Recently I ended up sitting in for a little bit at a dinner with the members of traditional contra dance band Morning Star (Brendan Taaffe, Garrett Sawyer, and Geordie Lynd) and caller Anna Rain when they played and called the FSGW Sunday Night Dance. In the course of this, I told them about this site and we got into a little bit of the ongoing dialogue about what techno contras mean for the tradition. Brendan made a point that I think is worth considering:
He said that as a musician who performs live music for dances, one of his key concerns was dancers being aware of the band and the people who made it sound so great -- that he'd had the experience at a traditional contra when he'd been playing his heart out for the first half and then went for a drink of water, someone would stop him and ask him for the next contra as though they had no awareness that he was a member of the band and had just been providing that wonderful music they'd just been dancing to for the last couple of hours. This expanded into his view that using recorded music -- like a lot of techno and crossover contras do -- is a move in the wrong direction because in his mind it takes the dancers one more step away from the live music and appreciation of the people who make it. He said that personally he would like to see more awareness of the presence of the live music, rather than less as he sees happening when using recorded music.
I'm not sure what I think of that myself, to be honest. I appreciate that he was able to express his view to me and allow me to mention it here, and as he is a musician I could easily understand his bias, but given that I don't necessarily see recorded music taking the place of live music in the contra community as a whole (and many of the people I've talked to about this seem to agree that the two branches of the contra dance tradition can exist in parallel to each other) I'm not sure I see the same level of concern being necessary. I'm also not a musician, which may make a difference here as well.
I can, however, understand his concern about having the producers of the music be overlooked while dancers are caught up in the dance, which I will admit I've been guilty of in the past. Since talking to Brendan I've been trying to make a particular effort to show my appreciation for the music-makers, be they playing on instruments or mixing recorded tunes.
How about you all? What do you think of this? Does Brendan have a point?
I'm not sure what I think of that myself, to be honest. I appreciate that he was able to express his view to me and allow me to mention it here, and as he is a musician I could easily understand his bias, but given that I don't necessarily see recorded music taking the place of live music in the contra community as a whole (and many of the people I've talked to about this seem to agree that the two branches of the contra dance tradition can exist in parallel to each other) I'm not sure I see the same level of concern being necessary. I'm also not a musician, which may make a difference here as well.
I can, however, understand his concern about having the producers of the music be overlooked while dancers are caught up in the dance, which I will admit I've been guilty of in the past. Since talking to Brendan I've been trying to make a particular effort to show my appreciation for the music-makers, be they playing on instruments or mixing recorded tunes.
How about you all? What do you think of this? Does Brendan have a point?
