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| Louis Shalako photo. |
Louis Shalako
This is the legendary Blood Fiddle, which belonged to my
friend's grandfather. The story is, he went to the Sarnia rez, bought himself a deaf
and dumb girl for about sixteen dollars and made her his wife. They had five
daughters and sometime during WW II, he started a band. Years later, she died
of cancer, somehow bleeding all over the place and one of the children used the
blood to paint the front of the fiddle...
I forget the
grandfather's name, but she still has the band going, and she's working on some
new songs. She sang a bit of one to me and she definitely has a good voice.
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| They're not real big, are they. |
On this particular instrument, the outer strings are not rigged, as it appears the bridge is broken. The lady says she spent some money, as the thing 'was in pieces' and I guess she knew some guy.
Yeah, we talk once in a while.
At some point, she
brought out a real violin. This was in fine condition. For the first time in my
life, I held a violin in my hands. The strings were pretty loose, and I put my
finger on a line painted on there and began stroking the bow, across, back and
forth, just listening to the tone of the thing.
It sounded a lot like a violin.
When I was five or six
years old, I asked my parents for a violin, and of course they just laughed.
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