?The Black Lodge Singers, one of the most respected northern style drum groups on the pow-wow circuit, have over twenty albums to their credit on the Canyon Records label. The Black Lodge Singers are: Kenny, Erwin, Algin, Matthew, Emerson, Solomon, Joe, Treleigh, Louise Scabby Robe and David Spotted Eagle, all of the Blackfoot Nation. Also on this CD are Berta Scabby Robe (Lummi) Amber Davenport (Meskwaki), Gerald Waterhen (Cree) and James Stephenson (Lumbee).?

?In 1994, they were GRAMMY AWARD Finalists in the Best Traditional Folk Album category for their collaboration with R. Carlos Nakai and William Eaton on the album, Ancestral Voices. Their collection of kid songs is the first of it's kind. Never ones to shy from new challenges, they performed with the Phoenix Symphony in the world debut of the classical composition, "Native Drumming? by Composer James DeMars, who has written several classical compositions for R. Carlos Nakai . . . When not on the pow-wow trail, the Scabby Robe family resides in Warm Springs, Washington on the Yakima Reservation.

It could be said and probably has that the Native family that pow wows together stays together. Put that with singing at the drum together and you?ve got a double whammy in both extended and nuclear family structure.

The resume of the Black Lodge Singers is as long as your arm and leg put together and their experience shows in the tightness with which they sing and drum. This drum circle is very tight both in a technical sense and a spiritual sense.

The first track Dancing People is a tribute to the scene at a pow wow. The third track Poetry reflects the notion of the pow wow and people dancing as poetic and a language that speaks to people in simple terms that can be understood by everyone whereas, the fourth track Good Times is just plain old good singing in celebration. Eagle Tails is a song inspired by the drum group of the same name who adopted the Scabby Robe family into their own.

Spo'Mo'Kin'Nan the sixth track and the title of the CD translates to ?Help Us.? I hear the eagle bone whistle in the back ground so this is a gift the drum song. As is the practice of a whistled song, it is long and involves the lead singing of several different voices.

The Hop the ninth track on the CD is a song that refers to the Crow Hop songs sometimes sung at pow wows and ceremonies but is also a tongue in cheek reference to the 50's classic rock notion of a get together where people would socialize and dance. Something of a different format here. It makes me feel like I want to hop around.

Red Stars was composed by Shane Red Star of the Young Spirit drum group who gave this song to Algin Scabby Robe as a gift. The members of Young Spirit drum group adopted Algin into their family for kind words that he shared with them.

The War Bonnet sung in vocables is a tribute to the bonnet of feathers worn by a chief of great skill and courage in a conflict with an enemy and Shakin? is a very energetic song and makes me want to get up and dance.

Weaseltail's Dance is a song done in honor of the chief who was photographed by Edward S. Curtis and in that sense becomes even more powerful and passionate since it represents an actual tribal figure and leader. The song features some acapella singing without the drum and is very powerful indeed when the drum comes back and now they're swinging it. You need to hear the energy in order to feel it.

For nearly sixty years canyon records has been recording the finest drum circles the North American continent has to offer and they are leaving us with a legacy in our own culture that can not be met by anyone else except maybe the Smithsonian Institute Museum of Natural History and Frances Densmore. I must give my tobacco to them more than anyone else for being able to look out my window on the brilliant darkness neon dusted profanity of the cool and rain soaked Minneapolis skyline and feel what is gonna have to pass as serenity. Is there really anything else? Sometimes you just want to sit still for a minute, not to think but to feel.

Jamison Mahto/Reporter
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