Recalling the Sound of the Ancients : Music: Log drums, clay flutes and deer antlers are part of Luis Perez’s treasure of pre-Columbian instruments.

Luis Perez climbed a Mayan pyramid on the Yucatan Peninsula, sat on a stone altar at the summit and closed his eyes.

“While I was meditating, the sound of drums came from far away in the jungle,” recalled Perez, 39, in his Highland Park home. “I took my flute out and played with the rhythm of the drums, following the beats. I had my eyes closed and forgot about time, forgot about everything.

“Suddenly, all these sounds were coming from everywhere, a lot of people in the pyramids were whispering a strange, very beautiful language which I couldn’t identify. I sensed someone around me and felt feathers touch my arm. Then I opened my eyes and the magic disappeared. Nobody was there and the songs and drums had stopped.”

Perez was then a 19-year-old rocker playing electric guitar, flute and singing British and North American pop hits in his native Mexico City. But that spiritual experience at Palenque 20 years ago convinced him to dedicate himself to the music of Mesoamerican cultures.

Today, he appears with the group Huayucaltia from noon to 1 p.m. as part of the free Concerts in the Spiral Court series at the California Plaza downtown, and is recognized as an authority on the indigenous musical traditions of Mexico. He lectures on pre-Columbian music to ethnomusicology students at UCLA each year.

Perez studied music at the University of Mexico from 1970 to 1974 but his research also focused on culture while he lived among ethnic Indian groups. In the mid-’80s, one group, the Nahuatl, gave him the name Ixoneztli (pronounced Ish-o-nest-lee ), “the music maker.”

His collection of more than 500 percussion and wind instruments includes pieces from 500 to 3,000 years old. Initially, Perez tried to mix those instruments into a rock context but now, using electronic delay devices in live performances, he layers the instruments’ sounds atop one another.

“People started doing scientific research about the music, but they didn’t use the musical artifacts to produce music,” Perez said. “I’m combining these instruments to produce something for today, doing my own interpretations based on my inspiration, because we don’t know anything about pre-Columbian music.”

Perez will be busy during the Los Angeles Festival. Huayucaltia will be featured Sept. 8 at Griffith Park and on the Andean Winds program Sept. 9 at UCLA’s Sunset Canyon Amphitheater.

He will participate in the festival’s opening ceremony at Angels’ Gate Sept. 1, and perform a solo concert, “Chants for Life and Death,” Sept. 16 at Descanso Gardens in La Canada-Flintridge.

The solo performance will require as many as 150 instruments, as opposed to the 30 or so Perez brings to group performances. His collection includes log drums, water drums, clay flutes and drums, turtle shells and deer antlers.

By Perez’s account, the musician in early Mesoamerican societies functioned the way griots do in West Africa--storytellers who pass on traditions in song.

“Musicians were considered very important people who would be able to transmit messages from the gods to the people and from the people to the gods,” he explained. “Some of these instruments were considered as gods that fell from heaven like fallen angels. You can tell by the sound--they transmit something totally spiritual.”

According to Perez, the Spaniards destroyed instruments because they represented deities deemed “demons” by the Catholic Church. Perez re-created certain instruments by having replicas made of museum artifacts.

His 1982 album “In the Navel of the Moon” was sponsored by the Mexican government and became the first record to spotlight music produced by pre-Columbian instruments. But Perez ran into problems in 1983 when he became politically active, joining the effort to obtain aid for Indians in Mexico. Himself dependent on government-sponsored cultural projects, he saw opportunities disappear for two years, he said.

In 1967 Perez moved to San Francisco and came to Los Angeles to join performers Strunz and Farah and Huayucaltia the following year. Huayucaltia has released two albums and Strunz and Farah’s second album will be released this month.

Performing with Huayucaltia and doing session work for Andreas Vollenweider, Jackson Browne and David Lindley albums are sidelines to his solo work, he said.

“These instruments are living things and every time I play them, I’m just another instrument,” Perez said. “They’re allowed to talk through me so I’m just a vehicle of communication for them.

“All these artifacts were found in tombs. The musicians were buried with their instruments because they believed they would keep playing and, by my playing them again, I bring back the spirits of these people. There’s something from the beyond that you bring every time you play these instruments together.”