Songs that Make the Road Dance: Courtship and Fertility Music of the Tz'utujil Maya (Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas) by Linda O'Brien-Rothe - 2015-09-07

Paperback / softback. New. An important and previously unexplored body of esoteric ritual songs of the Tz'utujil Maya of Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala, the "Songs of the Old Ones" are a central vehicle for the transmission of cultural norms of behavior and beliefs within this group of highland Maya. Ethnomusicologist Linda O'Brien-Rothe began collecting these songs in 1966, and she has amassed the largest, and perhaps the only significant, collection that documents this nearly lost element of highland Maya ritual life. This book presents a representative selection of the more than ninety songs in O'Brien-Rothe's collection, including musical transcriptions and over two thousand lines presented in Tz'utujil and English translation. (Audio files of the songs can be downloaded from the UT Press website.) Using the words of the "songmen" who perform them, O'Brien-Rothe explores how the songs are intended to move the "Old… Read More

Univ of Texas Pr, 2015. Paperback. New. 244 pages. 10.00x7.00x0.75 inches.