2026-07-26 21:00:00
Leading up to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival the organizers asked Dudley Laufman to put together a band. He got together some folks he'd been playing for, and this was the start of the Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra. They quickly became one of the leading bands of the contra dance revival, and in 1972 released a self-titled album (F-72-FW-3). I found a picture of the liner notes:
I couldn't find the text of these anywhere, so I had an LLM convert them to text and manually cleaned up the output:
"For lack of a better name, let's call ourselves The Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra. Dudley is the only one from Canterbury, but how many of the Budapest String Quartet are from Budapest?" said Newt Tolman when we were looking for a title prior to a Club 47 appearance. Of the thirty or so Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra musicians who play for dances or concerts at one time or another, we arranged for ten to make this record.Jack Sloanaker, bass (also plays fiddle, banjo, guitar, and piano), published the Square Dance Chord book, has trained several topnotch square dance pianists, produced the F&W String Band records, played with us at the Newport Folk Festival ('65) and at all our Club 47 shows. He lives in Cambridge, is a psychologist, and a director of the Farm and Wilderness Camps in Plymouth, Vermont.
Pete Colby, banjo and autoharp, lives in Brookline, Mass. He is a draftsman and licensed gunsmith, having built a replica of a Kentucky rifle with which he won the Colorado Open. He makes fine musical instruments, including the two he plays on this record, the autoharp being the only gasoline operated rig of its kind.
Ted Levin (alias Ichabod Crane), fiddle, piano, bass, penny whistle. A student at Amherst College, he is one of those musical geniuses who can play anything he picks up. He has had a ragtime band at Amherst, recorded with them and with a rock band also. Owns land in Windsor, N. H. and plans to build there soon.,
Nicholas S. Howe, fiddle, locked himself in his office at Franconia College in the White Mountains, where he is a professor, and for two weeks worked on these tunes until he had them down right. He rides down to the dances on the back of his Newfoundland dog.
Allan Block, fiddle, lives on a farm in Francestown, N. H. He is a leather craftsman (Allan Block Sandals) and poet, and has been with us for three years. Recently made a record with Ralph Lee Smith on the Meadowland label.
Bob McQuillen, piano and accordion, is from Dublin, N. H., where he lives in the blue house at Bonds Corner with his wife Prissy Jean, and their family. He teaches shop at Peterboro High School, and has been playing for Ralph Page, Duke Miller, and me for almost thirty years. In fact it was he who inspired me to learn the accordion. Jerry Werhner, fiddle, mandolin (piano, guitar, viola, cello ...) runs a stringed instrument repair shop in Amherst, Mass., The Ballade, ... gets things together when we have dances in the Pioneer Valley.
Dave Fuller, accordion, lives with his family in Harvard, Mass., where he is a carpenter. He played with us at Newport, at the Fox Hollow Festivals, at the Club 47, and for many of the dances in Nelson and elsewhere. He is also a caller and is on the F&W String Band records. Larry Delorier, flute, piccolo, and penny whistle, appeared at a party one night in 1968, played three tunes, and disappeared for a year. Showed up again at a dance and has been with us since. He recently graduated from New England College in Henniker, N. H. ... carries his flute in an old tomato basket.
I live in Canterbury, N. H., with Patty, five children, and two horses. I called my first dance in Walpole, Mass. in 1948, and was into the accordion and harmonica a year or so later. Since have fooled with the fiddle and piano, and have recently been trying a cornet. Took some musicians and dancers to Newport Folk Festival in 1965, and thence to Fox Hollow and the Club 47. Patty and I went to Ireland recently and we are publishing a collection of photos and prose poems hanging on that trip.
Other musicians who sometimes play with us are Newt Tolman, flute, from Nelson, N. H. Newt is a writer, dog trainer, guide, and inspiration for us all. He and Kay Gilbert (piano and flute) have collaborated on the Nelson Music Collection, a great book of jigs, reels and hornpipes.
Jack O'Connor, fiddle, bass, accordion, whistle, banjo, from Carlisle, Mass. Jack is a technical writer, and leader of the Cambridge Folk Dance Orchestra. Other members of that group who sometimes play for us are Allan Chertok, Calvin Howard, Dave Freeman, and Risa Goldberg. They are really into Balkan music. We do an excerpt from a Balkan kolo on this record, with Ted Levin at piano, Larry on flute, Allan, fiddle, Jerry, mandolin, and myself accordion. We just fool around. Jack's group does the real thing.
Joe Ryan, fiddle, clarinet, banjo, mandolin, bass, guitar, and musical saw, lives in Northfield, N. H. where he is a wood and leather craftsman, bone handle knife maker, and bee keeper.
Walter Lob, fiddler from Newton, Mass., is a physics professor at Northeastern. He has recorded with Ralph Page's Boston Orchestra, and is one of the original Old Joe Clarkers.
Gene Murrow, oboe, accordion, concertina, pipe and tabor, from California at present, has recorded with Judy Collins, and Peter, Paul and Mary. (Newt says of him, "I can play the Stars & Stripes Forever on a limp dandelion stem, but I'll be damned if I can play the oboe.")
Sylvia Sawyer Miskoe, accordion and piano, has played for me since 1956. She is from Concord, N. H.; her husband Bill is our stage manager.
Don Braley and Omer Marcoux, fiddles, from Concord, N. H. Mark Hanson and David Raitt, guitar and bass, from Northfield, N. H. where they build yurts.
Doug Cox, fiddle, flute, mandolin, from Plaistow, N. H. One of the original yurt builders ... spent a year in Germany learning to make violins ... presently studying in Wisconsin.
And many musicians who sometimes "sit in" with us wherever we play ... Ann Gary, Sarah Gregory, Stu Coffin, Betsy Northrup, Allan McIntyre, Ray McIntyre, Jack Perron, Roddy Miller, Randy Miller, Judy Hough, Dick Gross, Jenny Robinson, Harvey Tolman, Paul Spaulding, to name a few ...
Many of us have played together at the New England Folk Festivals for years before the Club 47 debut, and all of us play in various combinations for dances around and beyond New England, including dances for other callers besides me . . . Ted Sannella, Ralph Page, Duke Miller, Charlie Webster, Dave Fuller, Johnny Trafton, Jim Morrison, Bronson Schonk. Mostly we work in small units of three or four, using musicians who live closest to the job. Others join us on a volunteer basis, so that even the smallest dances sometimes find us with a core of two hired and eight guest musicians.
With the exception of Newt Tolman, none of us have had the advantage of a musical tradition passed on to us through our families and communities. Being urban oriented, we just sort of happened onto it. The first time I really heard this kind of music was at the 1948 New England Folk Festival on the fifth floor of the Boston YWCA.
6/Eight
Yes, it was a mixture
of pine trees & hayfields
honey & woodsmoke,
a strange combination for a jig,
but dammit, if a girl
hangs her sweater in the woodshed
& her father is a farmer,
you have the makings for
a country dance,
& that describes it.
We have our favorite tunes. Like Yarmouth Reel for instance. Larry and I discovered it in the Fiddler's Tune Book while we were playing for a wedding and waiting for the bride to cut the cake. It became the top tune on our list for a while. I use it mostly for the contra dance French Four ... it fits nicely and I can sort of sing right along with it. Nick says, "A great many of the melodies that we use can be found intact in baroque music, particularly that of Handel, who lived most of his career in England and lifted thematic material very freely from the countryside musicians that he would have heard at almost any crossroad. Even Beethoven seems to have done this on occasion; the Yarmouth Reel appears in his suite 'Twelve Contratanzes.'"
Since then, Yarmouth Reel has been supplanted by Prince William and Auretti's Dutch Skipper, two tunes I picked up recently from a book of English dances with references to Holland in them. Other tunes in their turn have been number one with us. Money Musk ... in 1949 I first heard it, in Boston ... fast and uninteresting. But when I went to a Ralph Page dance at the Bell Studio in Peterboro, N. H., and danced it there to the slow pulsating New Hampshire music, on a spring floor and with the Williams twins clogging it out with taps on their shoes, it became my national anthem for a long time. More recently Jack O'Connor and I have had fun calling it in duet and syncopation. Even more recently we have been using other tunes with it for contrast, as on this recording. Chorus Jig ... originally an Irish dance, is actually not a jig at all, but a reel in 2/4 time. Pop Upton was dancing this in Nelson one night, and on his last time as active couple, he went down the outside of the set, motioned his wife to her seat, and kept right on out the door to his car for a drink. That reminds me of the Finnish wedding I played for in Ludlow, Vermont ... an old man wandered in off the street and without even removing his hat, staring glassy eyed ahead, he got in on a grand right and left, somehow wove his way into all the sets around the hall, and right out the door again.
Petronella ... 250 pound Larry Collins was dancing this in Nelson one winter night, performing a Scottish pas de basque step all the way down the set, much to the door faced disapproval of the bench warming woodchoppers. At the bottom by the wood burning heater, Larry switched to a Boston stamp balance, whereupon he slipped on some melted snow and down he went, bringing the stovepipe and ashes on top of him, and grins to the farmers' faces.
Irish American Reel . . . first time I heard this was in 1950 at Ted Sannella's place in Revere. He had it on a Starr Label French Canadian record. It was called Reel des Moissonneurs, played by Tommy Duchesne et ses Chevaliers du Folklore. For a long time we went without using it at dances for lack of sheet music for the tune, until I found it under the title we use here in Cole's 1000 Jigs, Reels, and Hornpipes.
With the exception of the kolo, we use most of this music for the contra dance, a form found frequently in southwestern New Hampshire. The figures are derived from the original English, Irish and Scottish. Most of these tunes are also adaptable to the quadrille and progressive circle mixers, although we seldom use them that way. Today, the youth culture, the kids from the communes, are frequenting the dances (invading is a better word) by the hundreds, filling the halls to overflowing almost every Friday and Saturday night. They are innovating a dance style all their own, enlarging and enhancing on the clogging and scuffing shuffle step, dancing all the time, interspersing rock steps with traditional.
They arrive, spilling into the hall like a tipped over basket of many colored balls of heavy yarn, waving college pennants, and start to unravel, spinning around like parenthesis. Some go down the center like Slinkies - some turn like a brace & bit, others like a dime on edge.
The fiddler rubs rosin along his bow and a fine dust rises out over the hall. He breaks off small pieces, doling them out to the orchestra like ginger. The prompter drinks his down with one swill of flute water, the piano player tapes hers to the bottom of her sandal, the accordion player holds his between his teeth, the banjo player smiles like Jack Palance, and the flute players pass as they take joy in mercury. — DUDLEY LAUFMAN
Notes:
Newt Tolman (ex-husband of Beth Tolman, who wrote the 1937 Country Dance Book with Ralph Page) is the only one who grew up in the tradition. Makes sense given that this is a revival album, but it's still a more lopsided ratio than I'd have guessed.
Lots of people turning up to play for free as guests. People doing this part time because they love it.
Looking at the full-time occupations, it's all over the map. Psychologist and Summer Camp Director; draftsman and gunsmith; college student; two professors; leather craftsman and poet; shop teacher; carpenter; writer and dog trainer; technical writer; wood and leather craftsman, bone handle knife maker, and bee keeper. Dance musicians still have a wide variety of day jobs, but these days a list this long without a programmer (or where the only teachers are professors and a shop teacher) would be surprising.
Neat to see Laufman's contemporaneous description of the youth influx.
2026-07-25 21:00:00
Someone submitted my musical multitasking post to Hacker News, where Rochus Keller saw it and left some fascinating comments. He's developed a method of foot drumming, using midi organ pedals:
Here's another one:
Additional, audio-only, examples: 1, 2.
I find this fascinating. The physical feel of organ pedals is very different from the kick drum pedals I play, much more keyboard-like, which means the technique is totally different. But it clearly works well, and Keller is able to play something musical, coherent, and (despite having only two feet!) very full. When I imagine playing this interface I expect I'd miss the rebound of my pedals (which feels a lot like stamping my foot on the floor, where all of this came from), and needing to move around horizontally would take some getting used to. On the other hand, it would be amazing to have the broader palette, with 17 different (virtual) drums to choose from!
I've previously written about how musicians massively underuse their mouths, and it seems clear to me that feet are similarly undervalued. Two different videos, to give more of a taste of what's possible here, both acoustic:
youtube
(Noah VanNorstrand in Buddy System)
2026-07-22 21:00:00
Dudley Laufman passed away last week at the age of 95. He's best known for his extensive contribution to the 1970s contra dance revival, and especially for fostering live music. Twenty years ago [1] I attended one of the "Wind in the Timothy" dances that he and his partner Jacqueline would host at their house in NH on fifth Saturdays, and it was clear he really enjoyed what he was doing.
As part of my project on understanding attitudes towards live music I thought I would read some of his own words. Most of his words were poems, though, and I generally prefer something more concrete and direct. He did co-write a 2009 book with Jacqueline, however, Traditional Barn Dances with Calls and Fiddling, which seemed more promising.
As with my notes on Tony Parkes' book, I'm more interested in what it tells us about its authors and its context than in its primary purpose as a dance instruction book.
The feel of the book is formal and institutional, a bit stilted, with sentences like "Be certain to ask the caller if he or she is able to...". Passive voice, very structured prose, avoiding contractions. A bit like real advice coming from a wooden puppet: "Do not worry about calling the dances on the phrase", "Request that the caller not do contra dances of the "duple proper" variety", and "Emphasize to the caller that folks are coming to a dance party for a social good time. They are not paying their way in to attend a workshop or listen to lengthy explanations and walk-throughs of complicated figures." The content is folk but the presentation is not folky. I'd speculate Dudley didn't draft (Jacqueline wrote many educational books), the publisher had a strong house style, or both.
Here's what they have to say on hiring musicians:
Live music is better than recorded music, even if it is only a harmonica. The caller you hire may prefer to select a band whose repertoire coincides with the dances and tunes he or she uses.If you expect a small dance (i.e., fewer than 40 people), it may be plenty to have just one musician (fiddler or accordionist) and a caller. This is a reasonable approach if there is not much money available to pay for more musicians.
A larger dance should have at least one fiddler and a guitar, standup bass, or piano player, as well as a small sound system. Anything over 120 attendees should have at least three musicians. Other instruments that make up traditional barn dance bands include mandolin, banjo, accordion, pennywhistle, flute, and cello. Brass instrument players must be very good in order to play in the keys that fiddlers tend to use.
A sound system for a big crowd will cost an additional amount, though it may be included in the band's fee if they bring a system. Sometimes, however, if the hall's acoustics are good, only the caller needs a microphone.
In the 1800s and 1900s, dance orchestras from New England typically included fiddles, coronet [sic], and string bass. Today, a nice full sound is provided by two fiddles, string bass, piano, and accordion.
The opening preference against recorded music is very strong, and is consistent with a vague memory I have of Dudley saying something along the lines of that he'd rather dance to an out of tune fiddle played by someone who only knew one tune than any recording. This is the kind of "live music above all else" push that Enid Cocke was reacting to.
At the same time, the context here is a book that has "With Calls & Fiddling" right in the title. It ships with "Two CDs of authentic fiddle tunes for many of the dances with the calls on one track followed by the music track without calls." So there's still some pragmatism: in practice most of the teachers this book is aimed at will be facilitating dancing to recorded music. And the authors accept this:
Eventually, the day will come when you simply pick up one of the CDs, hit "Play," and, without even opening the book, see everyone start dancing, regardless of whether it's you doing the calls, or Dudley, or no one calling—which is the way it always was, because everyone knew the dances.
I was glad to see them push, though, for getting students playing for dancing:
Older orchestra students, especially those in middle school and above, can learn to play music for a dance. In fact, string students and their teachers can meet national standards of the American String Teacher Association by playing fiddle tunes and learning the dances in a mainstream classroom setting. It is crucial to keep the music at dance tempo, as heard on the CDs that accompany this book, since a slow tempo drags the dancing down and thus tends not to work. (For this reason, younger students, who struggle to play the tunes up to tempo, may need to wait a few years before playing music for a dance.)You may find students eager to play for your dance or to hold a dance for themselves and take turns playing the music. Having older students play while younger ones dance can inspire the young ones to practice their fiddle tunes and learn to play for a dance like the big kids. Let them experience being part of living history as the fiddling tradition continues and is passed down to the next generation—themselves!
Overall this wasn't really the book for me, nor was I the intended audience. But Dudley and Jacqueline's extensive experience with barn dance crowds did come through the overly formal prose, and I do now have a citable source for something close to my memory of Dudley's very strong preference for live music.
[1] Very nearly to the day. If I were a more patient blogger I would
have waited a week to be able to make it an even twenty.
2026-07-20 21:00:00
Our kids like listening to music on their tablets, and we decided it's worth it to pay some money so they can make playlists and don't need to listen to ads. A family account makes sense if you're more than one person, and we ended up with Amazon somewhat randomly. I've been poking around: the personalization features are pretty terrible, and they have a major artist conflation problem.
When you first show up it asks you to pick some artists to seed your experience with. I put in the first few bands that came to mind:
I would also have included some bands like Nightingale and Nova, but since these are common band names there wasn't any way for me to find the right artist profile in search, so I left them out initially. I also got bored quickly: please don't take this as an exhaustive list of my favorite bands!
I felt like I'd picked out a pretty clear "modern contra dance music" cluster in musician space, so I was disappointed when these were my first five "My Soundtrack" recommendations:
![ICONIC BY MISTAKE
[Explicit], LESSERAFIM, ILLIT, & KATSEYE](https://www.jefftk.com/amazon-music-recommendation-3-big.png)
These are... nothing like the cluster my selections were pointing at. Recommendations should not be that hard anymore; a small cheap LLM (ex: Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite or Claude Haiku 4.5) would do far better. Actually, let's try them. Asking "If someone liks Airdance, The Free Raisins, Crowfoot, Perpetual e-Motion, Great Bear, Kingfisher, and Buddy System, what other artists might they like?" Gemini suggests Pete's Posse, Elixir, KGB, Hotpoint String Band, and Toss the Possum; Claude suggests Elixir, The Stringrays, The Moving Violations, Nor'easter, Gallimaufry, Wake Up Robin, Countercurrent, and Giant Robot Dance. These are great suggestions; I like all of these bands, and they're clearly within the cluster.
It's easy for me to just not use Amazon's auto-playlists, but it turns out they're also pretty confused about artists. For example, here's the search results I see for a band I know well:
Makes sense! We're not the first people to think "Kingfisher" would make a good band name. But then when I select what looks like the right one, I see it's actually conflated us and another band:
Getting these right can't be that hard; I've never seen this problem on Spotify (and it gets this one right: us, them). It's also not just Kingfisher: part of why I couldn't find the right Nova is that they've been mixed in with dozens of other artists, and incorrectly styled as "NoVa":
And "Great Bear" is mostly some other band with twenty AI-generated covers:
Crowfoot, Nightingale, and Buddy System too:
In fact, of the nine bands I originally thought to include (Airdance, The Free Raisins, Nightingale, Crowfoot, Nova, Perpetual e-Motion, Great Bear, Kingfisher, Buddy System), only two (the Free Raisins and Perpetual e-Motion) had a single coherent artist entity. I've started the process of trying to claim the Amazon artist profile for Kingfisher so I can clean our piece of this up, though I'm a bit grumpy about needing to.
This is mostly just me complaining, because I don't expect to use this much (I usually listen to freely available podcasts if I listen to anything), but it's depressingly low quality work from Amazon. I do also wonder if some of the reason their recommendations are so off is that they're extrapolating from very poorly-defined clusters.
(We've since unsubscribed due to a different set of problems, where for kids under 13 to use a family account on a tablet it has to be an Amazon Fire one.)
2026-07-19 21:00:00
I like to play multiple instruments at once, and really enjoy how this lets me create a fuller musical picture. Sometimes this looks like mandolin + foot drums + bass whistle:
Or guitar + foot bass + singing:
Or piano + foot drums + talkbox:
People often hear what I'm doing with Kingfisher and ask how it works, but when I show them they say they couldn't do it because they're not good enough at multitasking. But I didn't start off being able to do this either, and it's a skill you can learn.
If you're not convinced of that, consider organ. There are maybe a million people who have learned how to play separate keyboards with both hands, and a third keyboard with their feet, all while moving between settings ("stops"). And piano, where the left hand and right hand do very different things, probably has tens of millions of players. So if you're interested in learning how to do this, you probably can: this is within the general capabilities of humans.
This kind of multitasking is all something I taught myself, so there may be better paths, but here's what I do. The core of it is that I have much more physical ability to do things than conscious attention to coordinate them with. So I need to get aspects of my playing out of my conscious attention, to where I can control them as larger chunks that I can combine it with other uses of my conscious mind. When I have something I want to push down to my body like this I use three steps. I play it:
In isolation, until it's solid. I start with something very simple, because recovering from errors would require moving back to conscious attention.
While distracting myself with something non-musical. This forces my body to figure out how to continue the physical action with minimal demands on my conscious attention. And if I fail at that the music will audibly stumble.
In combination with other musical actions. There seem to be parts of my brain that are only for music, and in this step I'm forcing these actions to learn to share.
For example, when I was trying to learn how to play left-hand rocking octaves on piano at the same time as right-hand chords, I started by just doing the left hand. Initially I wasn't very good at it, and it took my full mental capacity to keep it going. As I got better, I started intentionally distracting myself. I'd typically read: the goal was to move the action down a level, the way walking is, so I could free up my conscious attention for something else. Then, once I could continue a solid left hand while reading, I'd start combining it with right hand playing. This was harder, since both draw on the musical parts of my brain, but still less work than if I'd skipped the distraction stage.
It's critical to break each of these steps across multiple sessions. Learning doesn't just happen while practicing: there's a consolidation that happens between sessions, where something that was just out of reach at the end of the last session often comes easily the next time. If you try and push rapidly through the stages before there's been time for that consolidation, you'll probably get frustrated.
A related kind of multitasking I've worked on is talking while playing. It feels like I've just always been able to do this, but Julia reminded me I used to practice playing chords on mandolin while trying to have a conversation with her. I'd play a very simple pattern, one that was so simple it used as little conscious capacity as possible, and try to talk. Initially, as soon as the rhythm of the speech conflicted with the rhythm of the instrument I'd mess up one or both, but over time I got smoother at both. I'd always prioritize keeping the mandolin steady, since in all the circumstances where I planned to use this it was much more important for the music to be consistent. Over time I got to where I could fluently call chords, and even discuss more complex musical plans (usually with Amy).
Overall, I'm much worse at multitasking when playing melody. I used to think that this was because I've always been a much stronger rhythm player, but this is also a pattern I see in others: seeing fiddlers struggle to get a single word out while playing can be pretty funny. Testing just now with my fiddle and playing an easy tune, I can talk about anything but there are small gaps in my speech. On a tune that's closer to the edge of my ability I can feel that my concious mind is needed to keep it all going, and if I try to talk anyway the tune falls apart. When I'm calling while playing at parties I do a mix of simple tunes and falling back to rhythmic shuffles while getting words out. It helps that I'm doing easy dances and don't need many words. When I think about my model of multitasking it makes sense that melody would be harder: it's going to be easier to offload something to my fingers if it's simpler and repetitive, and that's usually not what you want in a melody! So I'd recommend starting with offloading accompaniment.
If all of this sounds too hard, the simplest accompaniment of all is stomping your foot in time with the music. It's moderately musical on its own, a gateway to various forms of percussive accompaniment, and helps you avoid mental patterns where you produce syncopated rhythms by stretching your sense of time instead of playing with where the notes land.
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2026-07-15 21:00:00
I've been reading a lot of older writing, trying to understand how and why contra dance ended up with a strong and near-exclusive live music tradition when many other dance forms switched over to recorded music. One of the more interesting ones I came across is a series of three letters (1985, 1988, 1992) from Enid Cocke, President of the Lloyd Shaw Foundation, tracing the evolution in her attitude towards this question.
Lloyd Shaw was the superintendent of the Cheyenne Mountain School in Colorado Springs, who documented traditional Western square dancing in his book Cowboy Dances and kicked off what became Modern Western Square Dancing. This is a branch of the tradition that has gone in a very different direction from traditional contras and squares: instead of a simple form danced to live music with 10-25 regionally varying calls that welcomes people who've never danced before, MWSD has 100-400+ (depending on level) highly standardized and formalized calls, with classes, and is nearly always danced to recorded music. I have several friends that love it, especially at the high levels where they say it's a lot like collaborative physical puzzle solving.
Shaw died in 1958, however, after the introduction and spread of recorded music but before most of these other changes. I do suspect he wouldn't have been a fan: he'd say "keep it simple, keep it folk."
His wife, Dorothy Shaw, continued organizing dances, and in 1964 she and others founded the Lloyd Shaw Foundation to continue this work. The Foundation ended up in an interesting position between the worlds of MWSD and traditional contras and squares. They used recordings, going back to the early days of the western square dancing revival, but at the same time they were attempting to carry on a folk tradition. Since 1979 they've been publishing a quarterly magazine, American Dance Circle, and looking through the archives, there was clearly a significant debate happening in the Foundation's community in the late 1980s and early 1990s on how to approach live music.
I was especially interested to see three articles by Foundation president, and the Shaws' granddaughter, Enid Cocke. The first, in November 1985, is a strong defense of recorded music (The American Dance Circle Vol 6 No 4):
...Another issue that stimulates endless debate is whether to use live or recorded music. It is certainly the most wonderful situation if you have expert musicians who can play any tune you want and do it at the tempo you want. But I have been to dances where the musicians were inexpert and had a limited repertoire, and this clearly detracted from the quality of the evening. Because the music is so important to the dance, I just cannot accept the view that any live music is better than recorded music.
Rather than turning our backs on modern technology, I would make creative use of it. Thus at our dance weeks we can dance to the best New England and French Canadian contra dance music and the finest Scottish and English dance orchestras. Thanks to Bill Johnston's efforts we have available to us tapes of all the music recorded by the great Harry Davidson orchestra. With records we can do any round dance and singing call; in my experience it is often the rounds that get neglected when a live band is playing. And of course folk dances often require special instrumentation and musical styles that cannot be reproduced by a band that is used to playing only hoedowns, jigs, and reels.
Last weekend some of us from this area who had been together at Granby gathered for a dance reunion in our hostess's basement. We had an elegant time doing our favorite dances, all of which had beautiful music. We should be grateful for the technology that makes such an evening possible. And we should resolve as leaders to make even better use of our treasure trove of recorded music.
Three years later, in September 1988, she wrote another letter. After a great experience with Glen and Judi Morningstar's mentoring, she's now much more positive on live music (American Dance Circle, Vol 9 No 3):
...In the past few years we have tried to respond to suggestions that we provide some live music. We began first with volunteers and without adequate amplification, but this year we took a quantum leap forward. We had better equipment, but much more important, we had Glen and Judi Morningstar from Pontiac, Michigan. What talented musicians and gracious people they are! They made an enormous contribution by educating musicians, dancers, and leaders about the uses of live music.
Those of us who played in the band--Randy and Carol Barnes, Dale Sullivan, Holly Baker, Don Armstrong, and the Cockes and Litchmans--appreciated the Morningstars' musicianship and tact. I for one learned a lot about the making of good dance music. Another dance leader commented that he had received an education in working with musicians. Many of us are called upon to call with live music. Now we know of steps we can take to insure that the band will have an adequate repertoire and to establish a danceable tempo.
In the continuing debate about live music versus recorded music, Glen Morningstar presented a very reasonable response: The Lloyd Shaw Foundation should be the organization that combines the two. Recordings provide variety of sound and style while live music can provide spontaneity and flexibility. Why not combine the best of both?
....
Four years later, in December 1992, she wrote a third letter. Here she talks about how happy she is that the dance community now has so many great musicians who can play for dancing ( American Dance Circle, Vol 13 No 4):
...We all know quality when we see it. In dance it is that wonderful experience when music, choreography, calling, and dancing come together and make something that is more than the sum of its parts. In a single word, it is joy.
Unfortunately, we sometimes are more aware of quality by its absence. It is possible for people to embrace everything that seems "folksy" and to forget about what constitutes quality. I have encountered people who contra dance a few times and then write down a few contras on 3 x 5 cards and feel equipped to call a contra dance. They have no sense of the musical phrase, and soon the dance and the melody part company. The caller is ready to call the beginning of the dance sequence, but the band hit the beginning of the music a dozen bars ago. It is a punishing experience for anyone who has experienced a well-timed contra.
Ten years ago I felt that the missing element in the quality equation was often the music. In insisting on live music, people were inclined to think that any live music was better than recorded music even if the band couldn't play up to speed and knew only ten tunes. Now we seem to have a wealth of competent, experienced dance musicians. In some cases a band may be the starting point for a contra group. The musicians want to play for dancers, so they draft a caller or become callers themselves so that they can play for dancers.
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Looking over this progression, and the rest of the folk revival, it seems likely to me that the music Cocke dismisses as low-quality was a necessary prerequisite of the thriving live music tradition she's now glad to see. I suspect the people in the community who pushed hard for live music, including accepting tradeoffs like small repertoires and amateur musicianship, set up the conditions to restore live dance music as a core component of the living tradition. The "wealth of competent, experienced dance musicians" she celebrates in 1992 grew out of communities that had been willing to dance to bands that couldn't play hard stuff up to speed and played the same ten tunes every time. I'm sure this wasn't all of it: folks working hard to become better musicians, and better dance musicians, must also have been critical. To become good at playing for dancers, however, you have to play for dancers, and that means a community that is accepting of people at a range of stages along their musical journey.