Lacandon Women's work songs

Lacandon women's work songs are like sung magical charms that call upon the creatures of the forest to help women with their chores. They were sung during the tasks of preparing corn and chocolate offerings to the gods and spinning (curing) thread. These are seldom heard anymore, since traditional religion and many of the associated rituals have been abandoned. Only the elderly women recall these songs, though many others have "forgotten them".This performer was the only women in the village willing perform these for the camera. Other women denied knowing the songs, but it is unclear whether they were too shy to perform them. What is clear is that these songs are not being transmitted to the younger generation. A case in point is the tortilla making song provided by one young woman in 2000 (see Kitchen Lacandon). It shows no resemblance to the traditional version sung by JK, which is provided below. Other traditional songs include one for spinning thread and for frothing cacao.


JK sings the song for making tortillas	Song for spinning	Song for frothing cacao

Little research has been done on Lacandon women's work songs. But from the three recorded here, they display the couplet and triplet structure found in both ancient and contemporary Mayan texts. Repitition is common, acting as a structurally and conceptually unifying device. It can occur verbatim or with slight variations, such as a change in the word order or lexical replacement. These slight changes serve a disjunctive function at the lower levels of text structure, i.e., poetic verse.