Remote Indian Tribe Wild About the Beatles (1966)

 

Remote Indian Tribe Wild About The Beatles 

By Copley New Service

Rio De Janerio

September 23, 1966

    The influence of the Beatles' music has gone just about as far as it can go. While worried mothers across the world wonder what influence it is having on their children, worried officials of the Brazilian Indian Protection Service are wondering what final effects it will have on the Maxacali Tribe.

     The Indians live on an isolated, thickly grown area in the interior state of Minas Gerais. They were only discovered and "pacified" a generation ago, but they have always been interesting to scientists of Indianology because of their customs. They have a different way of considering the hereafter, a different way of organizing their family relations, and their language varies so much from other Indians of the same area-- to be almost a separate dialect. 

    The tribe is dwindling. The present population is estimated at about 115 persons. This makes it all the more urgent for scientists to record all they can on these unusual people. It has increased the Indian Protective Services' determination to keep the tribe pure and apart from the influence of civilization, but it hadn't counted on the Beatles.

     Recently, a tourist came to the tribe, and the braves were amazed to see a small black box that produced voices and sounds with just the flick of a finger. Some thought it was a way for jungle spirits to communicate with them. They especially liked the music. The ye-ye-ye was given a top rating. Beethoven and Brahms failed to move them. Frank Sinatra fared only a little better, but when the stomping, shouting, twanging of the Beatles came out of the little box, the whole tribe started dancing.

     When it came time to leave the village, the Indians didn't want to let the radio go. There was much discussion back and forth. The visitor finally agreed to trade his transistor radio for a collection of bows and arrows and some ceramic pots.

     The next time the Indian Protection Service men showed up with their tape recorders and their notebooks, they were appalled to find that the Indians were thumping out a Beatle beat on the tribe's five drums. The prayers for harvest and good hunting now sound like something from the soundtrack of "Help"; the solemn chants and mournful pace of the funeral rites have been replaced by a jazzed-up version that could very well wake the dead.