Remembering and celebrating the dead by following ‘custom’ is essential in order to understand and ensure the continuity of life. This is because, according to Customary Catholicism, the dead remain in the world as the memory of the living (chapter 3) and vice versa for the living remain on earth as memorials. Abogado Pablo Camo expressed this in his prayer to the souls of the dead (dnimas):
Revel in this alegria, in this blessing for all of you, since we are but your memories. We are your reminiscences, your children. We stayed here, we are a remembrance of you, to beg God the Father once more for your well being, for the necessary rest of your souls, since in your time you were our grandparents in this world... we know that you also played music, you were great musicians and because of this we are here celebrating this memory of you.
The purpose of life for the followers of Catholic Custom is firstly to please the ancestors by remembering them and acknowledging what they did to serve God and preserve life, and secondly to ensure the continuity of this teaching so that in their turn, the dead will receive the blessings of the living. Victor Tum, abogado and musician.
assured that “The dead want to see a continuity and they rejoice when they see other people dedicated to the same.”
Invoking the dead is an invitation for them to rest and enjoy the offerings prepared for them. The offerings of music, prayer, candles, incense, and flowers ‘feed’ the souls and fulfil the living’s obligation to acknowledge and thank them for their protection, help, and blessing, and their intercessions with God, the master of life. Prayers to the dead are also prayers to God on behalf of the living, as can be seen from the way Pablo Camo begins his prayer:
We invoke our dead to ask for their blessing so we may have a new day here [on earth] with happiness, to thank our Father who is in heaven... Thus we have reached the end of a year and are grateful to our God the Father.
Gatherings to commemorate the anniversary of a relative’s death are the most frequent musical occasions; they sustain musicians throughout the year. As with all other religious alegrias, these gatherings are characterised by sociability and abundance - of food and drink, music, conversation, prayers, dancing, and finally, drunkenness - which contrast with the drabness of daily life.
Music and the ritual process of mourning
The series of mandatory rituals commemorating a family member’s death begin with the wake held on the night the person dies and continues as long as there are relatives who remember and can continue to celebrate the deceased’s soul (anima). There is no music during the wake; silence prevails. Wrapped in a straw mat (petate) and placed on the floor, the body receives the holy Earth’s blessing; it is then displayed in a coffin on a table for people to view it for the last time. Together with the animas, mourners pray the three mysteries for the well being of the deceased’s soul. The animas are invited to accompany the deceased’s corpse to its resting-place in the cemetery and the funeral takes place the next day.
The family devotes time every day during the next seven or nine days to praying novenas^^ for the departed soul. They choose an abogado (known as a
Unlike all other prayers, novenas are said in Spanish. The novena practice is also obse^ed by the Ladino population.
‘padrino’ in this context) to lead the prayers and a violin and adufe (square drum) ensemble to accompany them; ideally, the same team of ritual specialists should be used throughout the fourteen years of commemorations. On the seventh or ninth day,^° and again on the fortieth day after death^^ the family gathers for prayers; the music of the violin and adufe ensemble ‘follows behind’ the padrino's prayers, as it does on all subsequent death anniversary celebrations. The deceased’s soul is invoked and welcomed together with all other dnimas and invited to pray the three mysteries and to enjoy the offerings prepared in their honour. This implies a degree of separation and distance and it is for this reason that it is necessary to invite the dead with music. The ‘little music’ of the violin and adufe ensemble respects the deceased’s transitional condition and it's suffering: it is still “fresh; it is soul not yet judged and is therefore in sin.” This suffering on the part of the soul is manifest through the overwhelming pain of the relatives’ memories. Marimbista Lazaro Cauec explains the grieving process:
The first days after a person dies, it is very hard because he has just passed on and the family is sick in their mind and in their heart just feeling the pain and lamenting his departure, but after one year, the family is more or less calmed, time has gone by and it is acceptable to celebrate with violin and marimba. Because, as you may have noticed, the marimba speaks of many things traditional to the mind, that is in spirit, because the sones bring alegria (happiness), emotions and you are going to have some drinks.
Only after a year has passed will the soul be welcomed and remembered with the merry bulla (bustle) of marimba music at a happy social gathering - unless the mourners’ grief is such that they defer the marimba music and social alegria until the seventh year celebrations.^^ The celebrations for the first, seventh and fourteenth year anniversaries all follow the same procedure. Celebrations are repeated on the seventh year after the person’s death and finally on the fourteenth year (although they may be celebrated on different dates by different family members in order to obtain personal
I was unable to obtain any explanation as to why some families pray for seven instead o f nine days.
Some families hire a marimba for the fortieth day celebration. Choices such as the absence or presence o f music and of different groups of musicians represent distinct attitudes towards the deceased.
Families who lost kin at the height o f la violencia were unable to celebrate the first anniversary as alegrias were banned for three years from 1981; in the case o f "the disappeared" celebrations did not take case because relatives were uncertain if death had occurred.
blessings from their dead relative). This ends the family’s responsibilities to that particular dead relative.^^
Musicians (violin and adufe ensemble and marimba de sones) are contracted because the event is a reunion between the souls of the dead and the souls on earth. Although people grieve when they remember the dead - because they cannot be seen any more and their death reminds them of the brevity of life on earth and the imminent presence of death - they are also happy because this is a reunion and because they enjoy the things of this life. The ambivalence between feelings of sorrow and happiness are clearly expressed by the sones of entrance and farewell, which are the same. At the beginning they may evoke happiness and at the end sadness. But for some people, these four-mallet sones are always sones of sadness, whenever they are played. For them, it is the merrier three- and two-mallet sones that evoke happier feelings of sociality during the event. The feelings evoked by a son depend on the context in which they are played, the musicians’ performance, the individual’s state of mind, and the sentiments evoked within them by the living and the dead who surround them (chapter 3).
Marimbista Bonifacio Jeronimo explained:
We receive them with a son of sadness because they come and say, “Ah! Look at this place I left.” That is why we receive them with their sones of sadness. Once inside (at the altar inside the house), then we begin with the joyful sones so they can listen and share with pleasure, right? Then when they leave, we play again with sorrow, because maybe in one year, who knows who will or will not be still here?
People rejoice listening to sones of happiness indicating the dnimas" entrance to the house where the celebration is being held and cry during sones of sadness when they leave to return to the cemetery; these sones are called ‘soon re okib’al keri qati’ qamaam’ {son for the entrance of our grandmothers and grandfathers) and ‘soon releb’al ke ri qati’ qamaam’ {son to bid farewell to our grandmothers and grandfathers). Other sones for the souls of the dead, such as Costa Grande, Costa Chiquita, encourage people to express their sentimientos and recall past events and memories. Such sones
First, seventh, and fourteenth anniversary celebrations currently cost between US$150- 200, or over 1,000 quetzales each. This is equivalent to a continuous period o f three to four months’ work on the plantations.
are known as soon bis’ab’ak which literally means sones which evoke memories which generate sadness and nostalgia.
Celestino explained the relationship between his way of playing and the feelings of people listening to him: “I play the son more beautifully, with more vueltas, to make people cry and express their desires.” Another musician from the Lajuj family of La Ceiba village made a comment about the musician's feelings: “Let’s suppose a
marimbista is performing a son, he will make more vueltas to ornament the son, he will
then be putting something else into it, he puts feeling into it by making a vuelta.'"
The Celebration of a Fourteenth Year Anniversary
The fourteenth anniversary celebrations for massacre victims^"^ fell between 1994-96, keeping violin and adufe players marimbistas very busy. Violinist Magdaleno Xitumul complained that he and Felicano, his adufe companion, had not been able to sleep because of the many obligations to the souls murdered in 1982.
The souls have many engagements now. All those who died in '82 are celebrating their fourteen years. You saw how it was in Nimacabaj [village] last night - there were many festivities because there were many who died in that dangerous time.
I asked Magdaleno if I could attend one of his compromisos (commitments) and he agreed gladly. We arranged to meet at the Calvary Chapel the following Monday when there would be a fourteenth year celebration by the Pantulul bridge. Later I met
marimbista Esteban Uanché who told me he was also playing at the event and he
agreed to meet us at the same place.
As I walked to the Calvary Chapel the following Monday morning, I met
padrino abogado Felipe Sis and Cristobal Gonzalez, the hostess’ brother. Felipe had
just finished lighting candles and incense for the saints in the main church. As we walked, Cristobal explained that this was the fourteenth anniversary of the death of his father, Juan Gonzales, who had died of a heart attack caused by fright upon witnessing
The massacres were committed by the army, Ladinos from Rabinal town and the villages of Pachalum and Pichec who were acting as ‘judicial police’, and civil defence patrols from the village o f Xococ.
the massacre in the town plaza on 15 September 1981. This was the last obligation Cristobal had to perform in order to commit his father’s soul to God: “This is the end of our duty.” Cristobal had celebrated two weeks earlier and now his sister Maria and her husband had organised this fiesta a few days after the end of the novena prayers.
Musicians were waiting for us to arrive before entering the Calvary cemetery. We were the only people there; in the silence of the morning mist, it looked beautiful, with bushes and wild flowers overrunning the plain Indian graves; only the big colourful mausoleums of the rich Ladino families towered over the greenery. Esteban searched among the graves for a flat surface on which to set up his marimba; Magdaleno and Feliciano sat on the gravestone next to Juan’s grave. As they tuned their instruments, Felipe cleaned around the grave and decorated the stone with pine and cypress branches. He then knelt in front of the cross on the gravestone to initiate the ‘awakening’ of the souls of Julian Gonzalez, his deceased kin, and the rest of the souls from Rabinal. As Felipe began the prayer to invoke the souls, both musical groups began playing, independently of each other, their own versions of the Costa Chiquita son, which is the son played to begin the celebration and summon the souls. The marimba broke the silence of the cemetery, overwhelming the murmur of prayer and the ‘little music’ of the violin and adufe.
As an offering to the saints and souls, Felipe then placed several bouquets of basil between two rows of candles - seven yellow wax and seven white tallow - on the grave; a bottle of guaro (cane spirits) was sprinkled around the candles, which were then lit. Waving incense (another offering) over the four comers of the world, the comers of the space we all occupied and in front of the musicians, Felipe began chanting a prayer of thanks to God and the saints for a new dawn over the world’s four comers. Kneeling in front of the candles, he began a ‘roll call’ of the spirits.^^ This general call is accompanied by the son kotzii (flower offering), and four more sones to summon the souls, played moumfully by the violin and adufe; the marimba simultaneously begins its repertory of sones grandes (‘big’ sones; entrance sones). The summoning of the souls lasted as long as it took the candles to melt, approximately one hour.
At the end of this general summons, Esteban packed up his marimba and the three musicians carried it to the house where the celebration was being held. The rest of us entered the Calvary Chapel where a second invocation of the souls took place. Because it was a Monday, other abogados were also there praying on other people’s behalf and some were also accompanied by groups of violin and adufe musicians. Felipe approached them with the salutation, “Good morning, compadre (ritual kinship between abogados) alcalde (mayor), kaiauxel, principar^^ and proceeded to search for a spot at the altar on which to deposit his offerings for Senor de la Misericordia (Lord of Mercy), who is the guard of the cemetery souls, and Sem r del Cabildo (Lord of Town HallOn this second instance, the abogado padrino lit four candles at the four comers of the chapel- representing the world - for those souls who died in pain at unknown locations and placed some others at the center for the general congregation of souls. Finally he put again two rows of seven candles each in front of the altar where he knelt to pray until the candles were totally “consumed”. The musicians played sitting behind the padrino on one of the few benches available in the chapel. The violin and
adufe sones were repeated accompanying the prayers. They echoed across the incensed
darkness of the chapel bringing the sacred place to life (example number 16 in cassette: prayers and violin and adufe son music).
Upon ending this event, the padrino told me:" Now all the spirits are coming with us to the celebration". Thus "feeling" (I could only imagine) the great procession of spirits behind us, we walked to the house to celebrate the fourteen years of the deceased, Julian.
The house was a hive of activity. About thirty-five relatives, friends, and neighbours were busy preparing for the event’s guests (which includes the dead). Men had been assigned to killing and jointing the pig. Women were preparing maize-based foods {chilate, a drink often flavoured with chocolate; atol, (maize gmel) tortillas, (com pancake) frijol, (beans) chilmol, pinol de gallina (stews) and tamales de cerdo (maize dish filled with pork) etc. Many of them had been there since very early in the moming to decorate the domestic altar in the main room of the house. The floor of this small room is covered with juncia (pine needles); fruit, a glass of water, candles, white
These are titles given to all elder abogados (prayer makers) for having served God in
Madonna lilies, basil - the animas' favourite herb - have been added to the crucifixes and saints’ images on the altar). Benches are set against the walls of the room and along the corridor of the porch.
In the midst of this bustle, the marimbistas remained almost aloof, behaving as if they knew no one there. Dressed, like everyone else, in their best clothes, the
marimbistas appeared very formal and elegant behind their colourful instrument.
Carefully coifed with cowboy hats tilted stylishly forwards and wearing clean shirts and trousers, machetes in hand-tooled leather sheaths hanging from their waists, their faces stem, they were an austere presence. They stood for hours, straight-backed, heads down, eyes on the keyboard, their bodies taut except for their arms, wrists and hands, which were constantly moving up and down in parallel and contrary motion, with two, three or four mallets tangled in their fingers, their index fingers protected from blistering by pieces of plastic or leather. All marimbistas complain of great pains in their ‘pulmon ’ (lungs), by which they mean in their backs at the level of their lungs, and no wonder! Musicians’ moderation, restraint and general austerity indicates respect, dedication and care for the work they do and for the people and spirits of the dead for whom they are performing. Other than responding to a request for a particular son, they did not interact with the rest of the participants. They conversed with each other with reserve; from time to time they would disappear behind the house to relieve themselves. During more than 18 hours of playing, the principal performers only had short breaks when other players replaced them temporarily so that they could rest on a small bench behind the marimba (where they discreetly drank the guaro offered to them and ate the lunch brought to them).
The marimba began playing the son de entrada (entrance or welcoming son) as soon as we arrived on the patio with the padrino. Felipe, accompanied by the violin and
adufe musicians, then performed three blessings as a respectful greeting and petition to