LIFE

Cultures exchanged through drum circle

Sarah Dettmer
sdettmer@greatfallstribune.com

On Wednesday afternoon, two cultures came together to the beat of drums on stage at the Civic Center.

Local Native American students lit a small bundle of sage and took turns passing it around the group, using their hands to blanket themselves in tendrils of the pale smoke as a blessing of their drum circle.

The students began to loudly beat the circle drum in front of them, performing a traditional Blackfeet song. Their demonstration was part of a cultural exchange between the Native tribes and their Japanese visitors from the Kenny Endo Contemporary Ensemble.

As the students played the drum and sang their song, younger students dressed in traditional Indian regalia danced around them.

Peter Gil, a freshman at Great Falls High School, was wearing the Grass dancer’s regalia. He mimicked the beat in the style of a blade of grass dancing with the wind.

The Prairie Chicken dancers feigned the mating rituals of their namesake. The rings of bells around their ankles helped to keep time with the drumming.

Samatt Top Sky performs with his children Stephon and Kaylen for the Kenny Endo Contemporary Ensemble during a cultural exchange drum circle at the Civic Center on Wednesday.

Lilly Gil’s dancing competed with the sounds around her. She wore a traditional Jingle dress covered in folded Copenhagen lids that rang out as they clanged together with her movements.

The Jingle dress is also called a Medicine dress.

“There are several versions of the story because it’s an oral history,” Crystal Benton from the Little Shell Wellness Program said. “If someone was sick, a woman would come dance and it would heal them. Another story says a grandfather had a sick granddaughter and he had a dream about the Jingle dress. The more she danced, the better she got.”

When the drumming stopped, Kenny Endo and his band took to their instruments.

Endo brings 40 years of taiko to Great Falls. Taiko is the Japanese word for drum.

Though he was originally trained as a jazz musician, Endo spent 10 years in his native Japan learning his craft and perfecting his taiko skills.

Kaoru Watanabe plays shinobue with the Kenny Endo Contemporary Ensemble for Native American students during a cultural exchange drum circle at the Civic Center on Wednesday.

As he and his band played, the Civic Center rang with traditional Japanese melodies. The Native American students watched as they demonstrated their culture’s style of percussion.

“This isn’t something they get to do every day,” Benton said. “It has been getting better. They’ve been out doing a lot more cultural activities.”

Both groups took turns playing their cultural music for one another. Then, the festivities ended with a friendship circle. The Japanese musicians and Native American students joined hands and danced in a circle to the beat of an oak and buffalo hide drum.

Follow Sarah Dettmer on Twitter @GFTrib_SDettmer

The Kenny Endo Contemporary Ensemble

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 20

WHERE: Mansfield Theater

COST: Concert tickets are $30 for adults and $10 for students and Great Falls Community Concert Association members. They are available at the Mansfield Box Office, by phone at 455-8495 or online at ticketing.greatfallsmt.net.