Woman Keeps in Tune With Ancient Music

Elisabeth Waldo is trying to bring the mostly forgotten sounds of ancient music to life in the present.

Her Northridge home houses a collection of instruments--some 2,000 years old--made of clay, seashells, reed, animal bones, copper, bronze, gold, wood, stone, gourds, deer hoofs and cocoons. Most are percussion and wind instruments and generally are in the shape of animals, birds, humans (as gods) and plants.

“I had to speculate what the music would have been like, and based on my own intuition and archeological finds,” she said. “I composed the music blending those ancient sounds with the modern.”

Waldo became fascinated with ethnic music when she was growing up on a ranch at the edge of the Yakima Indian Reservation in Washington state. Although she learned to play the violin, the magical Native American sounds of her childhood stayed with her.

She studied classical music with Russian violinist Efrem Zimbalist at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, then toured with the All American Youth Symphony.

But while working with the Los Angeles Philharmonic early in her career, she realized that the mystical sounds of indigenous peoples had to be part of her musical life.

“I just couldn’t sit and play only Bach,” she said.

While performing in Mexico, she met artist Diego Rivera, who became a friend and mentor. “He encouraged me to research the ancient and great Indian civilizations and their pre--Colombian instruments,” she said. “In a sense I was breaking away from classical training and testing new ground.”

She began to play instruments that Native Americans had developed based on the guitars and violins brought by the Spanish.

“The Indians called them ‘the woods that sing,’ ” she said.

Waldo’s late husband, Carl Dentzel, was director of the Southwest Museum on Mt. Washington for 25 years and a longtime San Fernando Valley resident. He helped to give Northridge its name, and their home, Rancho Cordillera del Norte, is named for the community as well. The name is Spanish for Ranch of the North Ridge.

Today, with sons Dana Carl and Paul Dentzel, Waldo’s Multi-Cultural Music and Art Foundation of Northridge--located on the family’s property--has expanded to include performing and visual arts of many other cultures of the world. Activities at the rancho include live concerts, workshops and both local and international tours.

Waldo said she is particularly enchanted by the music of early California.

“I have always blended the instruments of indigenous America into my musical scores . . . rescuing their sounds from the silence of the tombs,” she said. “I fuse the past with the present, to create music of the spirit for today.”