Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2025 16:09:40 +0000
Subject: [Callers] Re: working with inexperienced bands
Hi Joseph,
What is your musical experience/skill?
I have a music degree, have plied my trade in a few different areas of professional musicianship, and I've been working with live musicians (particularly young fiddlers who i see as the future and want to give performance opportunities to) for 10 years as a dance caller in an area with little-to-no contra dancing.
First off, I would get a sense of your musicians interest in the gig. Are they doing it for easy money? Are they genuinely interested to play for dancers and don't care how much they get paid? Are they making their living from gig work? Or is this something they do on the side for fun? Are they old-time experienced players? Or are they new upstarts, still forming their musical identity as a performer? Have they mastered their instruments or are they better-then-average amateurs? Answers to these questions can help set expectations for their commitment.
I can confidently say that the suggestion of sending musicians new tunes / resources a few weeks before the dance is not a welcome prospect and not setting them up for success. You should, instead, encourage new repertoire over a long period of time, and for the next show focus on what is in their current repertoire that will suffice for dances (if you want them to play for you again). It may seem an imposition, but if you can attend one of their rehearsals or jams, and ask to go through their repertoire, that would be best. Keep a few things in mind while doing so:
- No matter how experienced a fiddler is, playing for contra dances is a specific skill or knowledge base; don't be afraid to say that such-and-such doesn't work
- Some tunes sound fine but they're actually crooked and will not work for contra. You need to be able to detect these tunes to prevent them being programmed and ruining one of the dances. Crooked tunes in the contra dance realm take multiple forms: additional beats within a measure, yes, but also additional measures on a phrase. Phrases that are 4 or 12 beats long, and tunes that have more than 2 parts are particularly hard to detect. Your musicians may or may not know the difference or whether this is important or not (even if you're clear that 32 bars jigs and reels is what you're after, before hand).
- Different kinds of tunes work if the band is willing to play with the tempo. For example, jigs tend to be played faster than is comfortable for the dancers, so they need to be slowed down a touch, and polkas can also be played at a slower tempo. I suggest this to attempt to broaden the potential tunes that can be programmed while working within what they already know.
Also be respectful of different musicians abilities... Dave Brubeck couldn't read music, and some traditional musicians also never learned how to read music, picking up tunes by ear instead. If this is the case, sending tunes a few weeks before a show is simply not going to work. Musicians have their own culture apart from dancers, so temper your expectations and be patient and respectful.
Consider not hiring a "band" but hiring a fiddler. I don't know what the remote situation you're in is like, but if you have any professional musicians in your area, they should know how the gigs work. If you can find a single fiddler and hire them, they will find someone else to play with them as a duo or trio, as long as you explain what you're looking for (reels at 120 bpm, playing for dancers, etc.) and the pay. If you can pair less experienced musicians with more experienced musicians, this will benefit you in the long run, bringing up a new generation of fiddlers in this tradition. For example, many musicians have students. Ask if one of their students is up for the task of performing and they can join in on a few tunes. It also broadens your dance base when the parents come out and participate.
You'll want to go over with whomever you hire a series of signals that indicate "speed up", "slow down", "keep playing", "stop immediately" and "stop at the end of the phrase / last time".
You'll want to ensure that they start each tune with a 4 beat introduction ("Four for nothing" as Winton Marsalis says, and "Four potatoes" as is the phrase around here), which is a cue for you to cue the dancers. Musicians are NOT in the habit of doing this on their own, and waiting once through the tune instead is too long.
Forcing a square peg into a round hole is not what i would consider setting anyone up for success. Expecting your blue grass band to convert to a contra dance band lickity-split is, in my opinion, not a good approach. I would suggest letting it be what it's going to be. Maybe your group likes blue grass tunes, and you form a contra/bluegrass syncretism. This is part of the folk process. Everywhere, everyone, is different and cherishing that and encouraging appreciation is what i would consider setting people up for success - my previous recommendations and advice support this idea, I think. For example, in my area, fiddling is heavily influenced by many repertoires, particularly Metis, which was originally used for Metis step dancing. I doubt the Metis fiddle tunes get played anywhere else, but they make for excellent contra dance tunes with their own flare and feel. I'm leaning into this, it's part of the Manitoba sound!
Best of luck! Happy Dancing!
Greg, Winnipeg