This weekend, I volunteered at the UW First Nations’ annual Spring powwow. I took a class on powwows last quarter, part of which involved planning and marketing the annual Spring powwow. I also attended the Winter powwow, but it was nice going to the Spring one after learning about the different styles of dances and regalia. For the first four hours of my volunteer shift, they had me manning the donations booth (translate: really boring work). When someone finally came to relieve me from that post, they put me on microphone duty. I nervously made my way out to the floor and got a 5 second instructional speech by the girl who had been doing it before me. Let me tell you, holding the microphone is harder than it looks!! They’re about seven feet long with five pounds on microphones on one end. Not only was it quite physically demanding, but it was also stressful. The emcee would announce the next group that would be playing and all the older men laughed at us as we walked around blindly looking for the group that seemed to be getting ready to play. When a kind samaritan finally pointed us in the right direction, we literally ran over to them and held our mics out just as they started playing. As we recorded, we had to carefully watch their down beats, so as not to knock into their sticks with our mics. I kept having visions of my microphone bumping into one of the drummers, setting off the beat of the entire group as all the dancers screech to a halt. Phew.
On the other hand, it was really cool being so close to the music and dancing! Those drums are LOUD and most of the groups were really good. I should have posted the flyer for the powwow on here before the weekend. It’s an awesome event, and it’s totally FREE! Keep it in mind for next year’s plans.
1 Comment
April 13, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Oh man! I’m sad I missed it (the performance and your microphone skills). Good thing you have such giant guns to hold up heavy things like that.