The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #86814 Message #1618239
Posted By: Desert Dancer
02-Dec-05 - 12:05 AM
Thread Name: American Contra Dance Band CDs
Subject: RE: American Contra Dance Band CDs
Last night I had nearly completed a comprehensive and erudite essay on the nature of American contra dance music when I pressed some wrong button and it disappeared into the ether. I'll give another run at it tonight. :-)
Compton, in your PM to me (which I hope you won't mind if I quote) you said, " How many of what you recommend have "Danceability"?. Some tracks go into free form of what I've got! Or are American Contra Dancers able to cope with all that!"
I take it that you're in the U.K.. And English dance music is different over here too. :-) If you're used to what we call English country dance (Playford style, over there), you're used to tunes that for the most part go with particular dances. And e-ceilidh dances are short and lively (read, "rowdy"), in my understanding, of variable length and flavor, some with special tunes, some not. For contra dances any 32-bar (64 beat) jigs or reels will work (some better than others, of course), and the choice of tunes is up to the band, with or without the collaboration of the caller. Nowadays most bands play a medley of 2-3 tunes per dance, since a dance goes for 7-10 minutes.
For the dancers, the key thing is the beat, and the traditional reel and jig phrasing in 8s and 16s, corresponding to the number of steps in the figures. Beyond that, a band has a fair amount of latitude in both the tunes they pick and how they play them. The same dance may give a dancer a very different experience depending on whether the band picks northern or southern style tunes, or traditional or contemporary tunes.
And then, the same tune may sound completely different depending on who's playing it. Some fiddlers put a certain amount of swing in their playing, what kind of rythm backup there is makes a huge difference (piano: straight boom-chuck or flowing, with some melody? guitar? percussion? etc.) How does a band arrange the tune? Do all players play all the time, or do they tinker with variations in the orchestration?
Of what you've listed that you've heard, you've got some sense that variation, I'll bet. Any band with Bob McQuillen on the piano will have a bit straighter, more traditional sound, while Wild Asparagus was one of the first real innovating bands. (The first time I danced to them I was tired and grumpy from being a camp organizer -- it was our first year -- and I thought to myself, "I didn't come here to dance to rock music!") Nowadays there are contra dance bands that go much further than they do. Rodney Miller was one of the earliest folks promoting traditional New England tunes, but his idiosyncratic fiddling style owes a lot to jazz/swing.
As to danceability, part of the euphoria-making thrill of contras for modern, urban contra dancers is getting into the groove of a dance. A good band can start you out quietly and simply and gradually crank up the energy by means of orchestration and tune and tune key changes (not tempo changes!) to whip the group into a frenzy. So, yeah, sometimes it can get a bit out there!
As far as "danceability" goes, sometimes a band's creativity goes too far, in my opinion. The above-mentioned Popcorn Behavior features some very young and talented musicians (well, it was 7 years ago that I danced to them), with some strong jazz training. They have a tendency to get into their own groove to such an extent that although the beat remains, the phrasing disappears, and the caller has to work hard to remind the dancers where the heck they are in the dance.
All of that said, a complicating factor for your perspective is that when a band makes a recording they often take advantage of the opportunity to be creative in ways that they wouldn't be when playing for a hall full of dancers. Tempos may be varied in a set, or be faster or slower than dance speed. The tunes themselves may not be "square" 32-bar tunes. The tunes might be ones that are fun to listen to, or fun to play, but not necessarily the first choices for dancing. And, usually a recorded track is not as long as that 7-10 minutes required for a dance. So what you hear on a recording is not exactly what you get in a dance hall. (There are recordings intended for dancing, not many though.)
I hope that gives you a little bit more to work with. All of the recordings people have mentioned here are from working dance bands who know their stuff.
You might be interested in reading Henry Morgenstein's dance essays. He's an American who calls contras and English dance, and who, with his British wife, spends a fair amount of time in the UK dancing and calling, too. He's written a lot to compare and contrast the dancing here and there. Regarding "free form" he says in one essay "One name for American Contras is "Appalachian Sufi dancing" -- like the whirling dervishes, we try to induce a trancelike state through constant repetition, and through dances that contain many swings." The along with the choreography, the music is a big part of making that happen. For my part, I like more punctuation in my dances then just continuous whirling, but there's the heart of the variation among dances and dance bands.
~ Becky in Tucson
(Eek! nearly lost this one in preview by not having closed the quotes on my link!)