Earlier this year I got a permanent job that has me in the car an hour each way to get to work. (Fortunately, it's against traffic.) As such, I've gotten to listen to many hours of local radio morning shows on my commute in.

Anna Kendrick's song "Cups" came on the radio sometime this spring (not just the one-minute version she did in Pitch Perfect and several talk shows to promote the same, a full-length radio edit).

In a surprisingly intelligent comment made on one of the morning shows, one of the hosts mentioned that the song was not in fact "new," per se, but was an update of a song that originated in the first part of the 20th century.

Oh really? think I. I'll have to go look that up.

So I did, and discovered that yes, in fact, Kendrick's version is in fact a remake of Lulu and the Lampshades (now apparently known as Landshapes)' single from 2009, which was adapted a song from earlier last century (c. 1931) by the Carter Family.

When I got home, I mentioned this to Steve. He was promptly rather perturbed -- apparently he had been thinking about working up the Lulu and the Lampshades version as a song to lead at song circles, but now felt that he couldn't because it was a song that was popular on the radio. When I asked him why it makes a difference, he said that "No one goes to a song circle wanting to hear something that they can already listen to ten times a day on some pop station. One of the big thrills of a circle is getting to hear songs you enjoy that you would otherwise never hear anywhere else."

Honestly, I suspect that a fair lot of the popularity of the Kendrick version revolves around the fact that she was in the Twilight movies and her career is continuing from that basis.

But, somewhat cynical blogger opinion aside, it’s really rather interesting that the song has come into the mainstream vogue in that way, and that because of that it could end up out of favor in some song circles. Because it’s on the radio, and as a result is now everywhere, it’s no longer one of the things that folkies are looking for in the song circles and such that are more away from the mainstream.

There is this odd sense of “Othering” that I’ve found comes to and from the contra community (and perhaps the folkie community in general), and while sometimes they can reflect various community values (e.g.,: most contra events are alcohol-free; most contra events try to make a point of using local talent as well as getting some touring folks, when they’re available), sometimes they can feel a bit arbitrary (e.g., if one finds it in “mainstream” culture and therefore it is inherently inferior and has nothing to offer the Tradition).  Adding a conventionally pretty, known face to an old song and making a radio edit that is then played on pop stations a lot can both make a song relevant to a new audience and doom it in the folkie circles for being, in some ways, “not Other enough” to make it acceptable. (As posited before, to me this seems to be more of an aesthetic issue than anything else, but that’s a tangent here.)

At the same time, part of the reason that contra dancing isn’t more popular is because of this “Otherness.” It is, for good or for ill, associated with other forms of folk dance in the public imagination and as such is not appealing to several potential audiences out there. At the same time, suggestions that contra events could or should be advertised “to the gen pop” is met with a somewhat unfavorable reaction. So there is a tension...how to keep an event “Other” enough that it is appealing to the current folks (who like it as something “Other”) and how to keep an event accessible enough that you get new people in and keep the community sustainable.

In marketing we talk about finding your target audience and getting your information into the streams where they get their information. But, while the community knows it needs to do it, is that something that they really want to stretch themselves to do? Are they willing to sacrifice a little “Otherness” to gain some of the mainstream attention? Whether or not they can or wish to, should they do so, and to what degree?

I don’t have an answer to that, but I’m certainly willing to hear what other folks think.

The discussion about advanced-only dances last week made me start thinking about new dancers, and my experience as a new dancer in mid-2007.

The short version of why I started dancing is that I reached a time in my life where I really needed to get out of the house and so I weighed a few options in my head and some friends in college had gone contra dancing so I Googled "contra dance washington dc" and found Glen Echo. Unfortunately, it was a Saturday when I did this, so I resolved to go the following Friday night, figuring that if I made a complete and total jerk of myself that I didn't have to go back and I didn't know anybody there so it didn't really matter. Besides, it would make a decent story to tell later, regardless. (Actually, that last bit is the reason I do lots of things.)

(Perhaps this should be subtitled, "In Which The Blogger Kicks A Hornet Nest.")

There are various threads around the web lately about outreach to new dancers (and ways to revamp how we approach beginners), or the importance of feeding your local dance community as well as the snazzy dance weekends that tend to self-select for advanced dancers.

I've gotten into conversations with folks about public advanced dances lately as well. To be clear, I'm not talking about private parties, dance weekends, many one-off techno contras, or all-day days of dance (all of which tend to self-select for advanced dancers). I'm referring to the regular nights of dancing (~3 hours) that are publicly advertised, but are advertised as "experienced dancers only please; new dancers are welcome next week" types of things.

I'm actually wondering a bit about their existence in the first place. I have yet to hear a reason for them (and here's where y'all can help me) that doesn't boil down to some variant of, "...because dancing with newbies sucks."

It's also entirely possible that I'm missing something here, and that there is an angle of this that I have overlooked entirely. (I hope so; I'm having a viscerally negative reaction to the reason cited above.)

So I'm using one of the perks of being a blogger and crowd-sourcing this for my own edification: if you're in favor of publicly-advertised "advanced-dancer only" dances, could you kindly clarify why? I want to see both sides of it.

Full disclosure: Steve and I did not go to the one-off "advanced dance" at Glen Echo last month, but that was more a result of its happening when we had other stuff going on than really a conscious choice either way (beyond "we are not cancelling our previously-made plans in order to attend").

(A Guest Post by Steven “Trouble” Roth.)

One expects to hear certain kinds of music when at a folk festival. While at the Washington Folk Festival this past weekend I quickly found myself immersed in many different styles, from Bluegrass to Balalaikas to Blues to Balkan. As I came around a certain corner of Glen Echo Park this past Sunday afternoon, however, instead of banjos I heard beatboxing.

Meet Christylez Bacon. On the surface, all you might see is a straight-up hip-hop artist who’s flow and playfulness is eerily reminiscent of Andre 3000. You might ask yourself (as I did, however fleetingly), “What’s a hip-hop artist doing at a folk festival?” But look again: that’s a string section backing him up on stage. They are the Washington Sound Museum (his back-up band), with one person playing an electric violin and another on electric cello. Over the next several numbers, he shows that he’s just as comfortable on guitar and djembe as he is improvising rhymes using words shouted out by the audience. It is quickly apparent that this guy is extremely talented. In this somewhat unexpected venue, he appears completely at ease and in his element. He gets this crowd, and the audience responds to that. This is a performer who is completely at home at a folk festival.

Make no mistake -- Christylez Bacon IS a hip-hop artist. He is a born-and-bred native of Washington, DC and you can tell when you hear him lay out a beat on his djembe that go-go music runs in his blood. His musical “mentor” is none other than local luminary Bomani Armah. (You don’t recognize the name? He’s also known as D’Mite, who achieved viral success with his “Read a [M************] Book.” Google it, but not at work or around small ears -- the language in the song is decidedly NSFW.) He also fully embraces 21st-century methods for his craft, running his show off of his iPad on stage, complete with mixing mic levels, looping tracks, and playing beat tracks while his hands are busy playing guitar.

But is it folk? Oh yes. When it comes down to it, Christylez is an extremely organic performer. While his music starts with hip-hop as its foundation, he is also eager to include elements of many other styles of music in his performance as evidenced by the fiddle and cello additions. He struck me as the kind of music nerd who could sit down and enjoy any music you put in front of him, no matter the genre (and maybe even improvise the style into his next performance). Most importantly , however, is just how present he is with his audience while he performs. When I saw him perform, I saw something magical happen; he has the ability to bring in all of the audience members and make them feel like they are part of the music as it is being created. The performance would have been a different thing had any one person in the audience been added or taken away. In that moment, he created music that will never occur the same way again because it was the product of that unique moment in time and those people who happened to be present.

Sounds like folk music to me.

When I arrived at the festival, I had not been expecting to hear rap or hip-hop being performed. To be honest, it is not a musical genre that I had ever directly associated with the folk tradition in my own thinking. However, by including live instrumentation and by bringing the audience into his performance in a participatory manner, I see this falling under the same umbrella of folk music. He may have taken a different path to get there than we are used to seeing, but he does get to the same place; I am reminded of how DJs and other artists have been approaching crossover contras from paths that are different from the usual acoustic bands, but it is still undoubtedly contra.

Steven is talent in the 100+ ContraSycretist YouTube Friday Flourish videos and is a former member of the Folklore Society of Greater Washington's board. Many thanks to him for sharing his insights!

Christylez Bacon's web site may be found at www.christylez.com.

I'm still recovering from my trip to Atlanta, GA for Catapult! 2013 over Memorial Day weekend; it was great to meet a lot of you for the first time or for the nth time and to dance with a lot of you. I got there late on Friday night and went to go add some flyers to the flyer table and this sight greeted me:

I didn't have to bring my own stash this time, someone else had beaten me to it (or at least, saved some of last year's stack)!

You, too, can be part of Contra Syncretist's street team!

• print and take this flyer to dances (PDF format);
• like us on Facebook to keep up to date on new techo contra events when I hear about them;
• subscribe to the YouTube channel to be the first to know when we post new flourishes (i.e., come back from hiatus);
• promote us in your dance community;
• link to relevant ContraSyncretist entries in other spots; and
  
• chime in when you have opinions; a lot of what makes this site lots of fun for me (and hopefully for you) is the ongoing conversation.

Onward!