The steady rhythm of a rattle, the sharp crack of wooden clappers, and the sound of voices singing in unison hung over the Santa Ynez Valley on Oct. 14. You wouldn’t recognize the syllables or what they meant, that is unless you were one of the few who’ve studied Samala, the ancestral language of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians.
The 11th annual Chumash Culture Day featured games, dancing, blessings, and food, and music is a part of the ceremony each year as well. The wooden clappers and deer hoof rattles the singers used are part of an ancient tradition as aged as the nearly lost language of Samala, Chumash Cultural Director Nakia Zavalla told the Sun.
“It feels really good, as you’re singing those old songs and playing the traditional instruments,” Zavalla said. “You definitely feel a connection to your people and your culture, knowing this is what they played so long ago. It helps connect you.”
Music has been more than a valuable tool for connecting the Chumash as a community, it also in keeps the Samala language alive, Zavalla said. As culture director the tribe, she teaches Samala to tribal members and youth.
A direct connection to both the traditional music and language comes from wax cylinder recordings of Maria Solares, one of the last speakers of fluent Samala. Solares died in 1923, Zavalla said, but before that she spent time with ethnographer John P. Harrington, who interviewed and recorded several Chumash.
Solares sang only a few traditional songs for the recordings, Zavalla said, and others were written down. Zavalla and her students use everything they can that came directly from Solares or other Chumash, she said.
“We have some that are written down, and we come up with the cadence,” she said. “And so the best-case scenario is we actually find a song she wrote down and she recorded on the wax cylinder recording. We only have three of those right now.”
The Chumash of today who work to preserve both their culture and Samala language find a marriage of the two in music, Zavalla explained. They’ve penned new songs, with original tunes inspired by the melodies of their ancestors, she said.
“We listen to that to hear how the old songs sounded, and we try to use the same cadence in these other songs,” she said. “We try our hardest because, you know, we don’t know. Sometimes we say, ‘You know what, this just feels good.’”
And incorporating re-creations of ancient instruments helps too, she said. The clapper sticks and deer hoof rattles are rhythmic and simple to learn.
The Lompoc Museum has a sizable collection of Chumash artifacts, including musical instruments, available for public viewing. There are authentic items including bone flutes and whistles alongside some re-creations of clapper sticks and rattles. Some were made with muscle shells, and one flute with the tibia bone of deer.
“It’s just another example of how the people lived off the land and the natural resources,” Zavalla said, “and how, you know, they were very resourceful and found a way to make instruments out of these different items.”
Zavalla explained that most Chumash songs that were passed down were sung for ceremonial purposes, but there were also social songs. The social songs speak to the modern tradition of pow-wows, where tribal groups meet to share music and dance, like at the Chumash’s Intertribal Pow-Wow, which happened Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.
Events like the pow-wow and culture day are great opportunities for the Chumash to share their culture, Zavalla said, but the music does a little more for the people who sing it.
“In the work that I do,” she said, “I think what I feel most proud of, whether we are creating new songs or bringing back old ones, is when you hear the kids and adults singing our traditional songs again. I mean, it really does reconnect the people to our ancestors, and to each other.”
Managing Editor Joe Payne is carving up his own clapper stick. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 2-8, 2017.