Thanksgiving weekend part 2

I finished the last blog with the end off the Cultural programme which was amazing see the extra curricular dance and music they do.

The evening followed on with a Dinner Garden Party. I had to do a dash back to the compound with 2 or 3 of the girls coming with me as I needed to change into a sari to be dressed the same as the rest of the ladies who leading the entertainment. We started the evening off by singing 3 songs, of which I played two on the keyboard with them and just sang the Hindi song. We did Dancing Queen and Dance to my ten guitars and then there was general music while the Rector of St Peters School, Daniel Thomas, tried to get everyone dancing. But most people were nibbling on little bits and drinking coffee.

I have no pictures of this as I seemed to be busy all the time. All the guests were given gifts before we ate dinner. A good evening - I will try to get hold of some pictures as I know many were taken by others.

Saturday morning after 8.00 a.m. violin lesson and and worship was the Tribal Awards at St Michaels school. many more people had arrived overnight by bus and they started practicing their drumming by 6.00 a.m.!!!!

Two awards are given each year, Revd P.O.Boading Memorial award in the filed of literature and the Revd J.P.Hastings memorial award in the field of Social development.

Here is the chief guest and the Guest of Honour and the Bishop at the start of the preceedings.

This is the man who won the literature award, who has written poetry and books in the santali language. The  Rev Boading was Scandinavian and he spent time with the tribes learning the language and was the first person to write down the language which is why it is done in his name.

The Rev J P Hastings Award for social development was awarded to a minister who does tremendous work in the tribal villages and was award by Karen, the daughter of JP Hastings. He was a minister who worked in India for over 10 years and then later in Bangladesh improving conditions for the people. We then had some very colourful dancing groups with their music entertain us till lunchtime.

Can you dance for over ten minutes with a vase balanced on your head? These women did.

These are some more of the dances, some all men, other all women.

This is just a few of the dances - each lasting anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes. This last one had drums and you can see a couple of dancers have whistles in their mouths and they seemed to be the commands to change movement. But all the dances were telling stories and would be very difficult to shorten and I would imagine they go on for much longer in their own environment. How the singers remembered all the words I have no idea but they did. Here are a couple of picutres of some of the musicians and singers that accompanied the dancers.

 A brilliant feast of music and dance and it was great to see the variety of instruments one group had. Many only had two or three types of drum and a gong - which was loud. They didn't really need micing!! Many of the dances had the same basic drum beat underneath, whichever tribe it came from so probably all from the same route originally.