At a Medicine Singers show, barriers are loose suggestions, meant to be crossed: barriers between music styles, and cultures, and time. The group’s sound combines powwow drumming with psychedelic rock guitar, Eastern Algonquin vocals with electronic soundscapes, tradition with experimentation. They’re a genre unto themselves.
During their performance at Troy’s live music venue No Fun this past Friday, the musicians removed the typical barriers between artist and audience, too.
At most concerts, spectators watch from below as the musicians play above them, separated by the impermeable line of the stage. Not here. A Medicine Singers show is an experience to be shared by all. The band plays in a circle, “like a powwow,” Medicine Singer Daryl “Black Eagle” Jamieson of the Pocasset Pokanoket Tribe explained. “We give each other energy.”
The musicians set up their equipment — rugs, guitars, amplifiers, and so very many drums — in the middle of the checkerboard dance floor. Band members weaved through the growing congregation to place amplifiers and lights. More than once, a distortion pedal or an instrument cable spilled into the crowd, and the nearest audience member, hunched down to help put it safely where it belonged.
The fans slowly gathered around on all sides. The stage was populated entirely by the audience, clustered together sitting crisscross applesauce, waiting patiently for the music to begin. Among them was the opening act, local duo Sun Dogs, who’d warmed up the crowd with their avant-garde combination of ambient synth and freeform jazz.
Then, bathed in red stage lights like the fire in a central hearth, Medicine Singers began to play.
The powwow drum formed the steady heartbeat of the performance, thumping powerfully from beginning to end, played by a semicircle of three men. The rest of the band soon joined in — frenetic crashing on a modern drum kit, electric guitar played at times with a mallet or the bow of a violin.
Not everyone was in sync at first, but quickly, through wordless communication, the music cohered. Wild jazz-like improvisation returned again and again to the anchor of the powwow drum. Israeli composer Yonatan Gat paced and writhed as he played, savagely kicking one guitar stand after another into his amp, into the crowd; a fan, unprompted, caught it and propped it back up.
All the audience was on their feet by the third song. People danced on stage, leaping and bouncing. Some swayed gently as if in a trance. Songs melted into each other, through ecstatic highs to a cacophonous crescendo like a hallucinogenic journey through the darkest woods. And it returned, in the end, to the powwow drum. The band finished by inviting the audience to form human chains between musicians and showgoers, and then they prayed, first in Algonquin, then in English, “Thank you for the earth and sky. Thank you for the water and the rocks. Thank you for the trees and just for today. Great spirit, I thank you.”
Upcoming shows at Troy’s No Fun: Aug. 15 punk/alternative show with Cellular Chaos, Bleeders, Zombie Giuliani, and G.O.L.E.M.; Aug. 16 psychedelic bands Triptide, Maybird, and Lemon of Choice; Aug 18 art rock bands Bunnies, Chimes of Bayonets, Sapling, and Nite Office.
Where I’m going next: Delaney at local punk/goth club Fuze Box on Aug. 25.
