Yaqui Deer Dance

Yaqui Deer Dance Performer

The collection called Anthology of Central and South American Indian Music on Folkways [1975] yielded a number of recordings nominated for inclusion of the Top 100 2019. At number 31 a song called Deer Dance was the only one to make it in though. This intriguing recording of Yaqui male singers with rasping sticks and water drums was made by Henrietta Yurchenco in Mexico in 1952. Only much later I checked out the original 1952 album it was included on: Indian Music of Mexico: Seri/Cora/Yaqui/Huichol/Tzotzil. It provided the recording with much more context. Later yet, in preparation to create an illustration for it, I became further acquainted with the Deer Dance ceremony and with the Yaqui. Yurchenco wrote in 1952: "the original Yaqui cultural pattern has largely disappeared with very few either material or spiritual elements remaining." Yet in 2020 there is ample of information to be found online, mostly of the Yaqui people of Arizona in the US. The Yaqui who performed this ceremony in front of Henrietta Yurchenco in 1952 were living along the Yaqui River in the state of Sonora south of the US border in Mexico. The Deer Dance is still widely performed today.