Chapter 5. Yaqui Music

Audio Examples

Yaqui pascola music: San Javielpo Chu'kuy Kawi
The pascola dance is one of the most distinctive and best known of the Yaqui ceremonial dances. The pascola (old man of the fiesta) is the ritual host of most ritual religious and non-religious ceremonies among the Yaqui Indians of the lower valley. Rattles made of dried cocoons of giant silk moths are tied around the dancers legs above the ankles and accentuate the rhythmic pattern set by the accompanying violin and harp.
Performed by Francisco Molina, violin; Marcelino Valencia, harp (1980). (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings album #40418 1993 track # 14)

Ali Oidak Polka
From the village of Gu-Achi, the Gu-Archi Fiddlers are the first local fiddle band from this village ever to make a commercial recording. The group members are all decendents of musical families and have sons who are musicians in various chicken scratch and fiddle bands. Tunes such as this one are played at a lively two-step pace. Notice the booming base drum which plays a circular pattern deep in the song’s background; it is connected to Native American ceremonial drumming of the region.
Performed and composed by the Gu-Achi Fiddlers (1988). (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings album #40418 1993 track # 15)

Old Man Rooster (polka)
The Molinas, led by Virgil Molina, Sr., and Larry Molina, were the undisputed Super Scratch Kings in the 1970s and 1980s. An almost exclusively instrumental musical genre, chicken scratch is the popular music of the Tohono Oodham people. Also based on European rhythms such as polka, schottische (chote), a mazurka, and descended from the fiddle-dominated waila tradition, chicken scratch is also strongly influenced by Mexican norteño music.
Performed by The Molinas (1975). (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings album # 40418 1993 track # 16)

Uwaldina y Juan Gonzáles (corrido)
This group is made up of both Yaqui and Tohono Oodham members. The growing popularity of norteño music in migrant communities across the United States, as well as the prevalence of the norteño-influenced chicken scratch in southern Arizona, has prompted the demand for such groups within Yaqui and Tohono Oodham communities.
Performed by El Conjunto Murrietta (1978). (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings album #40418 1993 track # 18)

Notes provided on this page are by James S. Griffith and taken from the album Borderlands: From Conjunto to Chicken Scratch on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

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