The Deer Dance is one of the most visible of the traditional Yoeme religious arts, as well as being one of the most spectacularly beautiful solo dances in Native North America. The male dancer stripped to the waist and with stuffed deer head atop his own head, represents the spirit of the deer moving through the sea ania, or flower world. The deer speaks through his singers – three men who sing in an archaic form of the Yaqui language, describing things the deer sees and experiences.
Two of these three singers play rasping sticks or hirukiam, which rest on bweheim, half-gourd resonators. The third plays the va kuvahe, the water drum. This is a half gourd, which floats in a basin of water and which is beaten with the hiponia, which is a drumstick wrapped with cornhusks. The sound of the raspers is said by some Yaquis to represent the breathing of the deer, while the water drum is the sound of the deer's heartbeat. All instruments are made of materials native to the Sonoran Desert region.
Felipe Molina and his brother, Steve Armadillo, are Yaqui from Marana. Felipe is a well-known deer singer and student of deer songs. The brothers have sung at public and private Yaqui religious ceremonies, as well as at festivals such as this one and the 1989 Smithsonian Festival of American Folk life. Their grandfather was a well-known and beloved pascola or ritual clown and dancer. Felipe is also co-author with Larry Evers of Yaqui Deer Songs, published by the University of Arizona Press. He is active in training younger Yaquis in this demanding art form. Like most Arizona Yaqui, Felipe and his brother, Steve, are trilingual, speaking and understanding English, Spanish, and Yaqui. |
