Availability: Digital content is not available. Please write to pahma-mediapermissions@berkeley.edu. Please specify as much information as possible about the recordings you are interested in, including the Item number (24-156.2).
Description:The Fire Song would be accompanied by the cocoon rattle in actual context. Also, such a dance song would normally be sung by two singers who spell on another as they tire and by a group of (4-6) shouters who sing the rhythm chorus and add "how ha!" at the end of each song. The dance songs are usually accompanied by a log foot drum mounted in the dance house floor (here substituted by pounding on the kitchen table at Brown's house) as well as split-stick clappers held by the two singers. While singing this, the performer would slowly make a circle around the fire and center pole carrying and using his cocoon rattle (from collectors' notes). Meighan and Riddell (1972) is the best single source on the Bole-Maru cult, even though its focus is on more westerly versions of it. Distributed on California Indian Music Project, North-central region, tape 16, side A.
Repository: Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology
Preferred citation: Fire Song for the Bighead Dance, 24-156.2, in "The Lawrence E. Dawson and Frank Norick collection of Southeastern Pomo sound recordings", Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, http://cla.berkeley.edu/item/11219.
We acknowledge with respect the Ohlone people on whose traditional, ancestral, and unceded land we work and whose historical relationships with that land continue to this day.