Drum dance

Dances centered around drums are performed in many cultures. Anthropologists sometimes refer to these as "drum dances". Drum dances may have various kinds of spiritual or social significance.

Kalahari Desert[edit]

Anthropologist Richard Katz reports on a drum dance that the !Kung people in the Kalahari Desert perform. In !Kung, the dance is called !Gwah tsi.^[1] The dance takes a few hours. Women dancers form a horseshoe shape around a male drummer. The dancers may experience a spiritual sensation called kia while they dance.^[2]

North America[edit]

Dene and Slavey[edit]

When Dene drum dances are performed, the performers aim to get their audience to dance. If everyone in the audience gets up, the style of music changes. At some point in the cycle, the drummers stop drumming and the audience and performers sing and dance together.^[3]

Slavey perform a drum dance led by a group of frame drum players. The Slavey drum dance has components including the tea dance and round dance.^[4]

Haudenosaunee[edit]

As of 1985, a drum dance was performed on the Six Nations of the Grand River. It was led by a drum player, who also sang, assisted by a horn rattle performer.^[5] Anthropologist Gertrude Prokosch Kurath watched drum dances at the Six Nations reserve and reported that the dance had four major parts: (1) an introduction, (2) the procession of dancers into the longhouse followed by singing, (3) a set of chants and prayers, and (4) a recapitulation of part 2, the singing phase.^[6]

Innu[edit]

Innu drum dances or circle dances are called innuniminanu. Innuniminanu are performed with only one drummer.^[7]

Inuit[edit]

Drum dance in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, Canada, 2019

The drum dance [fr] and throat singing are two traditional forms of Inuit music.^[7] Inuit drum dance songs, or pisiq,^[7] are typically based on a five-note scale.^[8] They usually have a strophic form.^[9] The drum played during the Inuit drum dance is called a qilaut.^[7] Copper Inuit use the drum dance "to honour members of the family, to express gratitude, and to welcome and bid farewell to visitors".^[10] Jean-Jacques Nattiez describes a drum dance in Igloolik as an "endurance competition" in which performers are tested on their recall of songs and ability to keep performing as long as possible.^[11]

Ojibwe[edit]

The drum used for Ojibwe drum dances, sometimes called the "dream drum", has been considered sacred.^[12] It may be treated as a living thing.^[13]

A story says that the dance drum was brought by a Sioux woman called Tailfeather Woman or Turkey Tailfeather Woman to the Ojibwe.^[14] According to the ethnomusicologist Thomas Vennum, this story is accurate and the events it describes likely occurred in the 1870s.^[12] Elaine Keillor says the date was 1877.^[15]

Several anthropologists agree that the Ojibwe drum dance, rooted in this origin story, derives from the grass dance.^[16] Vennum uses the word "society" to describe the groups that perform the grass and drum dances.^[17] Drum dance societies are composed of a drum owner, singers, and others.^[18]

Tłı̨chǫ[edit]

Tłı̨chǫ drum dances, called Eye t'a dagowo, happen at nighttime. Dancers move clockwise, single file, in a circle.^[19]

Yup'ik and Iñupiat[edit]

Yup'ik and Iñupiat drum dances are composed of repeated musical phrases. The drum played in these dances is called a suayaq or kilaun.^[7] Nicole Beaudry, describing a Yup'ik drum dance she saw in Alaska in the late 1980s, says that there were four or five drummers who sat together on a bench, singing, surrounded by dancers. Sometimes, a drummer who wanted to dance would be replaced by one of the surrounding dancers.^[20]

Papua New Guinea[edit]

Anthropologist Nancy Munn describes a drum dance done on Gawa Island, one of the Marshall Bennett Islands. The dance is generally held nightly at some point in the year. It is a way for young people to meet potential sexual partners. The dance occurs around a tree called the dabedeba tree; drummers and singers stand there when the dance is going on.^[21]

Notes[edit]

^ Lee, Richard B. (1984). The Dobe !Kung. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. pp. 113–114. ISBN 0-03-063803-8. OCLC 9830439.
^ Katz, Richard (1982). Boiling Energy: Community Healing among the Kalahari Kung. Harvard University Press. p. 161. ISBN 0-674-07735-0. OCLC 7922887.
^ Elliott & Smith 2010, p. 138.
^ McGee 1985, p. 151.
^ McGee 1985, p. 148.
^ Kurath 1968, pp. 78–79.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e van den Scott, Jeffrey (29 April 2019). "Arctic and Subarctic America". In Sturman, Janet (ed.). The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture. SAGE Publishing. pp. 176–182. doi:10.4135/9781483317731. ISBN 978-1-4833-1775-5. S2CID 194264533.
^ McGee 1985, p. 160.
^ McGee 1985, p. 158.
^ Keillor 2006, p. 41.
^ Nattiez, Jean-Jacques (1988). "La danse à tambour chez les Inuit igloolik". Recherches amérindiennes au Québec. 26 (4): 40. ISSN 0318-4137. La danse à tambour traditionelle est une épreuve d'endurance dont le fort caractère compétitif peut prendre diverses formes. Chaque chant et chaque exécution font l'objet d'une évaluation, le plus souvent par les hommes présents les plus âgés. Les critères essentiels de qualité semblent être le nombre de chants connus, la longueur du chant et la capacité du compositeur-danseur à 'tenir le coup' le plus longtemps possible.
^ ^a ^b Vennum 2009, p. 45.
^ Vennum 2009, p. 61.
^ Vennum 2009, pp. 45, 64.
^ Keillor 2006, p. 32.
^ Vennum 2009, p. 51.
^ Vennum 2009, p. 76.
^ Vennum 2009, p. 77.
^ Keillor 2006, p. 23.
^ Beaudry, Nicole (1988). "La danse à tambour yupik : une analyse de sa performance". Recherches amérindiennes au Québec. 28 (4): 26. ISSN 0318-4137. Alignés sur un banc, quatre ou cinq hommes chantent tout en battant du tambour ; les autres hommes du village, regroupés autour des tambourineurs chantent, et, à l'occasion, vont remplacer un tambourineur qui veut danser.
^ Munn, Nancy D. (1992). The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society. Duke University Press. pp. 184–185. OCLC 1149046406.

Sources[edit]

Elliott, Robin; Smith, Gordon E. (19 April 2010). Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. ISBN 978-1-55458-199-3.
Keillor, Elaine (2006). Music in Canada: Capturing Landscape and Diversity. McGill–Queen's University Press. ISBN 0-7735-3177-7. OCLC 65206128.
Kurath, Gertrude Prokosch (1968). Dance and Song Rituals of Six Nations Reserve, Ontario. Ottawa: Queen's Printer. OCLC 1148819048. National Museum of Canada Bulletin No. 220, Folklore Series No. 4.
McGee, Timothy J. (1985). The Music of Canada. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-02279-X. OCLC 11519747.
Vennum, Thomas (2009) [1982]. The Ojibwa Dance Drum: Its History and Construction. Minnesota Historical Society Press. ISBN 978-0-87351-642-6. OCLC 263605528.