a threat for them.

[00:33:22]
So, they started persecution against Indians in the last 4 years and in fact, were killed, decimated, by the attacks of the army, so that's the reason we left [?] to Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and also to United States.

[00:33:48]
We are here all 6000 refugees from Mayan origin. Despite of that, we are, we bring our language, we are living family life as the Mayan ancestor, we are playing our music, we are still weaving, we are talking each other in our own language.

[00:34:16]
Now we are going to, I think, express more this spiritual interior of us, what's going on with the Mayan people. Not only inside like resistance in Guatemala but outside as refugees

[00:34:43]
Pedro Francisco is going to play us some kind of that sacred music that is played once a year in our town that the government calls Baile de Ropa, I think you can explain more of that.

[00:35:02]
Duncan Earl: Sure. Um, the dances that are done.

[00:35:05]
[[clears throat]]

[00:35:06]
I should, I should just say the reason, and, and to finish off what Hudonemo had said.

[00:35:10]
The reason why Maya are even here in the cultural conservation area, which is an area usually exclusively for the diversity of Amer-, of, of U.S. cultures

[00:35:22]
is that they are now, because of the difficult political situation with their own government in Guatemala, are now the latest arrivals of a long tradition of people fleeing other countries, seeking safe haven in the United States.

[00:35:37]
And so they are now, we now recognize them, the Smithsonian now recognizes them, as part of the diversity of American, of, of U.S. cultures. Now uh, it's a, it's an unusual situation in that the Maya ideally would like to have that a temporary arrangement, not a permanent arrangement.

[00:35:55]
But, uh, I think we can also say their loss is our gain. Because at least for now, while they're having to be with us, we can enjoy and understand up close, and celebrate with them, the beauty of their own culture.

[00:36:32]
This particular music that we're gonna hear, which is, first, which is the most, the least available, the least accessible, the kind you would not possibly have heard, have you not been here today, because there's none of it in recordings that are commercially for sale or anything.

[00:36:36]
It's a kind of, uh, marimba music that is played for devotional dances, and these are devotional dances that are done usually only once a year in each town, where people dress up, numerous people dress up in various kinds of rented costumes, very elaborate costumes. Saw a couple of them in fact in the photograph behind us. Um, and they play out various different roles, that have different music in them.

[00:36:55]
You know when you hear Peter and the Wolf, you hear the wolf song, and then you hear the, the bird sound. Well there's different songs that are played for each of the characters. Amongst those characters, there are, um, the, the deer, the monkey, the uh, the dog

[00:37:11]
the uh, old man and the old woman, the uh, the bull, the magical diviner, the um, the Mexican

[00:37:21]
the uh, uh, cowboy, um, and a number of other uh, uh, animals and other odd individuals, uh, sort of on the edge of the world of the Maya.

[00:37:34]
Hudonemo: Balam
And they- huh? Oh and, I sh-, of all of them I should not forget the Balam, which is the jaguar, which was considered the most important animal of the Maya, from time immemorial. And so we're gonna hear some of these animals dance.

[00:37:49]
Unfortunately, we don't have the uh, 35 or 40 dancers available in costume to show you what this all would look like, but you'll have to imagine that part in your head.

[00:37:59]
Um, but we will get the musical part of that if we can get uh, Pedro Francisco to uh, tokar.










Transcription Notes:
Kmhmu not Kamu