[Musicians] Dots & Jigs

[Erik Hoffman]

Jigs have certainly not fallen out of the contra and New England square dance repertoire. Just listen to Rodney Miller, Mark Simos. Andre Brunet, Eden MacAdam-Somer, Claude Ginsberg, Cathy Whitesides, and many more modern contra dance musicians, and they'll mix jigs with reels, no problem. I realize that one problem with these Americans is, uh, happily, they're still alive.

But in the Trad Square world, such tunes have fallen out of favor. Kathy Anderson, that great square dance caller, said for Southern patter squares, "I call in 2/4, not in 6/8," thus a preference for reels for fast Southern squares. Other bands I work with never play jigs. At an early dance weekend I asked the band, who stuck with Old-Time reels, to play Rory O'More, as it's a great dance, and a wonderful tune. They grudgingly acquiesced, and threatened to do it, but with bags on their heads. I never asked them to play a jig again...

Here in the bay area, when our local David Brown is playing 5-string banjo, if a jig gets started he pulls our a flat pick and wails! Stefan Curl, another wonderful banjo player, has worked out jig playing claw-hammer style, as has virtuoso Steve Baufman.

I figured I can call in either 6/8 or (the more natural) 2/4.

I've often thought it was weird: play a recently composed tune by a died-in-the-wool "Old-Time" musician and it's "old-time." Play an Irish tune that's been played for more than a 100 years, and, well, it's not "Old-Time," it's Irish...

Erik Hoffman

-----Original Message-----
From: Musicians <musicians-bounces at lists.sharedweight.net> On Behalf Of Thomas Verdot via Musicians
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2019 5:32 PM
To: Meg Dedolph <meg.dedolph at gmail.com>
Cc: musicians <musicians at lists.sharedweight.net>
Subject: Re: [Musicians] Dots & Jigs

I used to play with a great banjo play (Clarke Buehling) who played jigs but getting them up to dance tempo doing any sort of down-stroke is hard.  It was done in the 19th century however & these show up in the old banjo tutors of that era.

Tom V.

On 5/17/2019 7:21 PM, Meg Dedolph wrote:
> you know, this is something I've wondered about as well. There's this 
> thread on the Fiddle Hangout that has people putting forth some ideas.
> https://www.fiddlehangout.com/archive/22858
> A couple people in that thread mentioned that jigs are hard to play on 
> clawhammer banjo, and so maybe that has to do with why they are not 
> really part of the old-time repertoire? That seems like a good theory 
> to me ....
> meg
> 
> 
> On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 7:15 PM Thomas Verdot via Musicians 
> <musicians at lists.sharedweight.net 
> <mailto:musicians at lists.sharedweight.net>> wrote:
> 
>     This is an aside from the conversation & I hesitate to start something
>     new that is bottomless, but since you mentioned it...
> 
>     Why have jigs been discarded over the decades by most "old time"
>     fiddlers?  They were certainly used by many up to the early part of the
>     20th century but in most places they have almost completely
>     disappeared.
>        I love starting a dance with a jig & transitioning to to a reel or
>     hornpipe (both as a player & a dancer).
> 
>     Regards, Tom Verdot
> 
>     On 5/17/2019 6:37 PM, Meg Dedolph via Musicians wrote:
>        But I made an offhanded comment about how a particular dance
>      > worked well with jigs and the fiddler recalled a New England jig
>     that he
>      > knew, but hadn't played for a while and decided to try it, but the
>      > guitarist was not comfortable backing jigs and ... the band did not
>      > sound as good on that tune as they did when they were playing
>     old-time
>      > reels.
>      > Meg
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