My new hobbie
Many times have I gone to SCA events and people seem to want to get dressed up and get their middle eastern groove on. I've always thought it was fun and I wanted to join in on the party. Most of these middle eastern parties seem to have the men drumming (cause it's manly to beat on things) while the women dance (usually they wear these skimpy belly dance outfits, bonus!) This is not true for all people of course. There are many drummers who like drumming because they feel it is a source of musical expression. Also there are several women who drum. There is even a great deal of dancers who wear historicaly accurate clothing that do not show hardly any skin and who actually know how to dance rather than just jiggle.
Now I looked at all this and said, "Me too! Me too! I wanna play!" People said, "You're a guy, you should drum!" I looked at this instument and saw that it seemed limited since it could really only make one type of sound. Now, there are a great deal of things that can be done with a drum but if you ask me it's not quite the same variety as a string instrument. Mostly, drumming just isn't my thing. I said, "I want to dance!" The celtestany (people dressed in celtic/middle eastern/pirate garb) guys all say, "You can't dance. Only women dance. Men drum." All the women look at me funny as though to say, "Why would you dance? You're not a woman." Not wanting to be swayed by narrowminded people I began some research. What I learned through asking different experts was that the modern SCA has it all wrong. The women would drum and the men would dance! Now, this has some exceptions of course. Women would dance but only for each other. Men could drum and often did, but most importantly for me was... Men can dance!
So, I've been working on finding info on this subject. Mostly I've been looking for teachers to teach me how to do the dancing and I'm finding out that there are not many. In fact, there are none that I know of. It may very well be setting off to be one of the only men who know how to do male middle eastern dancing in the SCA. Wow! Anyway, I went to my friends house to visit my two brothers and my friends Bruce and Ellen. Ellen showed me a video on some Iranian guys dancing as well as a few pictures from a few books. It seems like male middle eastern dancing was a little more like the Wild Rumpus from Where the Wild Things Are. So, we decided to do some wild rumpusing with me and my little brother Nate with Bruce drumming. It was fun and I seem to have a talent for being able to spin and catch myself so perhaps I will be more dervish like with my dancing. In conlusion, I feel I have taken my first step into a larger world that could be a lot of fun and allow me to get my middle eastern groove on!
EDIT: I think my next step is to talk to this Kingdom's newest Laurel since she quite an expert on all things middle eastern. She might be able to help me get in touch with some good research material or perhaps a dance studio I can learn from.