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Resurrecting an Indian Tradition : Ethnic music: As a boy, Alvino Siva heard the Indian Bird Songs from elders. Now, he is trying to re-create melodies that are only a faint echo.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Alvino Siva had scarcely passed 5 years of age when the Cahuilla Indian Bird Songs first stirred his soul. The 1920s were drawing to a close, and Siva was living on the Agua Caliente Reservation east of here, in a stark desert land shared with the cactus and coyote.

On holidays and other festive occasions, the bird songs would emerge--flowing from the lips of Cahuilla tribal elders who, in turn, had adopted them from their forebears. With their complex rhythms, haunting melodies and accompanying dance steps, the ancient bird songs were entrancing to a young boy--a challenge and a joy to learn.

“We would have these huge feasts, these celebrations, and then the singing and dancing would start,” recalled Siva, whose parents picked fruit on the region’s sprawling ranches. “It would go on for hours, all night long, and we kids would follow along with the old people as best we could.”

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Through the years, Siva mastered many of the songs, but when World War II erupted, he was swept off to battle. The young combat engineer chose to make a career of the Army, and, although he would occasionally murmur a bird song while alone on sentry duty, his repertoire gradually ebbed away.

Siva is now 67, and he is worried. The bird songs--once such a vital, inspiring part of Cahuilla tradition--have lost their place in tribal life, having died with the elders who knew them so well.

Determined to preserve this element of Cahuilla culture for generations yet unborn, Siva is attempting to resurrect the songs and rekindle an interest in them among younger Native Americans. With two other tribal members--Robert Levi of Riverside and Sat Torres of Thermal, Calif., near the Salton Sea--Siva has formed the Cahuilla Bird Singers. The group’s goal is to record a collection of songs and share them with anyone who might listen.

The bird singers will make two appearances next month at the Los Angeles Festival, joining other Native American artists at the Pan-Indian Pow Wow over Labor Day weekend and performing at UCLA’s Sunset Canyon Amphitheatre Sept. 4. They can also be heard at occasional music festivals throughout Southern California and at the annual May fiesta on the Morongo Indian Reservation near Banning.

According to Paul Apodaca, curator of folk art at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, bird songs are not specifically about birds. Nor do they mimic the chirping sounds made by the winged creatures.

Instead, Apodaca wrote in a paper on the subject, the songs speak of the creation of all things on Earth, including humans, animals and plants. Common to tribes throughout Southern California, Arizona and Baja California, they also chronicle the settling of the planet’s mythological First People, describing their search for a hospitable homeland and the hardships that confronted them along the way.

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Although they have no ceremonial or spell-casting purpose, the songs have a distinctive magical sound. As the Cahuilla trio’s sonorous voices mingle with the crisp swish of their gourd rattles, an attentive listener can wander easily into a rapturous trance, with visions of the settlers’ adventures dancing in the mind’s eye.

Traditionally, the songs were sung in sequence, with each work representing a chapter in the First People’s journey. So numerous were the songs that performers typically began singing at sunset and continued past daybreak.

Tragically, Siva said, the Cahuilla songs’ proper sequence--along with the meaning of 90% of the lyrics--has been lost. Although bird songs have fascinated anthropologists and have been described as perhaps the oldest music in America, there has been little formal research or documentation of the subject. So when the old “master singers” died, the meaning and traditional cycle of the songs perished as well.

“It’s very sad, and it’s frustrating to me now because I had a chance to ask the old people, to write it all down,” Siva said. “But we were young. We just didn’t think the songs would disappear.”

Many have been salvaged. Over the past several years, Siva, Levi and Torres have searched their memories for shreds of melodies, fragments of lyrics. In such a way, they have managed to reassemble many of the historic works.

“Sometimes, I’d be outside in my garden and I’d think of a song, run inside and tape record it,” said Levi, 72, a brawny, bear of a man who learned the songs from his grandfather. “At first I would forget the song by the time I got the tape recorder going. But now it’s all set up, so I just have to push a button.”

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Songs return to Siva in a similar fashion, but at times the experience can be aggravating: “The worst is when I am lying in bed, and I’ll remember a melody but I can’t find the words. So I’ll lie there and hum it, and that’ll just drive me crazy.”

So far, Siva said, the group has been able to “remember enough songs so that we can sing straight through (in sequence) for about four hours, instead of eight hours, like we should.”

While the meaning of most of the lyrics still eludes them, the knowledge of just a few words frequently enables them to piece together a song’s subject. Like a crucial piece in a puzzle, that discovery can sometimes enable the singers to string together several works in sequence, said Levi, a World War II Army veteran himself.

In one song, for example, the First People “feel this strong wind, coming up behind them, and they are looking for a place to stay,” Levi said. “Then in the next song, it’s getting cold as the wind is catching up to them.”

The following piece tells of “clouds of rain gathering, and then of the rain falling on them,” Levi said. “There is talk of the mournful cry of the bluebird, and the blackbird, and the cold rain.

“It goes on like this and they finally come down on a high plateau or mountain, and see this lush valley below,” Levi said. “This, the songs says, is the land where they will stay.”

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Last year, the Cahuilla Bird Singers obtained a grant from the California Arts Council, funds that enabled them to take on three young Native American men as apprentices.

With this flicker of interest among their descendants, the Cahuilla Bird Singers hope they have ensured a remnant of the ancient songs will endure--even after they are gone. For now, however, Levi said he is treasuring their mission for a simpler reason:

“The songs, the dancing, that’s the only thing that keeps me going. They make me feel real lively, like I’m ready to fly.”

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