Day 5: Nicki Minaj Plays Hopi Dance

Day Five: Nicki Minaj Plays Hopi Dance

6/11/11:
I’ve heard Nicki Minaj before, but never like I did on June eleventh.

Yelena and I, having driven three hours through a brutal landscape of sweeping vistas and magnificent gorges, were at (very) long last taking in the clear, windswept view from Third Mesa in Hopi. Third Mesa, where we’d ended up accidentally, was mostly deserted. The Hopi were performing their traditional dances on Second Mesa, where we intended to be, and this plateau town had been virtually emptied in favor of its neighbor.

We wandered a bit, still unaware that we were lost, and after climbing steep block steps, found ourselves in a plaza surrounded on all sides by small homes. Poverty was apparent, but so was a strong sense of community. Much like the villages I’d seen in Mexico, Third Mesa seemed to have grown not in a house-by-house way, but rather as an amalgamation, foundations built one atop the other. The heat was intense at such an altitude, and Yelena and I slathered on more sunscreen and sat on a raised metal platform to take it all in: the captivating view and Third Mesa, a place unlike any other I’d encountered in the States.

Adding to the surreal-ness, “Moment 4 Life” played in the background.

Eventually awakening to the realization that we were not, in fact, on Second Mesa, Yelena and I braved the heart attack road down off Third Mesa (lots of curls and edges) and managed to reason our way to Second Mesa.

We watched the dance from a crowded rooftop. Below us, five rows of Hopi men moved in specific stepping patterns and wore traditional clothes. Made otherworldly by arrays of feathers, garlands, and masks, the dancers attached tortoise shells filled with deer antlers or hooves to their calves to amplify the sound of their rhythmic movements. A solitary drummer sat in the middle of the group, pounding out time as the dancers periodically alternated directions and steps. Fringing the dancers were clowns, Native Americans dressed in clothes specifically non-Native American; meant to represent what the Hopi were not, the clowns constantly worked to distract and bully the different dancers, even hoisting one of the younger men up into the air to the jeers and laughter of the crowd.

Experiencing the Hopi dance was eye opening. I’d never been on a Native American reservation, never seen a comparable landscape, never known what it was like to be one of the minorities in a crowd in America. I was unfamiliar with Hopi traditions, enthralled by the dance without really knowing what it was I was seeing.

Joel was dancing that day but, despite a lot of looking, Yelena and I were unable to find him in the columns of masked dancers. A few days after the dance, I asked Joel about the tradition, and he told me that this was one of many dances for the Kachina or Hopi spirits. Performed between February and August, the dances were meant to show the Hopi how to live and to ask for moisture for their crops.

I thought of Nicki Minaj, of the blond boy in Wayfarers I’d seen on a rooftop across the way, thought of Joel and the yellow Powerade he was never without.

Among all these discontinuities, the past and the present coexisted.

During the Hopi dances, someone on Third Mesa will probably be blaring Nicki Minaj.

Photos: 1., 2., & 3. Hopi Reservation