Family sharing Yakama song recorded more than 100 years ago at special event

A Yakama love song recorded more than 100 years ago by a revered tribal member and treaty interpreter will be heard once again during a special event Jan. 22.

“A Call to the Past” will take place from noon to 1 p.m. Jan. 22 in the theater of the Yakama Nation Cultural Center, 100 Spiel-yi Loop. It’s free and open to the public.

Louis Mann, a Yakama tribal member and interpreter of the June 9, 1855, treaty that established the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, sat down with Edward S. Curtis to record several Yakama songs in 1909, according to an event flyer. Mann’s family will share one of the recordings, a Yakama love song, at the event.

The recordings were restored as part of Indiana University’s Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative, according to a December 2019 story by YES!, a national nonprofit media organization.

IU allocated $15 million, which included funds from a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, in 2013 to digitally preserve recordings made on wax cylinders. The fragile cylinders are part of the university’s extensive Archives of Traditional Music, which documents music and culture from around the world.