RESOURCE: ‘The Boys In The Bonampak Band’

After the drummer come three turtle-shell drum players. Miller writes: ‘These nine musicians wear similar costumes, variations on a single theme... It is as if band members had been told to wear dark trousers and white shirts. No two figures wear identical costumes... but together they form a group. The basic outfit includes a hide skirt, painted with designs that resemble those of polychrome vases, and a rolled hipcloth, draped like a sausage around the waist. Each of these musicians also wears a stiff, white headdress, perhaps made of woven palm fibre or white straw. Such a construction suggests a Pre-Columbian Panama Hat.’

We have animated the scene ourselves - it’s our attempt to bring to life, however simplistically, Professor Miller’s intended message.

Source:-
‘The Boys in the Bonampak Band’ by Mary Miller, in Maya Iconography (Eds. Elizabeth P. Benson and Gillett G. Griffin), Princeton University Press, 1988.
Image: scanned from Ancient Maya Paintings of Bonampak, Mexico, Supplementary Publication no. 46, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1955.

Gourd-rattle players lead a (9-piece) Maya band - detail from the Bonampak murals, Room 1 (painting by Antonio Tejeda)