SLIDESHOW: De-Un-Da-Ga Pow Wow

Meadville Tribune

May 24, 2009 12:01 am

— 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.
“Not all the songs have words,” Maniscalco said. “Some of them are just ‘vocalables,’ like a Gregorian chant kind of deal. They just have guttural kind of noises. And others have words. Like we, specifically, we sing Lakota. It’s a branch of the Sioux people of South Dakota.
“Generally, the songs tend to be specific to the situation that people call for. If it’s an honoring song, if it’s an honoring song for women, they’ll recount, ‘Women, you need to be brave, your people are counting on you.’ It’s kind of an encouragement that way.”
Introducing each dance, like a pair of primitive disc jockeys, are 69-year-old Thom Meyers and 72-year-old Frank Andrews.
“(We) tell stories, historical stuff, jokes,” said Andrews. “Keep it moving, that’s our job,”
Meyers is from Billings, Mont., and Andrews is from Albuquerque, N.M. The pair emcee at pow wows all over the United States.
“California, South Dakota, New York, Ohio, Florida, Indiana,” Andrews said.
Meyers said he’s been attending pow wows since he was 6; Andrews, since he was 11. Like many of the people who attended the dance, they were introduced to it young and kept coming back.
“I was 13 when I started doing this,” said Krug, clinking all the while. “I’m 43 now, so I’ve been doing this for 30 years. And you see kids from five years old, and you’ll see people 70 years old out there dancing.
“Basically, what we’re doing is honoring the Native American culture.”
This year’s pow wow also aimed to honor one of its long-time associates, Lester (Les) Bean of Titusville, a Boy Scouts leader and camp ranger at Custaloga Town who passed away in 2008. Members of the Bean family were honored during a special dance ceremony on Saturday night. And the Bean family hosted a feast for everyone at the camp earlier in the day.
“He was a very good friend,” said Krug.
And friends, according to Meyers, is the true spirit of the De-Un-Da-Ga Pow Wow.
“The pow wow is all about old friendships, acquaintances, meeting new people,” he said. “As you get older, you understand that friendship means more than anything.”

Pete Chiodo can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at pchiodo@meadvilletribune.com.

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