Pow Wow Drumming Video

Another outstanding New Mexico experience!

It rained, it thundered, it hailed, there was one rainbow after another, and then the Grand Entry parade began. Toward the end, I got as close as I could to this drum group (sorry, I don’t know their name) and captured a little of what it’s like to be there at a pow wow.

At the end of the grand entry, my wife choked up. “It’s so awesome and overwhelming,” she said when she could get the words out. That’s how it is when you’re from god-help-us America and this hits you all at once: the beauty, the dignity, the power of a culture rooted in the universal. A pow wow isn’t a religious event, but you feel the spirit, anyway.

(I also had a Navajo taco that dwarfed my paper plate and scored a killer silk-screened shirt, which kind of frames the whole thing rather well.)

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John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on About page. For a complete list of all John’s writing, photography, NFTs, and social media links, please visit JHFARR.ART  

  • Patsy July 12, 2009, 9:28 AM

    Good morning John,

    Your words” the power of a culture rooted in the universal ” speaks to me of Hope . That is what I need to focus on and not all the hocus pocus going on in our country. When I close my eyes and open my ears and let the sounds wash over me that is when I am free and feel I am one with the universe.
    Thanks for sharing the color and sounds of the Pow Wow with me.
    You are a great teacher ..
    Patsy

  • JHF July 12, 2009, 9:58 AM

    You have expressed it perfectly!

    Real stuff you can feel in your BONES, not hocus-pocus. And thank you for your exceedingly kind words: I’m just sittin here doing my thing, as it were…

  • carolfrombatonrouge July 12, 2009, 6:52 PM

    Tell Kathryne…”Go Girl”….I know the feeling, there’s nothing like it….can’t wait to get it again next month in Spokane. Jon, the pic with the rain and rainbow is certainly a spiritual gift given to you, you were paying attention….AWESOME !! Thanks for sharing it with us.

  • Steve Ingham July 20, 2009, 8:17 AM

    the drumming speaks directly to my primal spirit!! I LOVE Pow Wow Drumming and the vocable singing…..(especially “Northern Style” Pow-Wow music!) Glad you got to go – and thanks for sharing with the rest of us!! And of course, once more….Wish I was THERE!

    Steve

  • JHF July 20, 2009, 11:49 PM

    It’s primal, all right… And you seem to know something about this. More than I do, I suspect!

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