I always have to start with the weather. We're in the transition from winter to spring here in the Upper Midwest, and that signals many things: the return of flocks of geese and other birds, melting snow, interviewing for permanent positions, and more importantly for this project, pow-wow events to attend. I'm quite excited about going to a few more, as I've had such a good experience at the two that I've attended. There is usually one held at Southwest Minnesota State, where I work, in April (haven't yet seen any advertisement of it).
I will seek out opportunities for native drumming/singing events in this part of the country; I haven't made any contacts through my colleague at SMSU, which I said I would do by now. I think that my focus on interviewing in the last month has taken up my energy and time, but I want to get back to this project. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it to the African Drumming session at MSU-Mankato.
I did finish reading Mickey Hart's excellent coffee-table book Planet Drum on the origins and facets of the world cultures' use of the drum. What a great read (and lots of great pictures, too). Rhythm and noise, two complementay forces, are at work with the drum.
I did order a DVD of a very popular drum group on the pow-wow circuit--The Red Leaf Takoja Singers. It's sort of a window into pow-wow music and drum groups. Other than that, I'm going to try to get more experiential as the snow continues to melt out here in Southwestern Minnesota....
No comments:
Post a Comment