The harp is an essential component of the ritual and festive ceremonies of the Yoreme (Mayo) peoples of Sonora and Sinaloa. Its presence in the Pascola Dance, one of the most complex and enduring ritual expressions of the region, reveals a profound interweaving of music, religiosity, and Indigenous mythology. Beyond serving as an instrument of harmonic accompaniment, the harp is a ritual agent that articulates the temporality and sacred spaces shared by the ancestors with human beings.
Without question, this stringed instrument derives from a European tradition introduced during the colonial period. The Yoreme, however, transformed it into a cultural object of their own through structural modifications, performance techniques, and distinctive ritual meanings. The pascola harp resembles European Gothic harps, with a variable number of strings (generally between twenty and thirty) tightened by means of wooden tuning pegs. Its resonating body has two sound holes.
Within the ritual context, the harp forms part of the Pascola musical ensemble, which also includes the violin and the ankle rattles (tenábaris) worn by the dancer. While the violin carries the melody, the harp provides the rhythmic and harmonic foundation upon which the dance unfolds. The compositions known as Sones de Pascola are characterized by their imitation of animal sounds and create a sonic tapestry that marks the transition into the time of the ancestors, when human beings were animals of the wilderness.
Within this symbolic framework, the enramada [ceremonial arbor] is the ritual space that reproduces the flowered forest, sewa annia, where life originates. Musicians, dancers, and other ritual specialists become ancestors, and prehuman (pre-Christian) time is experienced as present, a time when neither sun nor fire yet existed. To mark entry into this primordial time-space, the musicians perform the Son del Canario. Some studies indicate that ka'anaria may be translated as “without illumination” or “without dawning,” which would reinforce the wild character of the enramada and of the dance as preceding present-day humanity.
The Pascola Dance, the sones, and the instruments maintain a close relationship with processes of creation and generation. Myths concerning the first human beings recount how the first man succeeded in impregnating a woman, thereby giving rise to the Yoreme people. In this context, it is the first Pascola who teaches other pascolas the gift of fertility and the dances; the harp represents the woman who has been impregnated. Once fire appears, the animals emerge from the vegetal world and begin to seek food in the harp, now transformed into a tree, a source of honey and edible riches. This act is represented during the Pascola Dance when the ritual specialists cover one of the holes of the harp with their hands and insert a stick into it.
A myth collected by Guadalupe Escamilla (1991) recounts the creation of the instruments and of the Pascola Dance, as well as the transition from the wild state to the cultural one:
Many years ago God created the world and then came down to the earth to see what problems people had and how they behaved. When God descended to the earth, he was accompanied by Saint Peter, and together they began to travel through the villages. As they journeyed, they began to make things and bring others into being, among them a celebration for the enjoyment of the people. Then God said to them:
“I want you to hold celebrations, and that is why I am here. From that branch that you see, cut a piece and bring it to me, for from it I will make violins and harps so that you may begin to play. Little by little, melodies will take shape, and in this way you will begin to dance to the rhythm of the music played by the musicians.”
Having said this, music, the festival sponsors, and the musical instruments began to come into being. Thus they began to play among themselves. Recognizing the need to hold the celebration, they began to dance and dance, and in this way people began to gather to watch the pascoleros.