ATMuse> The Music of Multicultural America 
 
from "Cultural Interaction in New Mexico as Illustrated in the la Danza de Matachines." by Brenda M. Romero, pg. 205-238
In The Music of Multicultural America, 

Edited by Kip Lornell and Anne K. Rasmussen

 

December 29, 1974, Pueblo of Jemez, New Mexico. Featuring Adelaido Martinez and Daniel Culacke.

This was Martinez's favorite song to perform. The fast consecutive ornamental slides characterize the bull's mischievous nature. The rhythm features a triplet figure followed by a duplet, to which the dancers dance a triple step on the triplet figures, alternating the starting foot, and rest on the duplets. This song sequence includes the denouement of the Matachina drama, when the bull, after confronting each of the twelve dancers, is then shot and killed or castrated.

Costumed people dance outside under a big blue sky with white clouds and surrounded by desert mountains and spectators.
Pueblo of Jemez Matachina dance in Ponderosa, New Mexico on August 28, 2010, to commemorate the memory of Adelaido Martinez, fiddler of thirty years.

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