Tzo'kam perform "The Bone Game Song" at the 1998 Folklife Festival

Flora Wallace and her family--collectively known as Tzo'kam--perform "The Bone Game Song" at the 1998 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Bone games are popular among American Indians across the northwestern United States of America, including the Salish peoples to which Tzo'kam belong. During the game, two teams compete to guess where players are hiding carved animal bones. The game is accompanied by exuberant singing, drumming, or rattles. Bone game songs are very lively and fast paced, and are sung with full voices. The players hiding the bones often gesture expressively in time with the music. In earlier times, it was usually men who competed, but nowadays women and youth participate, too. Playing with percussive accompaniment and animated gestures, Tzo'kam continues this tradition.

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Category:

Music

Tags:

• Salish
• Native American music
• Aboriginal
• west coast
• first peoples
• song games
• musical games
• Tzo'kam
• Flora Wallace

[russwall604]

The name of the group is Tzo'kam and it is Flora Wallace (not Laura Wallace as indicated) who is originally form Xax'lip BC but married into the Mount Currie Reserve. The song comes from the Aboriginal Womens Voices Program from the Banff Centre in Alberta.

[SmithsonianFolkways]

@russwall604 Thank you for pointing that out. Errors have now been fixed!

[YambidiBlamBlam]

Listening to the words of many different tribal songs I deduce that it must be simple to learn some native american languages since they seem to be comprised mostly of simple oh-way-oh's, oh-yays - stuff like that.

[Tinymoezzy]

we need to learn our language.

[derrbarn14]

i love playing bone games and i might be related to laura wallace there are a few wallaces here