Northern Week 2000: At the concluding dance.
Photo by Jay Ungar.


In matters of attire, dance camp can be pretty relaxed.



 



At a birthday party across the road in Vansbro, Sweden, March 2000. My host Staffan Wrange with guitar. We played American music for his neighbors.
Photo by Anita Wrange.

 

Somewhat More Recently



La Bastringue at the Stroke of Midnight, New Year’s Eve 1999 - 2000 at the Guiding Star Grange Hall.


Photo by Ray Sebold

I'm the caller and primary organizer of the 2nd, 4th, and 5th Friday contra dances at the Guiding Star Grange Hall in Greenfield, Massachusetts. I've been doing this since the fall of 1980.

How much longer am I going to be doing it? Good question ... stay tuned.

I also call and/or play in other settings: Schools, libraries, private events (parties, weddings, funerals, etc.), village fairs, and more. I'm able to call and play at the same time and lead dances as a solo fiddler/caller, sort of like what one thinks of as a "dancing master" of the nineteenth century. I know a goodly number of easy circle, longways set, and contra dances and singing games which are well suited to situations where total beginners of any and all ages take part. Many of these events are outside the regular contra dance scene. I love working in them and believe that they're the source of many of the contra dancers of the decades to come.


Where Am I?

I live in Montague Center, Massachusetts.

In a larger sense, I see myself as a member of a number of social dance scenes in New England, New York State, and the Northwest.

I keep practicing and learning other people’s favorite tunes, hoping I can stay on people’s lists as a hirable musician. When I'm over 90 years old, I'd like to be playing and calling and considered a solid band member and not a creaky and grouchy old relic being dusted off for "legacy" events, nostalgia trips, or homage to the past.

In the short term, I plan to simply do more of _everything_…including, by the way, something I did prolifically until the spring of 2002: Drawing and lettering dance publicity flyers by hand. In the tough times which followed, I abandoned my drdawing table, light box, pens, and drawing tools for a scanner, keyboard, and mouse. Now, I'm trying to get my old skills back.

Like so many other fiddlers back in the early 1970s, I listened to the old Folkways recording of Björn Ståbi and Ole Hjorth and thought it interesting but not an immediate priority for my own playing.

This changed completely in August of 1978. The Green Mountain Volunteers, with me on board as one of the musicians, embarked on a European tour which included 7 days at the International Festival of Folklore and Folkdance in Burgas, on the Black Sea in Bulgaria.

I could write a lot about this tour, but not here and now.

Suffice to say that the GMV and the Swedish group Västerdala Folkdanslag ("western-Dalarna folk dance group") met there and shared many amazing experiences. At the conclusion of the festival, addresses and invitations were copiously shared, and, in February of 1979, I was the first member of either group to follow up. I spent two life-changing weeks with my newfound friends in Vansbro, Äppelbo, Dala-Järna, and other towns along the long, winding Västerdalälven.

I've been back there eight times, including lengthy spring-summer stays in 1981 and 1984, by which time I had become somewhat conversational in Swedish.

Life has been too complicated for frequent visits there, but I'm glad to report that in March of 2007, I finally got to spend three wonderful weeks in Sweden. Every time I've visited there, I've intended to make great leaps in musical knowledge and skill. But in fact, as major as it is, music is still but one interest among many: Skiing, running, eating, drinking, spending time with friends who don't play much music (if any), and soaking up other aspects of places and people. For better or for worse, if you hear me playing Swedish music, you're hearing not just notes, techniques, or specific tunes, but also echoes of my experiences on hiking and running trails, in ski tracks in deep forests and high mountains, and in living rooms and kitchens.

As Bertil Ferneborg said to our musicians' class at Northern Week, years ago, on the subject of quantitative vs. qualitative development: "Some people collect tunes like they collect stamps". Rather than spend money I didn't have on costly classes with big-name musicians, I found myself falling in love with the music of the local musicians' groups and getting most of my repertoire, stylistic influence, and overall inspiration from them in their own surroundings.

Around my own country, calling and playing with local folks, I've had the great good fortune to cultivate many delightful and fruitful musical associations. A way too short list: Bill Olson and Pam Weeks of Scrod Pudding in Maine; Rebecca McCallum and Jane Knoeck in Rochester, NY; Ted Crane, Pam Goddard, and Nancy Spero in Ithaca; George Wilson, Toby Stover, and Bill Spence of Fennig's All Star String Band in the Albany area; Anne Maroney in Buffalo; Beth Robinson in Potsdam; Rex Blazer in Juneau; Cathie Whitesides, Laurie Andres, Jon Singleton, Anita Anderson, Eric Schlorff, Margie Katz, KGB's Julie King, Dave Bartley, and Claude Ginzburg, and the inimitable Les Fab Girls du Ouest Coast in Seattle; Fred Nussbaum, George Penk, Sue Songer, Lanny Martin, Kathleen Towers, Erik Weberg, and Dave Goldman in Portland, Oregon.

In a special place all by themselves are Lissa Schneckenburger and Corey DiMario, two of the best musicians and nicest people with whom I've ever worked. No fiddler, however skilled, has ever filled me with such delight. Corey's bass and tenor guitar accompaniment are terrific, and he adds a singular mixture of enthusiasm, confidence, and calm to the stage.

Uncountable good experiences come my (and many others') way because of Paul Rosenberg. Whether dancing, calling dances, organizing events, acting as a communications link between practitioners of the folk arts and people who want to partake of them, or just plain being a good host, great friend, and delightful running partner, Paul figures hugely in my well being and others'.

A great many musicians, dancers, artisans, craftspeople, and thousands of their Hudson and Connecticut River Valley comrades and constituents have created, contributed to, and benefited from the extraordinary annual Dance Flurry celebration and reunion in Saratoga Springs. This has been made possible by the herculean labors of a select crew of energetic visionaries of which Paul is a charter member..

For four or five years, starting in the late 1980s, the cheerless and dispiriting interiors of the Farnsworth Elementary School were filled with color, music, stories, song, dance, laughter, and comaraderie...an uplifting manifestation of what a school could become in which few associated with the school bothered to take part. Presumably, many of the school's personnel and members of its community of parents and students thought us and our activities strange and less attractive than TV and the Crossgates Mall. That the Flurry flourished there is a credit to everyone involved with it.

As I recall, structural problems forced the school to close its large activity spaces and the Flurry to go house-hunting at the eleventh hour in 1994. Thanks to the resourceful efforts of Paul and his colleagues, the Flurry relocated to downtown Saratoga Springs and has been evolving and thriving there ever since.

Not only is it a vibrant celebration of music, dance, and the participatory folk arts; not only is it a working musician's investment in his or her own future; it also helps its musicians pay some bills in the here and now.

I do not know how much of this is due to Paul's vision and values, but I believe he has had a great deal to do with it. All of this has to do with the contra dance I composed in his honor, which is on my "compositions" page.

I'm deeply grateful to Bob Dalsemer and the staff at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. The Folk School is a magically inspiring place and some of the magic rubs off on us and on our students. I think we contribute a little magic of our own as well. I've been privileged to be on staff for all nine Contra Dance Musicians' Weeks as well as other events there.

I am only one of many American contra dance musicians who have been greatly helped and profoundly inspired by Northern Week at Ashokan. For two decades, the vision and skill of Jay Ungar's and Molly Mason's leadership have sent joy, excellence, commitment, and passion rippling outward over the Northeast and beyond.

My own commitment to Northern Week extends back to the summer of 1983. Then, there were only a few activities on the schedule, facilities were primitive and cramped, folks got dressed up and paddled out on the lake in canoes (actually, I got undressed and swam) to drink gin-and-tonics and listen to the music session on shore, and no one had ever imagined an all-comers' ensemble playing a Swedish walking-tune in a procession from a dining hall to a dance pavilion.

What a week it was! And what a week it has been every year ever since. Facilities are less primitive and cramped; gin and tonics and other libations have disappeared; we aging veterans are going to sleep earlier and foregoing some of the late-night shenanigans and dissipation which are now carried out by younger campers. But the magic endures. So does my gratitude to Jay, Molly, and all the musicians and dancers who have made that week into so great an annual gathering.

Thanks to you all for taking me in, putting me up, involving me in your lives, catching me up in your inspirations, and including me in your gigs.

Like innumerable contra dancers, musicians, and callers, I am deeply indebted to the Guiding Star Grange organization and the musicians and dancers who strive to keep Greenfield's grange hall open to music and dancing.

In 1980, some of Greenfield's once-a-month dances were so small that the fiddle-case by the door never accumulated much money. The Grangers, hoping we would endure, lowered the rent. In 1985, my dance had grown so much that I raised it! In 2000, with dances happening at least two nights of nearly every weekend, I raised it yet again. I saw it as investing in the resource of a nice hall. Because of being both a longtime renter and a member of the Grange, I have a firsthand, up-close perspective on what the building needs and costs…trust me: It's a lot.

That we plan on being stewards of this great place for decades to come is due to a lot more than good luck. It results from a confluence of feelings, wishes, ideas, visions, values, hard work, and a dance scene replete with greathearted people. Contra dancing in Greenfield is physically positioned to thrive and evolve. Whether and how it does so is up to us.

Being a Grange member has put me in touch with a century and a half of the growth and development of a very interesting organization. The relationship between a local Grange and the social and political landscapes of its own immediate area and the country as a whole is ripe with potential for activism for innumerable good causes. Contrary to many perceptions and assumptions, the Grange has to do with much more than farming and rural community life.

I joined the Greenfield and Montague Center Granges and became an elected Montague Town Meeting Member in order to be involved with nearby people in nearby activities, concerns, and processes. We dancers and musicians who joined the Grange did so for several reasons, one of which was earning roles in policy- and decision-making relative to our dance halls. For some of us, another reason was our interest in the Grange organization itself and the chance to be involved in it with friends and colleagues both old and new.