It's now 3:20 p.m., and we've got some time off before dinner and our evening performance at the Inupiac Heritage Center here in Barrow, so let me backtrack to the rest of my time in Alaska.
I flew in from Honolulu on Tuesday, arriving at midnight in Anchorage after a twelve hour journey via San Francisco and Seattle. It was nearly 2:00 a.m. before I was settled in at the Hotel Captain Cook. I slept late on Wednesday and then got in some rehearsal before being picked up by Mike Campbell, an Anchorage singer-songwriter who had come through Mystic Seaport in September. We grabbefd a bite of Mexican (Mike grew up in New Mexico) and then headed for the Organic Oasis restaurant where I was to sing from 7:00 - 10:00. The O O is a lovely and comfortably appointed place that serves a fine vegetarian cuisine, along with some fine organic beers and wines. A small but enthusiastic crowd showed up, mostly Mike's friends, many of them very involved with the folk scene in Anchorage. All in all, a good start for developing an audience, and great people!
Next day, Thursday, the ECHO gang gathered at 8:00 a.m. for breakfast and a full day of school performances followed by an evening rhearsal with three singers from the Anchorage Opera to incorporate them into our piece. Now, I had some doubts as to how well that might work, but I was amazed at the result. Their Director had located a recently composed opera from Wales which tells of a British sailor surviving the ordeal of having his ship frozen into the arctic through the aid of an Inuit woman. The two are found by another ship in the spring, and taken back to England where she is put on display as a curiosity. She escapes her demeaning bondage, only to be caught and put on trial for stealing sheep to feed starving children in the mountains. She is executed, and her sailor love has returned to the artic to die of exposure in order to rejoin her spirit. We were able to integrate this tale into our stories by making the man one of our sailors, telling us his tale, and then walking off onto the ice to die. In fact, the collaboration worked so well it gave me chills. We got to perform the piece with the opera twice, once on Friday night as a benefit for the Opera and the Native Alaskan Heritage Center, and then again on Saturday as part of a day long festival.
I also got to do a solo set at the Saturday festival, and it was quite a feeling to sing for a largely native audience. The most amazing part of the day, however, came at the end when a native dance troupe of Tlingit/Haida (a culture from the southeastern part of the state) invited us to join them in a longhouse that has been built on the Center's grounds. They showed us the proper way to enter the rather small carved entry, by backing in to show that you come in peace, and then proceeded with ceremonial introductions. Each tribal member named their family lineage on both sides, some in their own language. The truly exciting part was to hear a nine year old and twelve year old introduce themselves in their own tongue. We then introduced ourselves, saying where we were from. At that point, they sang an honor song for us, and then asked us to sing for them. Charlie Hugo sang an Inupiac song, Tobias sang a Wampanoag song, and I sang "The Parting Song," with everone joining in. Mark Lovewell sang part of "Rolling Home" and Tom and Kealoha sang the Doxology in Hawaiian. After we had offered our songs, our hosts explained that they wanted to sing for us a healing song which they do not perform in public. I know that the gift of that song is one of the highest honors we could have been given, and it is a memory I wll hold close. Moments like this are what make this experience so remarkable, and I only hope I can do justice to the honor by bringing these stories home and letting my audiences know what a wealth of tradition exists out here.
I tried to make an entry from the airport in Anchorage yesterday, but didn't get it posted before my time ran out. I'll try to get back to that later, but for now, I arrived with the rest of the ECHO crew here at the norther nmost town in Alaska at around 5:30 yesterday. We walked the thirty yards from the airport to the King Eider Inn through a balmy tempurature (for here) of ten degrees above zero. A bit later, we headed out for dinner at the home of Jana H archaeck who had been with us in Hawai'i. En route we could see a number of car ibou skins hanging on porch railings, and the occaisional skin boat, or umiak, t hat is used here for hunting whales. For dinner, Jana served salmon chowder, ca ribou stew and Bowhead whale steaks with onions. All were delicious, though qui te a new culinary experience. After dinner, at 9:00 p.m., still with full dayli ght, we drove around town a bit, and watched the sun go down at 9:58! Then to b ed, and now ready for a full day of activities. I'll try to get back on later today!