Oh, The Humidity
After almost two years of living in Santa Fe I have forgotten what fields of green grass, stands of leafy trees and humidity are.
We just got back from several days in Oklahoma, where the rolling hills are verdant and the air is hot and damp. It was actually nice weather for central Oklahoma in mid summer, but to my dry adapted self, it was oppressive. I grew up with this kind of summer humidity, but boy is it foreign to me now.
We spent the weekend with friends at the Sac and Fox Indian reservation in Stroud, right there at the crossroads of old Route 66.
It's an intimate setting. This is no large arena, it's a grassy park where you sit with family in lawn chairs right in front of the dancers and drums and where the dancers, exhausted and sweating after their turn in the circle, come back and wander with their own families among the crowds watching.
After such up-close exposure to the rhythms and sounds I could begin to pick out variations in the pounding drums and high chants. The songs all sound the same at first, but they begin to sort themselves into variations as you listen.
The dancers follow a very specific set of rules for each type of dance, and their regalia is specific to the form. Fancy-dancer men are decked out in incredible roaches and bustles and feathers and bells and scary looking accoutrements; for jingle dancing the women wear dresses covered in clinking jingles, for fancy shawl dances the women twirl their beaded shawls and flit like butterflies. The men do a traditional dance that mimics birds and their regalia is filled with animal furs and feathers and their dance movements are eerily animal-like.
There are many more forms, and like my ear sorting the difference in chant songs, my eye began to recognize the type of dancer just by the regalia worn.
My friend wore a simple camp dress of colorful purple cotton and ribbons. As an elder now (we're all getting so damn old), she wore her dress during honor ceremonies and danced just a bit in the intertribal general processions. Not for any prize money. Not in that humidity.
Her regalia was simple, but she had beaded a beautiful hummingbird necklace to go with it, and it was enchanting. Her beadwork is pretty amazing.
Truly, it's an exquisite art form, and we spent Saturday afternoon with a group of women beading and talking. I did not pick up a needle or a bead, it's way too detailed cross-eyed work for me. But it was a fun afternoon and fascinating to watch.
We also got art immersion during a day we took to go to Oklahoma City to the museum of art. Dale Chihuly has an extensive display of his glasswork there. All of it was stunning.
The museum also had a huge exhibit of Paul Mellon's collection of Impressionist paintings -- amazing Renoirs and Monets and Van Goghs and Picassos that knocked Jim over when he saw them.
So we got a good fix of Western European art and spectacle to go with our weekend of Western Native art and spectacle. That was a juxtaposition!
It was a wonderful time with good friends and an extended circle of people. All easy going, lots of good food and plenty of entertainment at pow wow. I loved it all.
But the humidity. The damp. Ooof, you can have that. Even though the landscape was green and beautiful I couldn't wait to come back to dry brown Santa Fe.
We just got back from several days in Oklahoma, where the rolling hills are verdant and the air is hot and damp. It was actually nice weather for central Oklahoma in mid summer, but to my dry adapted self, it was oppressive. I grew up with this kind of summer humidity, but boy is it foreign to me now.
We spent the weekend with friends at the Sac and Fox Indian reservation in Stroud, right there at the crossroads of old Route 66.
We spent evenings at the pow wow grounds with our friends and their family, eating traditional foods cooked at their campsite, chatting and stuffing ourselves with truckloads of caramel corn. Pow wow is about family gatherings, re-connecting, endless basketball games, kids chasing each other in the grass, old relatives reminiscing -- but of course the dancing at night is the spectacle and entertainment. The dances in full tribal regalia are incredible to watch, and dancers come from all around to compete for significant prize money.
After such up-close exposure to the rhythms and sounds I could begin to pick out variations in the pounding drums and high chants. The songs all sound the same at first, but they begin to sort themselves into variations as you listen.
The dancers follow a very specific set of rules for each type of dance, and their regalia is specific to the form. Fancy-dancer men are decked out in incredible roaches and bustles and feathers and bells and scary looking accoutrements; for jingle dancing the women wear dresses covered in clinking jingles, for fancy shawl dances the women twirl their beaded shawls and flit like butterflies. The men do a traditional dance that mimics birds and their regalia is filled with animal furs and feathers and their dance movements are eerily animal-like.
There are many more forms, and like my ear sorting the difference in chant songs, my eye began to recognize the type of dancer just by the regalia worn.
My friend wore a simple camp dress of colorful purple cotton and ribbons. As an elder now (we're all getting so damn old), she wore her dress during honor ceremonies and danced just a bit in the intertribal general processions. Not for any prize money. Not in that humidity.
Her regalia was simple, but she had beaded a beautiful hummingbird necklace to go with it, and it was enchanting. Her beadwork is pretty amazing.
Truly, it's an exquisite art form, and we spent Saturday afternoon with a group of women beading and talking. I did not pick up a needle or a bead, it's way too detailed cross-eyed work for me. But it was a fun afternoon and fascinating to watch.
We also got art immersion during a day we took to go to Oklahoma City to the museum of art. Dale Chihuly has an extensive display of his glasswork there. All of it was stunning.
The museum also had a huge exhibit of Paul Mellon's collection of Impressionist paintings -- amazing Renoirs and Monets and Van Goghs and Picassos that knocked Jim over when he saw them.
So we got a good fix of Western European art and spectacle to go with our weekend of Western Native art and spectacle. That was a juxtaposition!
It was a wonderful time with good friends and an extended circle of people. All easy going, lots of good food and plenty of entertainment at pow wow. I loved it all.
But the humidity. The damp. Ooof, you can have that. Even though the landscape was green and beautiful I couldn't wait to come back to dry brown Santa Fe.
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