Ritual dance tunes

Subject: Ritual dance tunes
From: GUEST,Les in Chorlton, Manchester
Date: 23 Aug 03 - 04:07 AM

Is it true that Sharpe had a dodgy habit of attributing country dance tunes to ritual dances that he had witnessed? If so this does confuse the whole issues of ritual dance.

But the question I really want to ask is: Have any ritual dance tunes been collected, or for that matter any Ritual dances, outside the uk?

Subject: RE: Ritual dance tunes
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 23 Aug 03 - 11:06 AM

For a recent study of C. J. Sharp (not C. K. Sharpe, who was a quite different person) and Sword dances, I'd recommend you read E. C. Cawte's article Watching Cecil Sharp at Work: A Study of his Records of Sword Dances Using his Field Notebooks (Folk Music Journal vol.8 no.3 2003; Manchester Library will have it). You'll have to look elsewhere for commentary on Sharp's work on Morris; there are useful bibliographies on the EFDSS website:

An Introductory Bibliography on Morris Dancing

Sword Dancing in Britain

Do bear in mind that an awful lot of guff is talked about him by some people. Look at the facts and make your own assessment. Morris and Sword have traditionally used country dance tunes, popular music of the day, whatever the musicians happened to know; and it is true that, when publishing dances, Sharp sometimes replaced tunes which he felt were modern or boring (in some cases I can see his point. There is a limit to the number of times it is worth printing The Girl I Left Behind Me in a book aimed at the interested reader rather than the serious scholar). We would certainly not do that sort of thing today, I hope; but we have the advantage of nearly a century's hindsight, and Sharp was a pioneer, feeling his way without much guidance in a completely new field of exploration. He made both mistakes and errors of judgement, as anyone else would have, but at least he did it. Cawte goes into all that in depth.

That "ritual" tag is left over from the old "pagan origins" school of thought. A less loaded term is "ceremonial", which is generally preferred nowadays. There are plenty of examples outside the UK, of course, but again, "ceremonial" is usually a better term to use than "ritual"; that way there is a distinct word available for the occasional dance which may actually have a ritual function. These are vanishingly rare in Europe, but not in other parts of the world.

You'll find analogous dance forms, and tunes, throughout Europe (the Northern French Bacchu Ber comes to mind, and there are sword dances in the Basque country too, if I remember right). The practice of lifting a dancer on the knot is a recent import from European sword dance, for instance. Further afield, I'd guess that most countries in the world have dances which involve broadly similar procedures, though that doesn't mean that they are related, or that you can draw conclusions about a dance in one country from a superficially similar one in another (which is the root of at least part of the confusion many people encounter).

Subject: RE: Ritual dance tunes
From: GUEST,Les in Chorlton
Date: 23 Aug 03 - 01:03 PM

Thanks Malcolm and sorry about the 'e'. As a member of EFDSS I have the FMJ you mention and shall dig it out and read it.

On reading my own post I now realise that the point I was trying to make was - did Sharp et al when collecting in the States, and other people collecting where uk migrants had gone, collect any ceromonial music.

But then again the point you make is that ceremonial often came from other sources so perhaps its a bit if a wild goose chase. But still that poor old horse seems to have gone to sea. Was that of ritual/ceremonial origin?

Strange how often when doubting the depth of the oral tradition we can be reassured by shanties and sea songs?

Subject: RE: Ritual dance tunes
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Aug 03 - 01:12 PM

A point that might interest you,Les, is the Derby Ram song.This was (and still is,I believe) in use in many variants around Derby in a ceremonial/mumming play/money collecting sort of way, involving the usual kind od death and resurrection stuff in the mumming play. And surprisingly enough it ended up as a New Orleans funeral march among the black community in New Orleans. Was that the sort of thing you were looking for? And I also have a recording of English mumming play stuff(words and music),in a Caribbean island.

Subject: RE: Ritual dance tunes
From: GUEST,Les in Chorlton, Manchester
Date: 24 Aug 03 - 04:42 AM

Wow, mumming in the Caribean? What's that then?

Unlike soldiers in the first world war who were recruited in one town to one regiment, sent away together and sometimes died together, I guess teams of morris dancers or mummers weren't sent to Van Diemans Land or migrated together to The Appalachians. So Morris and mumming have not been found in such places.

But, if the origins of tradition of ceremonial dance are as deep as some would like us to believe, perhaps a few tunes might have made those long jouneys, because the songs did.

How far did the Poor Old Horse get?

Subject: RE: Ritual dance tunes
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 24 Aug 03 - 03:05 PM

The Old Horse is a bit of a case apart. The "mast horse" tradition ran in a band down from North Yorkshire through Derbyshire and Cheshire into North Wales, and was little known outside those areas, though there were other kinds of "horse" in the South of England and in Ireland. The song, however, was widely printed on broadsides and has been found (though without the attendant custom) all over the country. Additionally, parts of it seem to have been adapted for the sailors' song of the same name, though that relates to a completely different custom; examples found in the USA seem to be from the maritime branch.

As you suggest, these kinds of customs tended to be local and didn't usually export well. Families might emigrate together, communities less commonly. The Mummers' Play, though, seems to have spread largely via chapbooks to begin with, and was to a degree standardised, so may have been more widely recognisable -and hence acceptable- among migrants from different areas; and it is Mumming and the Luck-Visit tradition that turn up most often in exported form. Greg has mentioned the Caribbean; there is also quite a lot in Newfoundland. Mumming in the USA is rather a different thing, and where it resembles the British form it appears, like Morris in the USA, to be a recent revival rather than a transmitted tradition.

That's getting well outside my area, though, so you'll be better off looking at the website of the  Traditional Drama Research Group. See also their "Americas" links page:  Folk Play Links - Regional & Performers' Websites

Subject: RE: Ritual dance tunes
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Aug 03 - 07:30 PM

As to ritual or ceremonial collections of dance and other tunes outside of the UK, may I suggest this website? It can serve as a first look at a highly developed culture deeply rich in ritual dance, song, and ceremonies.

And so you know that I am mildly picking a bone with this thread and the unspoken assumption that Eurocentric ceremonial dances and songs are all that there is.

Such exist and have been recorded, on paper, film, tape, and other other media, from nearly every country in the world. From the Inuit and Yupik of the Arctic to the Islanders of the Pacific to the Indian subcontinent to the Bushmen of Australia, ceremonials exist. Morris and sword dancing, like the Corn Dance of the pueblo peoples, is a small part of it.

(Not a rant, just a mild bone-picking, as I said.)

Subject: RE: Ritual dance tunes
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 24 Aug 03 - 07:57 PM

Of course the world is full of such things; I don't think anyone here would, or has, suggested otherwise (it might be possible to read Les's question that way, but I assumed he was talking specifically about British or Irish customs taken abroad by migrants). I read a good bit about the ceremonial customs of other cultures when younger, and they are very interesting, but they belong to other people. It isn't about being Eurocentric, to my mind, but about trying to reach a reasonable understanding of one's own traditional culture (whatever that might be) before poking around in somebody else's. Useful analogies may be made and insights gained, but go too far too soon and you wind up with The Golden Bough or Coming of Age in Samoa...

Subject: RE: Ritual dance tunes
From: greg stephens
Date: 24 Aug 03 - 08:18 PM

Rapaire: the question was a little ambiguous, but I read it as Malcolm Douglas did. We are being asked for evidence of UK ritual dance existing overseas, I'm sure. Not about the existence of rituals which have their roots in other cultures.

Subject: RE: Ritual dance tunes
From: GUEST,Les in Chorlton, Manchester
Date: 25 Aug 03 - 06:16 AM

Greg, spot on, my question was ambiguous, but Malcolm guessed where I was going. Rapaire makes a good point. People make strange anglo/eurocentric statements with out much evidence, not least about the origins and meanings of folk stuff.

I was just interested to know if any ceremonial tunes had travelled far and am fascinated by the caribean reference.

Subject: RE: Ritual dance tunes
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 25 Aug 03 - 07:54 AM

My father bought a tape of a band he heard in the Canaries. On eof the tunes was quite recognisably the same as the Helston Furry Dance.

Subject: RE: Ritual dance tunes
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Aug 03 - 09:06 PM

Bushmen of _Australia_ ???!!!

I seem to remember that the "Bushmen" were African...

Robin
(An Australian!)

Subject: RE: Ritual dance tunes
From: greg stephens
Date: 27 Aug 03 - 08:54 AM

Les: Caribbean mumming stuff. Have just had a re-listen to my old tape. It was recorded(I think, I have no sleeve notes) in the Dominican Republic, which is mainly Spanish speaking but there is an English speaking enclave of people who moved there from St Kitts and Nevis, and that is the people who do the mumming play.
    I can't decipher all the words , but here are a few lines which show you the kind of thing.

Good morrow friends and neighbours here
We are quite glad to meet you here
For Christmas come but once a year
And when it come it bring good cheers
And when it gone it is no longer here
May luck attend your milking pail
???????

Room room room here
Gallants give us room to sport
For we are the merry actors that(??) in the street


So stand forth great St George
And boldly clearly the way.

I am the King of Egypt
(???)plainly does appear
Where I am come to seek my son
My only son and heir


(Then some stuff about St George fighting Saladin the Turkish Knight).

The format is set piece speeches alternating with music. The music is fife(or whistle??), snare and bass drum, and a triangle(or possibly a stirrup, from the sound). Some of the music is fast drumming with fife doing high improvised stuff(I guess from the sound he is improvising while watching the action of the fights etc in nthe play...I've done it often on whistle myself,I know the effect!). other times the music is quite formal, a steady pure English dance tune sound(I would guess, I dont know the tune).
   The instrumentation and general sound is identical to some recordings I have, made about 20 years ago in Georgetown,Guyana(N coast of S America); this was a recording of a Mother Sally processional money collecting performance. Also similar to some Jamaican stufff I've heard.
    I would reckon the Caribbean is a place where there are a great many traditional relics of English ceremonial/ritual type stuff(possibly more than there are in England??).

Subject: RE: Ritual dance tunes
From: GUEST,Les in Chorlton
Date: 27 Aug 03 - 11:08 AM

Greg, this is truly amazing. How did you come by the tape? Is this still going on?

Has any worthy society or jounal collected this or anything else for that matter?

Rye Cooder has collected all sorts in the Caribean does any of that come from over here?

Will somebody pay us to go and look?