The first sounds of a human voice were recorded onto tinfoil in 1877.1 So, engraving sound recordings onto wax actually was a step upward in the 1880s. To play back that burst of sound from wax, though, everyone seemed to rely chiefly on hope.
Three wax cylinders from 1889 from the collections of the National Museum of American History.
By 1901, inventors had taken wax cylinders to recordings longer than two minutes, and into mass production. The sound to this day remains temporary. Playing a cylinder repeatedly wears down the wax until the sound disappears. That didn’t stop some of those studying human cultures and languages from plunging into the then-new technology. Starting in the late 1800s, these ethnologists set out to record Indigenous words and songs before they also disappeared forever.
Among them was J.P. Harrington, the eccentric and obsessed ethnologist who studied more than 100 Native American cultures and languages for more than 40 years, starting in 1915. In some cases, his recording is the only surviving audio of the language.2 Some of his recordings came from extensive field work among Southern California First Nations, and that’s where News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center picks up the wonder of today’s story.
Prelude:
In December 2020, Mark Araujo-Levinson, a Serrano language student of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center President and Elder Ernest Siva, shared in News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center his journey in learning Chumash languages.
Map from 1893, "The Land of Sunshine. Southern California; an authentic record of its natural features, resources and prospects ... Compiled for the Southern California World's Fair Association, etc. [Illustrated.]" by Harry Ellington Brook. (Courtesy of Wikimedia)
Longing to Hear Them
Mark Araujo-Levinson told us how the languages became alive for him as he plowed through hundreds of pages of J.P. Harrington’s notoriously-hard-to-read notes. In particular were the funny and feisty words of Rosario Cooper, the last known speaker of the Obispeño language, who died in 1917.
Rosario Cooper. Image originally obtained from Harrington Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution 91-31284. (Courtesy of Calisphere)
As he studied page after page of Harrington’s notes, he began longing to hear her voice and the voices of Harrington’s other consultants, such as the last known speaker of Cruzeño, Fernando Librado, who also helped Harrington with the Mitsqaniqa'n or Ventureño language. Fernando Librado died in 1915.
When Mark Araujo-Levinson finally did get to hear a snippet of Rosario Cooper singing a Deer Song, “This resulted in me in tears because there was something about working to learn her language, but never knowing what she sounded like,” he wrote. “I had it on repeat, and I still listen to it to this day.”
Harrington’s wax cylinders that remained viable were copied to magnetic audio tape in the early 1980s as part of the Federal Cylinder Project.
Then This Happened:
The Journey to Hear Their Voices
Santa Barbara beach (Photo by Chris, courtesy of Wikimedia)
By Mark Araujo-Levinson
On August 11th, I saw on the UC Santa Barbara Library page that the library was allowing outside patrons to make appointments to come and listen to any material that they had in the library. My mouth dropped with excitement because I have been waiting over a year due to the pandemic to get a chance to listen to the Chumash Wax Cylinders that the library had on CDs. I quickly wrote an email to the UC Santa Barbara Music Library to schedule an appointment. I could not contain my excitement, so I scheduled for a few days later, August 17th.
In my preparation for this exciting time, I went back to my Limuw (namely Cruzeño, aka Island Chumash) and my Ti∤hini (aka Obispeño) notes to help me figure out which songs I wanted to listen to. Every day I would come home from my work at Morongo Reservation, helping to preserve the Cahuilla and Serrano languages, and begin to flip through my Chumash notebooks. I started with my Ti∤hini notebooks because I remember seeing that John Peabody Harrington (the linguist/ethnographer who went all around California writing down many California Native languages) had written out the musical notation for the songs that his Ti∤hini informant, Rosario Cooper, had sung for him. I wrote down all of the songs that I wanted to hear. However, when I went back to my Limuw notes, it was not that simple. Harrington’s notes are known for being very hard to decipher because of his notations, but also there is no clear order. It is all over the place. When I was flipping through my second copy of Limuw notes I realized after about a half-hour that Harrington did not write out any of the songs that his Limuw informant, Fernando Librado, had sung for him. I remembered that Harrington wrote out the songs that Librado sang for him in one of his Mitsqanaqa'n (Ventureño, aka Ventura Chumash) reels. I went through all 94 slides to find the songs that I wanted to hear, and finally I was ready.
August 16th, I decided to reach out to a Chumash friend of mine to ask him about UC Santa Barbara’s collection. He warned me that their collection is very discombobulated. I was a little worried when I heard that because I only have 2 hours to find and listen to everything that I wanted to listen to.
Prehistoric rock art with sun images in Painted Cave near Santa Barbara (Photo by Doc Searls courtesy of Wikimedia).
On the way up to Santa Barbara, there was a particular song that I really wanted to listen to which is called wenaminami ptanəm. The reason that I wanted to listen to that one in particular was because the word for sun/day in Limuw is tanəm which is similar to how the Cahuilla/Serrano say sun/day which is tamit. When I was learning Limuw, I would pronounce tanəm similarly to how I would read tamit. The three and a half hours to get to Santa Barbara couldn’t go by any quicker.
I got to UC Santa Barbara around 12:45pm, and my appointment was at 2:00pm. I find somewhere to sit in the middle of campus where the tower is, and I just go through my notes for the last time before I get to hear these beautiful voices from over 100 years ago. As I go through the notes one more time, I see the dates that some of these cylinders were recorded on such as December 1913 and September 1916. Those dates are 108 years ago and 105 years ago, respectively.
1:50pm comes and I call the Music Library so that someone can let me in. I call, and someone comes a minute later allowing me into the library. We walk up the stairs where the library is, and I already see 7 CDs already on the counter. The woman tells me that these CDs were made in the year 2000, and can only be played on an older desktop. She also told me that some people who have tried before to listen had some trouble. She hands me the CDs, and walks me over to the older desktop which was already on. I sit down and I begin to look at the CDs which had the tracklists on the covers. I skim through all 7 CDs, and I can see what my friend was talking about when he said that the collection is all over the place. They are arranged by collection number, and I only have the cylinder numbers. "This is going to be harder than I thought." I said to myself. I begin with CD #1, and after the narrator (I suppose the person who is doing the transfer from wax cylinders to tape), names the collection number, there is a sound of the cylinder spinning and the whoosh whoosh sound coming through. I hear a man talking faintly in the background before you hear him start to sing, and putting my headphones deeper into my ear to try to make out any words. It was really hard to make out anything. So I skipped ahead to find any other songs.
After going through about 11 tracks, I press play on what they called collection number 12, after a second, I hear a man clearing his throat, and I hear the words "wenaminami ptanəm", and I put my hand to my mouth with such happiness. He said the word tanəm exactly how I thought it would be pronounced. The melody was so simple, but it was truly beautiful. On my notebook I read along to the words, and try to catch the melody so I can remember. I read the words along with the translation. "Wenaminami ptanəm, kšayanl'a" (What hour of the day, we are going to cry). Only 3 words, but it was truly beautiful to my ears.
After re-listening to that song over and over again, I noticed that already an hour and fifteen minutes had passed. Now I really had to start to hurry because I haven’t heard anything from Mrs. Cooper yet. I began to just skim through CD 2, CD 3, and CD 4. I didn’t hear her voice. I have heard a snippet of Mrs. Cooper’s voice in a clip from the new documentary on John Peabody Harrington called “Chasing Voices.” Also in the notes that Harrington took while interviewing Mrs. Cooper, it reads, “Rosario is a woman, she has a man’s voice.” I look at the clock, and I only have 15 minutes left. I hurry to CD 5, and then I skip through some tracks, and then I hear “Putsuyaaawri.” It is her voice, and like the previous song, it is only a few words and a very memorable melody. They are truly magnificent. The voices of the past can easily bring a tear to someone’s eye.
After my time was over at the university, I went back to my car, and I began to drive back on the 101 South towards Ventura, and I am looking onwards towards the ocean looking to see if I see the Channel Islands, and I don’t see it. However, I still smile looking towards the ocean, and I have a few words to myself, “Truly beautiful.”
Listen!
Photo by “MathKnight” courtesy of Wikimedia
Since then, Mark Araujo-Levinson found this snippet online for you to hear:
Rosario Cooper singing a Swordfish Song (Scroll down). 3
Thank You!
As part of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s 501(c)3 nonprofit mission to save and share Southern California Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts, one of our projects is looking for ways to make old recordings more accessible, including as part of our expanding reference library.
We love to hear from our community: EMAIL. Subscribe, share! Thank you! Pat Murkland, Editor. August 25, 2021.
Library of Congress, “History of the Cylinder Phonograph.”
National Museum of Natural History, “The Perfect Ear.” Some of Harrington’s later recordings in the 1930s from aluminum discs also are shared online here by the National Museum of Natural History.