Principio de proporcionalidad

When I first met the marimbistas (marimba-players) of Rabinal, I told them that I was writing a history of the music of Rabinal and was interested in knowing, recording, and playing their music. My desire to learn to play proved to be the key to their interest.

Before I leamt to play the marimba, my exploration of Achi concepts and ideas about music and music practice was hampered by my attempts to frame the questions in terms of the European theories of music in which I had been trained."^^ This resulted in conceptual difficulties of translation when I began to concentrate on the specifics of organology, style, technique, and theory. The main obstacle was that the musicians had never been questioned or made to reflect on their music and music practice in the way I was expecting them to do. When I attempted to get them to use concepts related to my theoretical tools, their answers to my questions became segmented and fragmented; their knowledge is based purely on musical practice. Fortunately, we sang along to the marimba and I was able to use my own instrument (the transversal or orchestral flute) to illustrate my questions.

I often felt that using concepts o f western music analysis in my questioning were often not understood or misleading, and in many cases I found them irrelevant.

A further complication arose when I attempted to discuss the technical aspects of the music they played: Rabinalense musicians’ vocabulary regarding musical concepts is sparse. A prime example is the word ‘vuelta ’ which has many meanings in conventional Spanish including a turn, twirl, gyration, circuit, circumvolution, repetition, rehearsal, etc. Rabinalense musicians use the word to refer to different aspects of sones music which a good marimbista must be able to perform. Firstly,

vuelta simply means melodic ornamentation; in contrast to the ancient, simple and plain

way of playing the melody of the sones, today’s style is elaborate and sophisticated with ornaments which require considerable agility. Secondly, \uelta means section, or strophe, and refers to the son's musical form. There are sones of two, three, and four sections or vueltas. The XvNo-vuelta son, such as the son San Pablo, is the simplest; three-vwe/fa sones such as the Amanecido are more difficult; and four section sones such as the Cubulero and Coyotillo are not only the most difficult but also the longest. Thirdly, vuelta means a variation within a section; this is also known as a coro (chorus). These variations, which are generally rhythmic changes to the melody, are used frequently because the sections of a son are repeated over and over again; repetition is an important feature of son music, as it is of prayers. Son musicians assured me that repetition is the best way to gain the attention of God, the saints and the souls of the dead: “All the repetition makes the son reach God’s ears”, explained marimbista Lazaro. Hence musicians who make more vueltas are more convincing in their supplications and expressions of gratitude to God. Furthermore, creative musicians who can vary the rhythms and play different ornaments give more colour and movement to the son. Finally, vuelta can also refer to an improvisation of melodic phrases secondary to the main melody. The musical styles of the towns, villages, and individual musicians depend very much on the ways the vueltas are performed.

My problems diminished when I began to take marimba lessons myself as I was constrained to limit my overly verbalised curiosity to following their explanations - that is, to listening to their music, observing their movements and positions, and then copying them. I not only leamt to play but also leamt how embedded the process was in Achi beliefs and attitudes to life and bodily behaviour.

I was taught to play the marimba de sones by two marimbista families. One was headed by Esteban Uanché and the other by his nephew, Celestino Cajbon; with their

distinct personalities and almost forty-year gap in their ages, each was an excellent representative of the different ends of the continuum of contemporary marimba music. Esteban is currently the greatest exponent of son music in Rabinal; he is an old man who remains faithful to the traditional repertoire, despite being the principal innovator within the genre. Celestino, who is in his mid-twenties, was also taught to play marimba music the traditional way; most of his contracts to be play sones are as a mozo (hired worker) for his uncle, for whom he plays centre to Esteban’s treble. Celestino also plays the marimba de pieza and the electric organ; he temporarily joined a short­ life tropical music group in Rabinal. Whilst he agrees with his uncle’s discourse about tradition, Celestino’s experience of experimenting with musical genres unrelated to a religious function allowed him to simplify the learning process for me. Celestino is a talented young musician who generously shares his musical knowledge.

Celestino was also one of the few Rabinalense musicians to understand my theoretical interest. I had been curious to know how much they knew about European music theory, considering that the marimba de sones is constructed in major diatonic scales (chapter 5). The short answer is that musicians do not know European musical theory, though some use a few of its concepts correctly. For example, they recognise that the marimba de sones has five octaves (términos) but they do not name the notes of the keyboard, nor do they divide the keyboard into octaves or refer to the tonic as tonality centres. The mallet positions of the harmony (centre) and the bass players are leamt not as chords but as a number of keys located one or more keys apart. The performers may learn to play different and alternative positions when they become experienced musicians but all play open tonic, subdominant, dominant and sometimes mediant chords.

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P h o to g r a p h N o . 13: L e a r n in g th e m a r im b a

THE TEACHING/LEARNING PROCESS

I was particularly interested to know whether a discourse existed about

marimbistas' concepts and ideas about music and music practice, especially at the level

of teaching/learning music. Conversations with different groups of marimbistas (which took place in the homes of the musicians who house and maintain the ensemble’s marimba) revealed that not only does a discourse exist but that it is primarily a discourse about tradition and ethics: it is a statement o f continuity and order.

Learning to play the traditional way

Rabinalenses are familiar with traditional music virtually from birth. They hear it at the frequent festivities celebrating annual or seasonal rites, life-crisis events - principally memorials o f the dead (cabos de ano), weddings, inaugurations and blessings o f houses, chapels, and other buildings; in the cofradia (saints’ brotherhoods) - and, until 1981, at zarabandas (social gatherings to drink and dance to the marimba

de sones). When a Rabinalense male (child, adolescent or adult) aspires to become a

marimbista, he will go to such events specifically to listen to the rhythms and melodies of the sones and observe the movement of the mallets across the keys of the marimba.

To “have the sones in mind” is very useful. It enables him to concentrate on the positions and movements he is taught, allowing him to arrive at an overall under­ standing of the son in its entirety fairly rapidly; soon he is able to think strategically in terms of the execution of the son rather than merely play his part mechanically. The advantages of life-long familiarity with the music were brought home to me when I began to learn myself: I felt like a blind man, feeling my way in the dark.

Any Achi male in Rabinal can learn to play the marimba at any age. There is a proviso here: in terms of traditional concepts, becoming a marimba player is a matter of fulfilling one’s destiny. It is believed that God mediates and determines everyone’s individual fate. The will and the application of the individual are indispensable attributes but the crucial determinant is ‘the will of God’. Esteban Uanché told me that it had been his destiny (fate)"^"^ since birth to become a marimbista and that he achieved this through ‘the grace of God’. As a little boy, he had lined up corncobs as though they were the keys of the marimba and played sones as an adult musician does. On seeing this, his father had remarked to his mother that their son was a marimbista.

One learns to play the marimba much as one learns to do any other task. I had observed how people learn work skills in daily life: they learn by watching for a while and then entering directly as a participant in the actual work itself and, if it is a group task, then they participate as part of the group from the start. My first lesson proceeded in the traditional way: Celestino and his brothers played an abbreviated version of the simple, two-mallet son San Pablo so I could observe the movements and positions of the bass and to listen to the rhythm and its changes. When the son ended, they pointed with their mallets to the different positions the bass had played to orientate me across the keyboard and, with no more ado, we began to play the son San Pablol

The pre-Hispanic idea that a person’s destiny is determined according to the day on which one is bom persists. Each day has its nahual (day owner) or saint which helps people bom on their day, orientating them and giving them knowledge. Unlike some indigenous groups such as the Momostecos and the Ixiles, Achis are generally unaware o f the Mayan calendar.

Behind this ‘watch and copy’ method of instruction are assumptions about, among other things, the optimal time to learn any skill (childhood) and where to learn (in the family). Thus the basic conditions for becoming a marimbista are having marimba-playing relatives - father, grandfather, uncles - and ready access to a family- owned marimba. These ideals are reinforced by the fact that it is generally extremely difficult to get an unrelated marimbista to teach one to play unless the teacher can see some way of incorporating the apprentice into his marimba ensemble. Adult apprentices face other difficulties: they have little time to practice as they are kept busy with survival tasks and can only play for a couple of hours after the evening meal. Adults learn the repertoire one by one, learning maybe twenty to thirty sones, whereas a competent lad can learn double that amount in a year. Another problem for adults is that they are less flexible than children are and, perhaps, more conscious of the learning process; it can be years before they are ready to play in public. These factors make the adult beginner unattractive as an apprentice. There are many obstacles that may lead to failure and the eventual abandonment of the marimba, especially when a man has no sons to take up the skill.

Another difficulty for adult apprentices is that the three-stage process of teaching/learning the sones of the marimba incorporates the traditional principle of respect and subordination to the authority and seniority of one’s elders who have progressively accumulated experience and knowledge (chapter 4). An adult faces the disorientating situation of being taught by someone younger than he is. The traditional order in which the three increasingly complex positions are learned also corresponds with the hierarchic construction of Achi society.

In the idealised schema, boys in marimbista families begin to learn by playing with the marimba as though it were a toy,"*^ at an age when they are too young to play in public. By the time they are old enough to go to school or to work in the fields (around six or seven), some boys spend all their free time playing the marimba, practising at any time of the day or night. Tono Cajbon remembered the time when his sons were small:

It is a ‘toy’ because, for a child, there are no responsibilities attached to playing the marimba.

They played the marimba every day; you would find those ‘naughty’ kids playing at any moment. They leamt by themselves, only by observing what their elders did and by copying them. The sones remained in their heads (minds). For instance, on a Saturday or a Sunday when I went out to gather wood, I would hear the marimba from a distance and they would be practising and playing and that’s how the sones would remain in their heads

Tono’s wife intermpted:

The children have heard the others playing and then they would play the same. There was no need to teach their hands because they leamt by watching other people’s hands playing. This is how the vuelta (sections) of the son remained.

This is rather disingenuous. Marimbista families specifically send their young sons to fiestas to listen to the music of other players so that they can leam the positions, their styles and repertoire (older apprentices and established musicians also do this, taking their cassette players with them). This behaviour, which is part of the development of the musicality of marimbista family, can cause resentment among established players.

Soon the marimba ceases to be a ‘toy’. Playing it soon becomes a serious responsibility to the family, the community, the ancestors, and God. The education of Achi children is full of responsibilities linked to family survival and they are expected to contribute to the household economy from the age of six or seven. Marimbista parents look to their boys to leam quickly so that they can be integrated into the family

marimbista pool, making the family less dependent on mozos. Even relatively wealthy

and ladinoized marimbista families, such as the Jeronimos (who used to own a marimba doble - see chapter 5), subscribe to the concept of a family ensemble. Paulino Jeronimo told me, “When the older ones left home to study [in Guatemala City], the number of players decreased but the younger sons began to join in, only those from the family, only the family.”

Sometimes, when a boy is unwilling, a father uses coercion to force him to leam. Tono’s son Celestino may have leamt by himself as his parents claim, but his memories of his first proper lesson are very different:

I was ten years old when my father began to teach me the marimba. He used to beat me when I began at the bass. He tried to teach me but I was unable to

recognise the keys he pointed to, so he would grab my hands and hit them with the mallets. I would yell and run and hide in the kitchen but he would come and take me back to the marimba. According to him, the task was to leam. In the end, after he repeatedly beat me with the mallets, I learned. At first I only leamt the bass but then I kept on playing and playing until I began to try the centre position. From there I leamed everything and then I moved finally to the treble. I only leamed sones then. After that we started to play Costeno^^ and from there we leamt piezas. That is how all of us in the family leamed - it was a continual stmggle until we leamed everything.

Such treatment is quite normal in Rabinal. Education among the Achi is based on following pre-established procedures and actions and not in the development of abstract thinking, questioning, or looking for causality; the emphasis is on knowing the form rather than the deeper process of comprehending the content (Watanabe 1994[1992]: 87-89). Children below the age of twelve receive no explanations about anything because they are not thought to possess the ability to think; instead, they are given instmctions and blows."^^ A young primary school teacher complained bitterly to me about his pupils’ parents, who sought him out after school to encourage him to use corporal punishment and threats to discipline the children and make them leam; he preferred the technique of positive reinforcement.

In marimbista families it is customary to leam the bass position - the first and

simplest stage of leaming to play the marimba - before one is old enough to ‘think’ for oneself. Boys often begin to leam when they are too small to reach the keyboard (they are given a little stool to stand on). They leam one of the two basic forms of playing bass known as the corrida (both hands together) and the marcado (marking the notes).

The corrida is the simplest and is accomplished by playing a triad chord, striking the

keyboard to a determined rhythmic pattem with both hands simultaneously. In the

marcado form, the bass plays a rhythmic pattem, striking the notes of a chord

separately (an arpegiatto) with altemating hands, the left hand playing the stronger beat. Intemalising the rhythms at the bass position is one of the first skills an apprentice develops.

The music accompanying Rabinalenses’ favourite dance-drama.

I did see fathers marking keys with pieces o f paper in order to help apprentices memorise mallet positions. However, their sons found this superfluous and it seems to me that this simple technique is better suited to adult apprentices such as myself as it provides a means of remembering the keys in the teacher’s absence.

The ritual function of the music and not ease of leaming determine the teaching/learning process. This is ‘the way of the ancestors’ and involves leaming the marimba by practising the sones in the same order as they are played at religious festivities and other events (chapter 5). It is important that the apprentice leams this and the purpose of the sones being played and it is the way Esteban taught me. Thus, instead of progressing from simple to complex rhythms (Celestino’s teaching method), the apprentice leams the four-mallet sones (sones de cuatro baquetas) which open festivities and are the most complex before leaming the three-mallet sones (sones de

très baquetas) and finally the two-mallet ones (sones de dos baquetas). At the end of

the leaming/ playing cycle, they retum to the four-mallet sones, this time without using