music: Yumari song
We’re listening to a song from the mountains of Mexico, performed in honor of the relationship between man and earth. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet. The Raramuri people of Chihuahua sing these songs many times a year at their dances, celebrated throughout the growing season. Enrique Salmon is a Raramuri anthropologist who studies his people’s customs and ceremonies.
“And the dances are, are very simple, there’s a woman dancing in a clockwise motion in a single line, going around the men who are singing the songs. The songs are sung to get the earth to remain healthy and strong so that the crops will be strong and healthy, and therefore the people will be strong and healthy. And so this dance is really our attempt to keep our relationship to our earth a sustainable one. To make sure it rains, that the plants and animals survive, that we survive because we’re directly connected to our environment.”
The words of the songs reflect the relationship that the Raramuri have with their land.
“The songs are very short, they’re very repetitive — one of my favorites goes, ‘off in the distance, the fog is rising. The fog is rising. I breathe the earth. I breathe the earth’. Another one of my favorites is, ‘you there, the lily, whose sweet breath I breathe, which strengthens my breath and allows me to grow old so I walk with a walking stick’.”
Pulse of the Planet is presented with support provided by The National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.