The Drumdancer Competition

THE DRUMDANCER COMPETITION.

Drums have always been one of my favourite things. Most people seem to feel the same way. Nothing is better than bagpipes and drums, except perhaps drums by themselves, although the bagpipes add such an eeriness that you feel your kundalini energy rising in your backbone when you listen to them.

So, when I heard there was a drumdancer competition coming to Rankin I was totally excited. And then I heard it would be after I left. Yes, "I heard" is the correct way to describe this event. Nobody seemed to know about it until a few days before it was announced, other than that there was to be one. One of the reasons, for sure, that people did not know about it, is that many of my friends do not speak Inuktituk, and so do not listen to local radio, which they could not understand, but which makes all the announcements for the community. (Local radio is great.)

You can phone in with an announcement at any time. They will put it on, and replies, may come in. Some divers wanted meat...it was put on the air, and they received muskox, caribou, whale. I wanted a bear carving, so another midwife put out the announcement that if you had a really nice bear carving to come to the Wellness centre the next day at 11. My carving arrived. It works very well. You can also hear announcements like...Lila Tatty, phone home. Local radio is a great communication tool.

One of the Midwives mentioned at work one day that the Drumdancer competition started that evening. Okay, what time...don't know, where...community centre, and they would listen to the announcements and let me know.

That afternoon we learned it started at 6:00. When would it end....when it did!! Obvious. So that night I went over to the community centre at 7:30 and it was in full swing. At first it was interesting to watch everything that was going on.

The drumdancers and singers themselves sat at the end of the centre and in chairs in the middle of the centre. Observers sat around the edges and some on the floor, mostly children. There were many elders that I had not seen previously, and everybody also brought their children. So, lots of activity was happening.

The first night I was mesmerized by the singers and the drumming itself. There were about 6-10 singers that rotated in and out. They sang different chants, which I later learned were the stories that the drummers were acting out. The singers ranged in age from teenagers to elders.

There were also a few women. The Midwives said that it was actually traditional for some women, but not many to be storytellers.

The drumdancers, I later learned, did not actually hit the fabric part of their drums, but rather the frame. The frames were moved back and forth so they could hit first one side and then the other.

After the competition was over one of the Midwives was travelling, and taking a drum to a friend. She told me that she had helped make it and it took at least four people. You had to take the wood and bend it, by hand, to form a ring, and then cover it with fabric. They were all fabric, although older pictures show them as fur. Drumdancing is quite strenuous, and a fur drum would be heavy and harder to use.

At the end of the evening I left with many questions. Most of the answers came from our receptionists and Midwives the next day. One of the most important questions was about shamanism in the North. Drumdancers, though, are not shamans, but story tellers. There have always been a few female drumdancers. They dance to various legends, and talk about hunts, but different areas have different costumes, different looking drums, and different types of legends.

One of the dances was done by an elder man and woman team. The woman was dancing and the man singing and drumming. After a time they switched places.

The competition went on for four nights. The third night it was followed by a square dance. Wanting to see this for myself, as there were many reports about them, I went to the community centre at 21:30. It was supposed to start at 21:00. Many adults were there, from teens to elders to dance, but the dance had not started. The drumdancers were putting on an impromptu performance, as there were so many people there, and no dancing yet. The square dances do not have callers. Many people say they are more like jigs, in that everyone knows the moves and goes out and dances. Apparently they are strenuous and everyone is in a sweat within five minutes of the start, and each dance goes on for at least twenty minutes. One of the nurses told me she had been asked to dance, and had literally been manoeuvred around the floor by all the dancers in her square. She said it was very hectic, and much fun.

The Friday night there was a community feast. I had been to two previously and knew that was not a place for a vegetarian (me), so had not gone. Feasts had changed somewhat in my nine months in the north. They now usually had servers. This one did not, and was much more traditional than most. The floor was laid out with large pieces of cardboard and the meat was placed on it for everyone to eat. The meat was raw or frozen, as is traditional, and you cut off what you want with your ulu, and usually eat it with your hands. I later wished that I had been there, since this does not happen all the time, but was similar to the Elder's picnic that was held just after my arrival in this community.

The feast was to be the end of the celebration, however, it turned out that there was lots of drumdancing after the feast.

The last night seemed to be the best of the best. It included a demonstation of dancers from Cambridge Bay. This area in the western Arctic has quite different story telling than the east. They had three teens doing the demonstration, two girls and a guy. They took turns dancing, singing and drumming.

This last evening a dance done by a father and son team, with the son, about 6-8 years old was repeated. The young boy danced with his eyes closed, making appropriate yells and screechs in all the right places. They were quite amazing.

I felt very privileged to have been able to attend this event.