The Sena'asom Rattle of the Yaqui Indian Pascolas

Abstract

During a masked dance the Yaqui Indian Pascolas hold a unique rattle called sena'asom. The Yaqui and otherTC-hiTHiTribes live in Sonora, Mexico, about five hundred miles south of Nogales in the desert west of the Sierras. In their half-pagan, half-Catholic ceremonies they retain a number of aboriginal figures, including the ritual clowns called pahko'ola, old man of the fiesta. Each of these men-usually three in a group-wears several jinglers and manipulates a sena'asom, derived in name from Spanish sonazo or sonaja. The shape, materials, manipulation, and associationsThoTftese instruments are curiously conflicting. The specimen which I brought from Vicam Viejo is carved out of ironwood, very neatly smoothed and lacquered, yet irregular at the edges and slightly lopsided. Its length of 9 1/2 inches includes a 4-inch handle and a hollowed frame 1 3/8 inches in width. In the inch-wide hollow space dangle two sets of brass discs. Three discs dangle from each of two nails which bridge the hollow space at a distance of two inches. Approximately two inches in diameter, they are far from circular; in fact, the middle ones are well frayed. Despite the solidity of the black-stained wood, the total weight is less than a pound. Weight and shape are well suited to the manipulation. The Pascola grasps the handle with his right hand in such a way as to strike the frame against the palm of the left hand. Most frequently he strikes his palm with a straight right wrist, then drops the rattle with a relaxed wrist, producing a strong and a weak beat of two different, metallic timbres. In a phrase he might thus beat two or three evenly timed pulses and a final syncopated pulse (or Scotch snap). He can produce other rhythmic combinations. Also at times he shakes the rattle laterally, with the discs suspended vertically; or he shakes it in a regular movement of aspersion, with both arms extended forward. He can modulate the intensity of the sound.