Click image for slideshow

By Pete Chiodo

Meadville Tribune

CARLTON — The beads, bells and other trinkets adorning Darren Krug’s feather-strewn American Indian regalia had a funny way of putting a clinking, clattering period at the end of each of his sentences.

“There’s a wide variety of outfits” — slink.

“The one I have on now is a traditional outfit” — ka-jingle.

“The one I have for tonight is the fancy outfit, and it’s for a whole different type of dance” — plinkle-tink.

Krug, a 43-year-old Indian hobbyist from Franklin, is serving as the head male dancer at this year’s De-Un-Da-Ga Pow Wow, which continues today and Monday at the Custaloga Town Scout Reservation.

The pow wow, in its 35th year, features American Indian music; dancers in elaborate, colorful costumes; food stands and Indian crafts.

There were about 150-or-so participants at Saturday’s afternoon dance session. However, Krug said the reservation’s circular dance arena gets pretty packed when the sun starts to go down.

“It’s so hot (during the afternoon), you can’t get the guys out there,” he said. “And I’m not exaggerating, I know (on Saturday night) we’ll have 400 people dancing. I’m talking the little kids, the girls. There will be 400 people out there dancing at one time” — ta-jinkle.

The dancers are propelled by a couple drum-and-vocal ensembles performing traditional Indian music; a stirring mix of driving, thumping rhythms and wavering, high-pitched vocals.

“It’s very unusual compared to western music,” said 24-year-old Erie resident Dave Maniscalco, one of the ensemble’s performers. “The song is actually off-beat. The drumming is one beat and the singing is on another. It’s very difficult for people to pick up sometimes. And it’s very unusual if you’ve never heard it before.”

Maniscalco was among a group of five men who would use mallets to pound out rhythms on a large communal drum while belting out their oddly-metered, descending vocals in unison.