As long as I can remember, I have always had an interest in the ancient world. As a child I would eagerly await Saturday mornings because on TV there were films about medieval heroes and villains, those Italian sword and sandal films featuring Steve Reeves as Hercules, famous epic films such as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, The Egyptian, The Last Days of Pompeii and many others. A Russian movie that for some reason was on every Saturday morning regularly known by its English title The Sword and the Dragon intrigued me with its depictions of magical beings and wizards, a famous wind demon and of course, the hero Ilya Murametz who rallies to defend his country against a horde of invaders and their fire breathing dragon, representing that universal theme of light and goodness against the forces of evil and darkness. Spartacus, Ben Hur, King of Kings, indeed any film that was set in some other time period was a fascination. I enjoyed these films which for me were entertainment. Yes, even the Wizard of Oz came in at a close second. Beyond these films there was Godzilla, King Kong, Rodan, The Mighty Behemoth, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Mars The Angry Red Planet and It, The Terror From Beyond Space and other science fiction films. As I was very young, I didn't realize at the time that what was poking my interest were stories based on the cosmic battle between light and dark, good and evil. The hero of any of these tales were like the champions of old- a human being facing a challenge and figuring out how to overcome it, the detailed actions of the characters involved in the story. These films sparked an early interest in history and mythology and as soon as I learned to read and write I began to investigate and research on my own, exploring the background of the stories I watched on TV.
By the time I was seven or eight years of age I became familiar with some cultural aspects, though via Hollywood, of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome as such films as Cleopatra and Quo Vadis informed my limited understanding of these civilizations. Alexander The Great, Atilla The Hun (with Anthony Quinn) and those 300 Hundred Spartans standing against superior Persian adversaries were badass for sure. Yet, this was at the time just entertainment for me. Never did I think I would follow the path of the historian or mythologist, nor did I dream that my later interest in music would one day reflect this inner fascination with the ancient or the traditional world. For that to occur and take place a spark was required that would prompt my lazy self to investigate and research a bit more seriously than merely being an avid watcher of epic films.
Life Magazine and National Geographic was readily available in my home or in the homes of relatives, neighbors and friends. These magazines were known for the fine images included wthin their pages, captured by some of the greatest photographers of the day such as Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz and John Mili, or the magazines might feature the work of early women pioneers such as Eliza R. Scidmore. This 8 year old kid enjoyed looking through these publications, fascinated by the beautiful images captured by the camera.
One day, I happened to open a magazine though I cannot recall which one, and within its pages were images that intrigued me. Ruins and tall monumental statuary that were uncovered from having been immersed in mud and earth for centuries, their discoverers standing next to or atop the monuments, completely dwarfed by their impressive size and height. Where were these images from? They seemed to me at the time to be somewhat Egyptian or maybe Babylonian but yet were very different and unique from anything I yet hereto beheld. I remember asking my Father if he knew where these giant artifacts were from and he responded rather matter of factly; "Mexico, Guatemala, the Yucatan". I began to wonder where the heck the Yucatan was. I knew about Mexico, as I sometimes listened to the AM Spanish radio station and listened to Mariachi music on Sundays, but I made no association between Mexico and these ancient ruins. What I was about to uncover would change my life forever. I came across a film titled 'Kings Of The Sun' (with Richard Basehart, George Chakiris & Yul Brynner) of which I had no idea what it was about or where it took place, but I knew that the costuming was very ancient in style. I was again informed upon asking Dad that this was "a story about Indians", and wasn't taking place anywhere in the Middle East. What? In fact, I would learn years later that the film was about political turmoil and upheaval in a royal Mayan city that caused the ruling families to flee to what is now the southern coast of North America- a theory that has its roots in theoretical historical evidence.
My Father traveled extensively in his younger days before he married my Mother, settled down and raised a family. To my surprise, I found out he did know Central America quite well, having visited many times while he was a trumpet player aboard Caribbean cruise ships. He knew the monuments I was looking at in the magazine as well as mentioning many other sites that boasted great pyramids and temples erected by a people who created a sophisticated civilization called the Maya. Covered by tropical forest overgrowth for centuries, explorers began to uncover the remains of a lost civilization in the jungles of Guatemala and the Yucatan. Following leads from the local natives who recounted stories of great kings and war lords who ruled the region before the arrival of the Spanish, and later perhaps due to the advent of the airplane from which one could look down while flying overhead and witness the tops of what seemed to be structures of palaces and pyramid like structures heretofore buried in the mud, interest in this region began in earnest as archeologists and historians rushed to find what was for them, a lost civilization. Just as the Conquistadors sought the fabled fountain of youth and legendary rivers of gold while satisfying their greed for this precious metal, so did the academic professors from prestigious universities around the world began to imagine a neo Utopian realm in the forests of Central America, a Mesoamerican Camelot or Shangrila.
I understand why these Spanish adventurer conquerors were fascinated and drawn to the Mayan world, aside from their greedy desire for power, gold and converts. The locals are an interesting people, forced to speak Spanish and follow Roman Catholic ritual by their conquerors yet many continue to speak their native language and blend their ancient religious traditions with the Catholic rite. They wear colorful clothing, especially on feast days when they adore Mary 'Madre de Christo' but see her as the Earth goddess of their ancestors. Perhaps most fascinating about their rituals is one that has nothing to do with the imported religion and culture of Europe, that being the recording and calculating of time, an obsession that is a direct continuation of ancient Mayan religion. It is believed that when the last shaman known as 'the timekeeper' passes away and there are no more after him to maintain this all important task, all existence as we known and understand it will disappear, the heavens will melt and both men and the deities will have no meaning. This responsibility of maintaining the count of days was coined 'the burden of time' by the late scholar J. Eric S. Thompson. Indeed, Mayan cosmology and the unraveling and understanding of their complex mathematical system remains interesting and is further being examined as new discoveries are revealed about these fascinating people.
Many of the amazing images I was exposed to as a curious child were photographed predominantly by the late great Alfred P. Maudslay (1850-1931) considered to be the father of Mesoamerican archeological photography. He encountered the newly excavated Mayan ruins at a place called Quirigua in Guatemala in 1881, and returned in 1883 for the purpose of documenting the archeological treasures uncovered at this site. His work is amazing- the monuments erected by once powerful kings were biographies of the great rulers, much like the monuments erected in ancient Egypt or the fertile Crescent, replete with self grandizing power and adoration, meant to inform friend and foe alike that this was a king of his domain who was to be taken seriously. These monuments were erected as part of a complex building initiative which took place at the height of Quirigua's power. The wonderful images captured by Alfred P. Maudsley were eventually bequeathed to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, Great Britain, but they were so widely shared around the world that this collection had come to be extremely popular among those interested in digging up the past, literally and figuratively.
Workers at the Quirigua site are photographed dwarfed by the giant monuments, or are viewed standing on them, giving the sense of their grandeur, though in some of the photos these monuments are standing on a slant, for many were found on their sides buried under tons of mud and rubble, as if to reach desperately into the future to acknowledge the archeologists who found them, like an old soldier attempting to clumsily stand erect as in the days of his prime but age and the reality of time has taken its toll. These monuments reveal the story of a once glorious age, a brilliant civilization that dominated the jungles of Central America when the rest of the world had no clue what was actually happening there. Here was a culture that excelled in mathematics and in the calculation of time and the study of the heavenly bodies, having discovered the secret of zero independently of the old world. For me, here was a new world, no pun intended and I began to read and study the history of Central America. I became fascinated by the murals of Diego Rivera and other artists who depicted this glorious past in art. From such paintings I also became aware of the bloody conquest of Mexico and Central and South America by those intrepid Spanish Conquistadores, who boldly crossed an unchartered sea to conquer an empire, believing it was their God given duty to do so, the wages for this effort to be paid in gold, glory and the promise of a heavenly afterlife. The costumes of the region, perhaps the most colorful in the world like the imagery infiltrated my brain, and I couldn't help but see the relationship between costume and nature in these fashions. I would later learn how the Native view of the cosmos held that humanity and nature are one. Indeed, despite the terrible practice of human sacrifice which for a time was ignored by the early non Mayan scholastics who thought they discovered a perfect, super utopian and peaceful society in Central America but have since been proven wrong, as the Mayan city states warred with one another no differently than the ancient Greeks did with equal brutality and punishment reserved for the vanquished. The understanding of the universe remains a mystery requiring much introspect and thought and history is what it is. The Mayans would laugh at those scholars and archeologists who attempted to portray any human society as perfect. All humans make war just as all humans eventually destroy their civilization from within. But for the Maya, humans were created from maize kernels, not dirt, and thus were important for human survival and therefore certainly are an integral part of it, that being humans with both all the positive qualities and the negative attributes. After many centuries the Indigenous culture, thought and art survived despite the Spaniards imposing their cultural aspects, language and religion on them and the explanations and theories of scholars who thought they discovered a novel human society. Wishful thinking perhaps, but the Native peoples knew better.
It was all fascinating and my curiosity was stimulated. Here was a civilization of paradoxes; of deep wisdom and sophisticated culture as well as sheer cruelty and barbarity, brought to an end by steel clad invaders preaching the peace and love of a benign and compassionate Jesus Christ while themselves engaging in what was one of the most bloodiest and destructive conquests in history, on a par with the medieval Muslim invasion of India, worse in many aspects because the Natives had no immunity to the diseases brought by the unknowing Conquistadors. Perhaps the Mayans and the Native peoples were simply more honest as human beings in their world view accepting bloodshed and the negative aspects of life as part of life itself, for they did not claim that life could be nor should be without any of it. Today, with the blending of European and Native mentalities and narratives, the inhabitants of the region maintain the belief that nothing is perfect as only the light of the Sun, which provides illumination for both health and well being to enable the growth of all creatures and plants, as well as being a source of inspiration for the human conscience, is a surety. Wisdom is illumination, according to the Mayan creation epic the Popol Vuh, while darkness is surely the lack of it. The history, culture and folk music of Central America became a sort of obsession with me and I tuned into radio stations which though in Spanish which I couldn't understand at the time, I knew the host would be playing some fabulous mariachi or marimba recordings, or feature a famous singer of semi classical or popular music- at home, we did own a few recordings of Yma Sumac, the then well known singer phenomenon with an unbelievable vocal range from Peru who was touted as being the descendant of the last Inca emperor, and I began to immerse myself in this culture. I can still see the album cover of 'Xtabay' in my mind.
I went on to study and learn about other cultures and folk traditions, affecting my choices in music which became my means of making a living as an accordionist as proximity, necessity and availability assisted in those decisions. The memory of the mysterious Maya and Central America went into sleep mode for some time as I explored and then performed the music of the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Middle East because that's where the work and the opportunities were for me. However, in 2018 my wife suggested we take a Caribbean cruise for a new kind of vacation, as we never cruised together before. Aware of my interest in ancient history, she booked one such cruise that visited Guatemala, Hondouras and the Yucatan as there were several Mayan sites to choose from as day excursions. She asked me which sites I would like to go to, but I left the choices to her discretion; "you choose, I trust what you'll find", without giving it much thought. It had been a long time since my childhood fascination with the region, as I grew somewhat distant from Central American history and culture after so many decades. We went on the cruise and had a lovely time eating, drinking and dancing on the ship. I glanced at our itinerary to check out our excursions and there it was to my surprise- we were going to Quirigua. I recognized the name of the place as it never fully left me and was now mysteriously being resurrected from the deep recesses of my mind.
As the ship approached Guatemala that morning the first thing that struck me was the colorful outline of the many pointed volcanoes that could be seen from offshore. When we arrived in port we bought some bottles of water to take with us and a can of insect repellant as we were going into the deep jungle of Guatemala, then boarded the bus to the accompaniment of marimba players serenading us and we began our two hour drive to the site. We passed quaint villages, stopping to purchase delicious fruit and the sweetest baby bananas (called ninos?) we had ever tasted from a roadside vendor. As we drove deeper into the interior the drive began to surge uphill through the volcanic region in what has to be one of the most beautiful landscapes on Earth.
We arrived at the Quirigua site, visited the museum which explained about the Mayan love for jade and listened to a historical introduction by a guide, after which we proceeded to the grounds proper to view the 'stelae' monuments. What I saw was a realization that struck me like a bolt of lightning. Here were the monuments I viewed as a child in that magazine years ago that impressed me so much, the beautiful photographs of Alfred P. Maudslay and others. The monuments were well cared for now, standing erect and tended to with care rather than appearing lop-sided after having been newly excavated as in the old photos, covered in mud and earth, they were lovingly protected from the rain and the Sun by thatched roofs erected overhead. I was so amazed and engrossed in viewing the monuments that for a moment, we lagged behind our tour party and sought to catch up with the rest after they sent someone to fetch us. As much as I loved it all, I didn't want to spend the night in a Guatemalan jungle! The monuments were impressive to see in person, the images of the powerful Mayan kings engraved on the stelae with their deeds and prayers to the gods as well as dates and calculations carved in hieroglyphs, explained in detail by the excellent guides. We proceeded and climbed some stairs which led us to the seating area section of the ball court from which the population viewed muscular, agile athletes competing in the sacred ball game of Pok A Tok. Practically every Mayan site reveals evidence of these ball courts, a feature of Mayan city planning. Here I was, close up to those figures and works of art that first inspired me as a child to pursue the traditions, music and cultures of the world's peoples. The trip to Quirigua was sort of a homecoming, a full circle for me, if you will. Indeed, the Native American concept of time is cyclical rather than linear, meaning everything comes around again and again in time for all eternity. Nothing revealed this truth to me more than this visit to Quirigua. We went back to our ship after a m,ost satisfying afternoon and I contemplated what I experienced that day. On we sailed and the next day we visited the coastal city of Tulum in Mexico's Yucatan as well, a once great religious center where I became acquainted with the ever present iguana lizards and the cute but reputedly dangerous raccoon-like animal known as the coati. The pyramid of Chichen Itza loomed high over the plain that once was the great city dedicated to Kukulkan, the feathered serpent god. We saw the famous dzenote, opening in the Earth which led to an underground river from where the Mayan inhabitants drew their water. Inspired by the daytime visits and excursions, every evening on the ship I would stare out into the vast Gulf of Mexico and watch the stars as the Mayans did, and contemplate the heavens.
In the morning after our excursion, I sat on our cabin balcony with coffee in hand and looked out again at the sea and contemplated the clouds on the horizon, noticing the shapes of what could easily be construed as gods, demons and beasts, wondering if this is what inspired Mayan artists to depict them on their vases, wall paintings and in sculpture. Indeed, I had come full circle. My interests and the musical paths I followed in life were first inspired by the images of Quirigua which I came to view in person many decades later. Life is a cycle and what has been before never leaves you but comes round again to remind you. In the midst of my fascination with my recent trip, which was sinc then followed by several more over the next few years to other beautiful and interesting Mayan sites, my dear friend and fellow musician Natalia Perlaza suggested, as if guided by Ixchel the Mayan goddess of creativity, music and art, to perhaps create a storytelling recitation based on Mayan mythology. A deeply soulful, conscious being who creates healing ceremonies and awareness sessions utilizing music and drumming, Natalia herself is fascinated with the Native American narratives of the spiritual realms, particularly those involving the concept of sound and naturally, being a percussionist, with rhythm as it relates to the beat of the heart. Her inspiration prompted me to compose the recently completed video storybook The Covenant Of Heaven which is my composed version of the Mayan creation myth, describing how and why the cosmos became adorned with the stars and planets, thus inspiring humans to create beauty out of chaos. It is a tale of the struggle between light and dark, that universal theme found in nearly every spiritual and mythological narrative across the planet meant to explain the unexplainable. Natalia also features as a model/actress in the photographs I commissioned to accompany the recitation, and she also performs on the soundtrack. The current video and audiobook is available on Vimeo and Bandcamp respectively, and there is a sequel in the works planned, hopefully to be compiled in Winter, 2025.
My fascination with the ancient Maya and Mesoamerica came full circle after hybernating in my mind and soul for nearly six decades. My Father's gentle, suggestive prompting was right for me, and I was brought back to my childhood years by visiting those monuments I first saw only in photos. Life is a circle indeed.
This was the experience of the Maya, Mythology, Music...and Me.
Three demi goddesses, from the storybook video 'The Covenant Of Heaven'
L-R Natalia Perlaza, ViviMar, Cheryl Gal Zur
Copyright 2024, Ismail Butera Visit: www.echoesofantiquity.net
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