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Waila: the Music of the Tohono O'odham featuring Gertie Lopez and the TO Boyz

The Tohono O’odham are a people who straddle the US/Mexican border in what is known as the Western Desert. These borderlands include the major crossing points for undocumented Central Americans and Mexicans seeking work in North America, and the Tohono O’odham reservation covers the entry zone between the border and Tucson, the nearest major city.

The Tohono O’odham are one of a number of Southwestern native peoples for whom the term ‘marginality’ carries a depth of meaning. Currently subsidized in large part by their casino operations, the Tohono O’odham, maintain a quiet presence in massively altered desert landscape in which their first settlement (c. 1000 BCE) lies amidst the remains of a basalt mine exploited to build, among other things, the perimeter wall of the University of Arizona.

Waila Music

‘Waila’ is a portrait of a TO woman and musician, Gertrude Lopez, who both exemplifies aspects of modern TO society and challenges it: on one hand she pursues traditional TO musical custom, leading a band which plays the syncretic music waila that binds TO communal celebration and European musical forms, yet simultaneously challenges convention: only men are meant to be bandleaders. Tracking musical performance on the reservation, in a South Tucson bar, in the recreation hall of a Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter and a health education benefit, the film uses Gertie to touch on various aspects of modern TO experience. The film includes interviews with Bernard ‘Bunny’ Fontana, a veteran ethnologist of the TO; Mike Wilson, a TO activist responsible for maintaining water stations on immigrant routes through the reservation; Mark Bahti, an Indian arts and jewelry trader; NEA award-winner, folklorist Jim Griffith.