These songs come from an audio recording in the Alaska Native Language Archives. The full recording is available here.
The singer is Bill "Willie" Tcheripanoff of Akutan, Alaska. The recording was made by Mike Livingston. He is accompanied briefly by another singer, who I believe to be Phil Tutiakoff.
These are dance songs, and their structure is repetitive with few words. While there is not much vocabulary to learn from these songs, they are an important piece of Unangan culture. They can also help language learners to get a feel for the sounds of Unangam Tunuu.
Ayax̂a or ayaqaa is a holophrastic expression. It is not exactly a word with a specific meaning, but it expresses an idea somewhat like ‘wow!’. dliiluuliiluu is a vocable, similar to the English ‘la la la’. Other lyrics include: Ayaqaa, ayaqaa luumatux̂ tiimatukux̂ ilaa tix̂sii waĝanikuu ayaqaa tayaĝux̂ ax̂takux̂ ayaqaa ayaxaan…
These songs all fit nicely with a Western scale and harmonies, but the ever-changing meter makes me wonder if time signatures are necessary or appropriate here.
Most of the words in “Tumula Tula” are non-lexical vocables, or nonsense words. It seems that alumix̂ could be talking about legs (alimax̂).
This song stays nicely in 4/4 time, and I can imagine people joyfully dancing to it. On one of the recordings of “Tumula Tula,” someone (Phil Tutiakoff?) harmonizes quite beautifully with Willie Tcheripanoff.
This song is entirely made up of non-lexical vocables. Once again, I question the use of time signatures in the transcription, as the singer seems to add in extra beats in measures 5, 9, and 13.
Upon recommendation from a native speaker, I spelled out ‘hay hay hay hay,’ but I realize the pronunciation can be confusing. These syllables are pronounced like the English word, ‘hey’ (/he/), not to be confused with the pronunciation of hayula (/hajula/), where hay rhymes with the English, ‘eye.’
Interestingly, the vocable ‘hay’ in this song includes a vowel that is not part of the phonemic inventory of Unangam Tunuu (Aleut). It is possible that this a borrowing of the English, ‘hey,’ however it is also possible that Aleut songs may include one or more vocable sounds that do not exist in the spoken language. This could be because of historical change in the language, contact with other languages, or other reasons. Siri Tuttle, at University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Alaska Native Language Center, is currently studying a similar phenomenon in other Alaska Native languages.
Musically, I am intrigued by the C-sharps at the end of the repeated phrases and the piece. They sometimes land somewhere between a C-sharp and a D. This seems to be intentional on the part of the singer, as he does it in both recordings, and it is decidedly non-Western-sounding.
