Maya Achi Marimba Music in Guatemala Includes CD

Listen to a clip from Amanecido son, Marimba La Reina Rabinalense. Esteban Uanche (treble); Celestino Cajbón (center); Mencho Uanche (bass). Recorded in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, 1995.

For the Achi, one of the several Mayan ethnic groups indigenous to Guatemala, the music of the marimba serves not only as a form of entertainment but also as a form of communication, a vehicle for memory, and an articulation of cultural identity. Sergio Navarrete Pellicer examines the marimba tradition-the confluence of African musical influences, Spanish colonial power, and Indian ethnic assimilation-as a driving force in the dynamics of cultural continuity and change in Rabinal, the heart of Achi culture and society. By examining the performance and consumption of marimba music as essential parts of a system of social interaction, religious practice, and ethnic identification, Navarrete Pellicer reveals how the strains of the marimba resonate with the spiritual yearnings and cultural negotiations of the Achi as they try to come to terms with the violence and economic hardship wrought by their colonial past.

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Contents

List of Illustrations
List of musical examples in CD
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. A History of the Achi People of Rabinal
2. The Belief in the Dead
3. Concepts and Classifications of Music
4. The Marimba and the son
5. Good and Evil: Music, Alcohol and Women
6. Musical Occasions
7. Cognition Values and the Aesthetics of Music
8. The Economy of the son and the pieza: Changing Strategies, Genres, and Musical Instruments
9. Music within Social Interaction
10.. Conclusions: "who am I to know better than the ancestors?"
Notes
Glossary
Orthography
Discography
Appendix 1: Cofradías
Appendix 2: Musical Ensembles, Repertoires and Occasions
Appendix 3: Synopses of Dance-dramas
Archival Sources
Bibliography