Column: Journey into music of Tohono O'odham Nation

Now we come to the most familiar form of O’odham music — waila. The word means both this genre of music and “polka.”

Modern waila is almost exclusively instrumental dance music, and is usually played on saxophone, button accordion, electric guitar, electric bass, and full drum kit. I have also heard it played on piano accordion and electric keyboard. The bands often alternate between polkas, two-steps (Sp.”chotis,” T.O. “chode”) and cumbias, a Caribbean-derived genre.

The first two dance types are performed by couples in the standard waltz position, with an emphasis on small steps and smoothness. The polka step is a simple walking step. (Dancers being more energetic on a June afternoon in Southern Arizona might well one-two-three-hop themselves into a heart attack!) The cumbia is a side-by-side couple dance with the dancers performing complex turns and footwork.

I’ve mentioned that by the mid-1800s, O’odham were playing polkas and other European-derived music. The tunes and dances may have arrived in a number of ways — just who brought them remains uncertain. But they certainly caught on.

Then around World War II, changes started happening. This was the era of the Indian boarding schools, when boys were urged to form marching bands. Most of the older O’odham sax players I’ve interviewed told me that they learned their instrument in that setting. Thus waila can be seen as a product of the two great directed culture change programs aimed at the O’odham: the Spanish mission system and the U.S boarding school.