Apodaca, Paul

Biography / Administrative History

Richard Lando, a graduate student from the University of California at Riverside, made a fieldwork study by recording Cahuilla bird songs at the Malki Fiesta on the Morongo Indian Reservation. Lando, with assistance from Katherine Siva Saubel, recorded Kauisik ceremonial singer Joe Patencio singing bird songs while accompanied by Alvino Siva, Saturnino Toro, Matt Pablo, and Lloyd Marcos. These recordings were made on May 26, 1968 (the Sunday before Memorial Day Weekend). Lando also recorded a private singing session at a later date. In 1998, Paul Apodaca discovered a cache of reel to reel tapes in the offices of Eugene Anderson, PhD of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Riverside. Anderson offered the unmarked tapes to Apodaca. These tapes were found to contain performances of Cahuilla bird songs and were determined to be the described audio recordings by Richard Lando. Apodaca then proceeded to digitally restore and transfer the original recordings to digital format. Packaged with these surrogate recordings are audio introductions to the project by Paul Apodaca, PhD and recordings of Alvino Siva listening (and responding) to digitally restored tracks.