Yaqui Deer Songs/Maso Bwikam

Download or read book Yaqui Deer Songs/Maso Bwikam written by Larry Evers and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the American Folklore Society’s Chicago Folklore Prize Yaqui regard song as a kind of lingua franca of the intelligent universe. It is through song that experience with other living things is made intelligible and accessible to the human community. Deer songs often take the form of dialogues in which the deer and others in the wilderness world speak with one another or with the deer singers themselves. It is in this way, according to one deer singer, that “the wilderness world listens to itself even today.” In this book authentic ceremonial songs, transcribed in both Yaqui and English, are the center of a fascinating discussion of the Deer Song tradition in Yaqui culture. Yaqui Deer Songs/Maso Bwikam thus enables non-Yaquis to hear these dialogues with the wilderness world for the first time.