Calafia’s Moods

Mild-eyed days, long like careless arms
bangled loose with gold
The bellied sun, a bursting moneybag –
hot coins in our hands
Each sandy hour panned by rushing men
for luck that melts away

Then the land rocks awake
like a boat slapped around
cradled by the sea

Ceiling beams sacked like shattered webs –
a shiver at every sound
But wakeful days quickly pass away
like fevered flies in silk
Our mother’s reign is a purse of love
ripped and stitched again

What is Calafia Music? Who is Calafia?

Calafia is the legendary queen of California.

She first made her appearance in Garci Ordoñez de Montalvo’s Las Sergas de Esplandian, a Spanish romance that was extremely popular in the early 16th century. If you’re familiar with Don Quixote, you might remember that Las Sergas de Esplandian is among the books that the barber and curate toss into their bonfire of knightly tales.

In the book, Calafia rules over a mythical Amazon island that’s called California. This is in fact where the Golden State got its name. The first person to propose this was Edward Everett Hale (famed Bostonian and grandnephew of Nathan Hale), which he did in 1872 at a meeting of the American Antiquarian Society.

Hale argued that when Cortez christened California, he had in mind the imaginary Amazon isle. After all, as far as Cortez was concerned, both places (real and imaginary) were located, in the words of the romance, “on the right hand of the Indies.”

So why Calafia Music? Rather fatheaded of me, you might think, to adopt such a grandiose figure of romance and history as an emblem for my tunes. “I am a queen of a great kingdom,” declares Queen Calafia in Las Sergas de Esplandian, “in which there is the greatest abundance of all that is most valued in the world...” While I’m just a solo acoustic guitar player who grew up in the Californian suburbs.

The explanation is simple: The figure of Calafia happened to be the mainspring for the first real song I ever wrote. “Calafia’s Moods” is the name of the song. I’ve performed it with 2 bands, it appears on my first CD as a solo recording, and there’s a fuller version of it on my latest recording of the same name. I’ve gone on to write other songs inspired by Californian places and themes, and find that California continues to be a rich source of material.

For images of Queen Calafia, you may want to check out the website of Bay Area artist TheArthur Wright. Here’s a link to two of his images of Calafia (Wright spells her name Califia, which is common). You’ll notice that these images affirm the queen’s description in Las Sergas de Esplandian: she’s “very large in person,” “of blooming years,” “strong of limb,” a warrior and black. In his essay on Calafia (“California’s Dark Mother,” Tea Party, Issue 14), Wright says that she symbolizes “the constant, consistent presence of dark-skinned peoples in California’s history, as crucial to its origins as to its success today as the sixth largest economic engine in the world today.”

You can also see Queen Calafia in person at the Coronado High School library in San Diego. That’s where the sculptor Donal Hord, in seven architectural panels, depicted “The Legend of California.” The central relief panel is devoted to Calafia. Here’s a link to the web image.