  We study BPS states in a marginal deformation of super Yang-Mills on R x S^3
using a quantum mechanical system of q-commuting matrices. We focus mainly on
the case where the parameter q is a root of unity, so that the AdS dual of the
field theory can be associated to an orbifold of AdS_5x S^5. We show that in
the large N limit, BPS states are described by density distributions of
eigenvalues and we assign to these distributions a geometrical spacetime
interpretation. We go beyond BPS configurations by turning on perturbative
non-q-commuting excitations. Considering states in an appropriate BMN limit, we
use a saddle point approximation to compute the BMN energy to all perturbative
orders in the 't Hooft coupling. We also examine some BMN like states that
correspond to twisted sector string states in the orbifold and we show that our
geometrical interpretation of the system is consistent with the quantum numbers
of the corresponding states under the quantum symmetry of the orbifold.
