Guatemalan rappers promote Mayan language, stories to youth

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — A group of Guatemalan musicians is on a mission to breathe life into a pre-Columbian language and heritage through a thoroughly modern genre: hip-hop.

Calling themselves Balam Ajpu, which means Jaguar Warrior or Warrior of Light, they rap in the ancient Mayan Tz'utujil language with the goal of making it cool for kids and teaching them their ancestors' stories and ways.

Their debut album, "Tribute to the 20 Nawuales," or spirits, is set to be released to coincide with the March 20 spring equinox. The musicians rap in both Tz'utujil and Spanish, blending a hip-hop beat with marimba and natural sounds like bird songs and running water.

"Since the time of the (Spanish) invasion, the (Mayan) worldview was persecuted, even almost snuffed out, but now it's returning to life, relying on music and sustaining itself in art," said group member Rene Dionisio, who uses the stage name Tz'utu Baktun Kan. "Our commitment as artists is to rescue the ancient art."

Three years in the making and completed in mid-February, the album's songs pay tribute to each of Guatemala's 22 provinces plus Mexico's Chiapas and Yucatan, encompassing the region where the Mayan civilization hit its apex around A.D. 250 to 950.

The lyrics came from a young Mayan priest named Venancio Morales, who serves as the group's spiritual guide. Starting with the project's genesis and as recently as this month, he performed prayer ceremonies where he entered into a trance and dictated in Tz'utujil what the songs should say.

I’ve always found the whole emphasis on one’s “Mayan” ancestry among latinos (though I have no Mayan ancestry, so I wonder if they’d call me not a true Hispanic?) to be quite silly. I’ve read lots of “Hispanic” or “Mexicotexan” literature, and they sit there and complain about how the eeevil Spaniards came and conquered everything... and I think to myself, “They had help from all the Indian tribes whom your ‘ancestors’ were enslaving and brutally sacrificing to the heathen gods.”

It gets worse too. All these poems they write about Pancho Villa or books where the main character is supposed to be a descendant of Pancho Villa (I had the misfortune of encountering one where the main character was a butch Lesbian fighting a killer named J.W (think George W.) who was called, as a nick name, “Pancho Villa.”). He was just a thief and a killer. In fact, all their heroes are either thieves and killers or else Communists who, if they came to power, would become thieves and killers. Even my ancestors, who were landowners in Mexico, were robbed and victimized by Pancho. Some hero who hangs people from trees just to get at the family gold!

What a big mess the culture has become down there.

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