eatdogs
Well-Known Member
Eyabay from Minnesota. Probably my favorite "Northern" drum group. I'm from Oklahoma and our songs have more lows than high vocals like these fellas, but in the powwow world everyone loves both. (oh, and the reason the video cuts off at the end is because the fancy dancer by the drum blows an eagle whistle, which you can hear slightly. Whoever was filming did the right thing and cut it off because it's a sacred practice. Whenever a whistle gets blown at a drum group they are immediately supposed to start singing. In this case they had to keep playing past the normal 4 looping turns in the song, so in the end they probably played another 10 minutes or so lol)
I used to sing back in college. We kept changing our drum group name over and over. I liked the first name we had which was Rusty Buffalo, which our drum teacher called us. Our second name was Stolen Drum and then we ended our drum group name with IAIA Confederacy. I didn't really like that last one lol.
After college that spring in 2009 we all graduated and went back to our homes in different states. We all attended The Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. Just a bunch of Native kids, many off the rez for the first time, getting together and singing songs.
Here's the only video of us all singing. We were Stolen Drum then so this was our second year and we were doing a lot better but still sounded kinda rough lolz. You can't really see me good but I'm on the far right wearing a beenie hat. I only recognized myself because of the black and white stripes I taped to my drum stick which everyone in the group made for themselves. We even made our own hand drums too.
By the end of our last year at college we were so awesome that we would often get asked to play at more powwows across the state. Wish we could have stayed together and traveled to different powwows in the summer time.
Oh man... We're more open now here in Oklahoma and the powwows are starting up every weekend here. I miss them and need to get out there soon.
