The Long Count

If you stand in front of the Kukulkan pyramid in the ancient city of Chichen Itza and clap your hands, you will hear a sound resembling the song of the sacred bird quetzal, the earthly incarnation of the god of air Quetzalcoatl. It is unknown whether the Maya intentionally created such acoustics, but judging by the huge number of frescoes depicting musical instruments, we know for sure that sound played a key role in the ceremonial life of pre-Spanish Mesoamerica.

The Maya did not leave behind musical monuments, but developed a variety of musical instruments, including clay whistles, animal bone and seashell trumpets, and drums made from turtle shells. The Maya did not have musical notation, and therefore the collapse of the great Mayan cities in the 8th and 9th centuries, followed by two centuries of Spanish conquests, erased the musical traditions of the ancient civilization.

The Long Count is a provocative work by Delia Beatriz, also known as Debit, in which she attempted to resurrect the sounds of ancient instruments. Prior to this release, Beatriz was involved in dance music. Her debut album Animus in 2018 is a mix of ambient and grime, while her 2019 work System is dedicated to tribal guarachero, techno with elements of cumbia, from her hometown of Monterrey.

Working on The Long Count, named after the Mesoamerican calendar Long Count, Beatriz completely moved away from dance music. To model virtual synthesizers, she used the UNAM archive, which contained fragments of sounds from musical instruments found during archaeological excavations. In addition, she likely assumed that ancient music sounded unfamiliar to the modern ear, much like the traditional music of isolated tribes that have preserved centuries-old traditions. For this reason, the album is more reminiscent of not music, but a strange radio broadcast, picking up a transmission from the distant past.