SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - What started out as a quest by two J.H. Sissons School teachers to find Dene children's songs to teach their students has ballooned into a multi-level project geared at preserving and expanding Dene musical culture.

After coming across a decades-old recording device the women began to transcribe the Dene drum music found on it and will soon be able to teach it to their students.

"We've got something here that will allow this culture to live on, and make sure that it does," said Grade 5 teacher Monique Marinier.

Marinier and music teacher Louise Drapeau had initially planned to find 10 or 12 Dene children's songs.

"We were looking for children's music, you know. English kids sing Ring Around the Rosie, so we were looking for something like that," said Marinier.

"That's not what this turned out to be. It's turning out to be a pilot project now."

Marinier and Drapeau - who has now left the NWT and couldn't be reached by telephone - had no luck coming across Dene children's music and asked Yellowknife Education District No.1 to subsidize their research.

With funding for their accommodation and transportation the two women, "took off on a quest," over the summer of 2009.

Despite spending a week in Lutselk'e for the 39th Dene Assembly, where Marinier said they learnt a great deal, they found people apprehensive to share information.

"When you approach people who have had things taken from them on a regular basis they're a little reticent to share things with you," she explained.

On a tip they met with Father Rene Fumoleau who used to be an Oblate missionary at Fort Good Hope and now resides in Yellowknife. They hit the jackpot.

He told them of another Oblate missionary, Father Biname, who brought up Fort Good Hope's first recording device - a reel-to-reel tape player.

"We met with him and interviewed him and he told us about this recording that he found in 1956," she said.

"So, by this, we're practically levitating. Of course, this being the only venue open to us at the time, we pursued it and sunk our teeth in it real good."

The story goes that Father Biname had recorded messages from Fort Good Hope residents who were in hospital in Aklavik suffering from tuberculosis.

When he brought the recordings back to Fort Good Hope the residents asked if they could record their own greetings and music for their sick loved ones to enjoy.

"The people of Fort Good Hope heard it (the recording). Two days later they approached Rene Fumoleau and said, 'we want to send a message back to our people'" she said.

The result is a treasure trove of Dene memories and drum music.

Fumoleau told them he took the recording device to an Ottawa museum and the women were able to get their hands on MP3 copies of the music from the Prince of Wales Heritage Museum.

"He (Fumoleau) wanted to preserve it, and thank God he did because who knows what would have happened to it if he didn't," said Marinier.

As the music teacher, Drapeau was given the arduous task of transcribing hours of music, each song taking her about eight hours to complete.

So far she has completed 14 of about 30 pieces of music and continues to work on the project.

Drapeau didn't transcribe the music based on Western standards, instead opting to stay true to the complicated and varying Dene meter, resulting in a far more cumbersome assignment.

"We used to live across the hall from each other and she'd (Drapeau) come and bang on my door and say, 'I can't take it anymore, I'm going nuts,' or I'd go over and we'd bounce things off each others heads," said Marinier.

After working on the music for a while the women decided the composers and performers should be identified and they enlisted the help of the recording's sole surviving performer, Baptiste Shae.

"We knew we had no choice but to go to Fort Good Hope to have everyone identified."

Despite having had a stroke three years ago and recent heart surgery, Shae obliged willingly, identifying everyone on the tapes.

"We visited him on more than half-a-dozen occasions to try to get the names of the people," said Marinier.

"He was very kind to us, and identified all of the people performing."

Following their meeting with Shae the women were invited to meet the Fort Good Hope council of elders who were discussing how they were going to preserve their culture.

"I said to Louise, 'give me the computer,' and I logged in and pulled up the sheet music and I stood up and said, 'look, this is how you can preserve your culture,'" she said.

After receiving a positive response from the elders the women want to seen the music transcribed into Dogrib, Chipewyan, Slavey and Gwich'in.

"Of course, they were very excited about this, and our plan is to return it to them because that's were it belongs," she said. Not only is there a push to return the music to its original composers, the Dene drum music will now be available for non-Dene music teachers to teach their students to drum.