8 minute read
Encouraging Musicians to Play for Classes
Susie Petrov is passionate about Scottish music and believes that dancing to musicians is much more fun that dancing to a machine. She has taught Scottish music and dance across the USA and Canada, as well as in Scotland and many other European countries.
Susie Petrov
Greetings dancers! What an exciting opportunity I have to write to you about something that has been an important part of my life for the last almost 50 years. As I write this, I am enjoying the music of Glasgow’s Celtic Connections exported around the world as so much of Scottish culture has been.
Our music and dance activities lay fallow this season. Perhaps it is a good time to contemplate how we are going to restart our dance groups and how we might attract more people to our most pleasurable pastime. People may well emerge from our current isolated situations hungry for a chance to participate in social dance.
I would like to focus on musicians who play for local classes and dances outwith Scotland. Did you know that many of these musicians are members of the RSCDS? So many of us found our way into dancing first and then picked up our instruments and figured out how to play our highly specialized form of music.
So, how did I fall into this subterranean current of Scottish dance that led to my life’s professional work researching, playing and teaching Scottish music? Like many of you, I had friends who discovered
a local class. After about six months, they dragged me along (under protest!) to my first summertime dance in suburban Washington, DC. I was hooked on the first night! In our last year of school, we had a gang of teens that went dancing every Tuesday night, dancing mostly with each other and sitting out the dances we felt didn’t merit our interest and participation.
When there is dancing, the RSCDS Boston Branch offers weekly classes, monthly parties, formal balls and a summer school with ‘live music.’ Why might your group want to encourage local musicians to play? I cannot use the old motivation for teachers, for all our music is digital and you don’t have to lug records and machinery to class every week. Teacher Ed Rawson once said, “It’s SO much more fun to clap to a person on stage than it is to clap to a tape recorder! ”
Boston Branch musicians performing remotely in June 2020
Here are stories of five RSCDS Boston Branch member musicians. It has been a 40-year effort, but now dancers insist that a party at our Pinewoods summer school is not complete unless our friends are playing on stage and then bringing their instruments along to enliven the afterparty gatherings.
Many players in North America have crossed musical paths with RSCDS member Barbara McOwen, including your humble author who moved to Boston to play in her band Tullochgorum in 1983. Her teacher, C. Stewart Smith, suggested she learn to play after she had become an accomplished dancer in the San Francisco Branch. She received an invitation, assembled an ensemble, practiced assiduously and made a triumphant début at the Asilomar Weekend. Barbara and Robert moved to Boston in 1979, but not before creating a dedicated group of musicians in California.
Fiddler Nora Smith began dancing as part of the century-long university folkdance tradition in the Delaware Valley Branch. She had learned violin in school. One night, she ’tweaked’ her ankle at an Irish dance and went along to the Scottish dance to listen to the music, do homework and socialize at tea. A Swarthmore College grad was leading a weekly music practice before the dance class. Nora and her friends who were nervous about playing for dancers would get together to practice the music before the weekly session to prepare! It helped her to be part of a group of students who played together.
Nora moved to Boston in 2010 where I promptly invited her to come play for my Fundamentals class. She writes, “Moving to a new place brings out all kinds of insecurities (“what if I don’t belong?”). Getting out and meeting the local RSCDS folks first thing made me feel like I had a place and community here.” She learned the importance of swing as a solo player for classes. She makes an interesting point.
Multi-instrumentalist Dirk Teide was not yet a dancer when he married Emily Peterson who had started dancing as a university student in the Delaware Valley Branch. Dirk had gone to university on a violin scholarship to play in the orchestra. When they moved to Boston in 2008 to start their professional careers, they already knew to look for a local dance community. They joined our Salem class and Dirk had some conversations with the teacher, Mary Ellen Scannell, about playing for dancing. Mary Ellen suggested he meet Dan Wheatley (non-dancing husband of member, Lucinda Brandt) and sit in for their next gig playing for the Salem Class party. Dirk was instantly hooked as a dancer and musician! Dirk plays guitar and fiddle and electric bass. He writes, “Playing for people and dances is a real treat. It fits my skills and interests perfectly, and has given me an opportunity to expand on my music in ways I never would have thought—putting together sets, learning accompaniment, music theory and chord structures, and playing instruments I love to play.”
Fiddler Sue Chari is one of the few people who did not encounter dancing first! A classical violinist, Sue played in a community orchestra that lost funding and folded. She had had the idea of playing Scottish fiddle music and joined the Boston Scottish Fiddle Club founded in 1981 (by fiddlers who were also Scottish country dancers!). Sue writes, “My introduction to Scottish country dancing was when Dan Wheatley invited me to play in his band in 2014. We rehearsed and you were the bandleader/teacher when we played for class and social hour. It was great fun to have people dancing to our music. Dan taught us the basic structure of the dances, how the music was organised, with a chord at the beginning and end, etc. I have learned a LOT about playing for dancing from you, both as a band-leader and also a dance teacher. Barbara McOwen also helped me early on. I learn so much just by playing alongside experienced dance musicians. I started Scottish country dancing a year or so after I started playing in Dan’s band. The dancing is fun and it’s another wonderful community to be a part of.”
Tom Pixton was a professional harpsichord player in his early musical life. His wife danced with different groups in the Boston area. He writes, “When a friend handed me their mother’s accordion, and I figured out how to put it on, it was an instant bond! I knew I had discovered my real instrument, the one I was meant to play.” He heard about the open band nights at the Boston Branch’s Cambridge class and went along. Tom continues, ‘I was given a sheaf of music and, being a good sight reader, I had no problem cranking through the tunes. What struck me was the fun everyone was having, what nice people they all seemed to be, and how much they liked the music. I started dancing. Before long, I had my ghillies, kilts, sgian dubh, and I was an RSCDS addict. At that very first dance, I played, and I was encouraged to come back as often as I could. Soon I was invited to be band-leader for a month. I enlisted a few fiddlers and cobbled together some sheet music. The dance organizers and attendees made me feel so welcome as they whooped and hollered their enthusiasm. I started cranking out more tunes and within a few years was playing paying gigs. When I was first asked to be Music Director for Pinewoods, I really felt like I had arrived! The dancing community and musicians couldn’t have been more wonderful. They have become part of my life!’
Tom Pixton: Band-leader and Scottish music enthusiast
What can we learn from our collective experience?
Idea 1 I suspect that 94% of the musicians in North America who play regularly for classes and parties started out as dancers first. The new musician can play for part of the evening and dance for the rest of the evening. We dancers are applauding our friends and fellow members of the RSCDS!
Idea 2 Teachers, you might well be the person who suggests to a dancer that they might like to learn to play for dancing.
Idea 3 Organizers, you and your group would need to commit to the idea of attracting not only new dancers, but new musicians.
Idea 4 Teachers, the dance musician needs to be able to play AND watch dancers at the same time as they learn to fit their music to the movement. Ask a new musician to play for a class and have them bring one jig, one reel and one strathspey. If your community is committed to encouraging musical members, then they won’t mind practicing steps and movements to one melody.
Idea 5 If you have a few musicians, encourage them to get together and practice tunes before a class. You might also tap into the idea of ‘open band’ where stronger melody and backup players sit up front and support new musicians sitting in the second row on stage.
‘But we don’t have musicians in our area!’ I have heard this lament from dance teachers over the last 40 years. I would like to suggest that most of us dance in urban or suburban areas where we all have another world export: classical music. Entice classical musicians to join your group.
Let’s start a conversation! Please email me with ideas, questions, thoughts, etc. If this topic interests you, it would be fun to travel virtually around the world and meet other local musicians.
Listen to RSCDS Boston Cambridge Class musicians: www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2ytAJap0lw
Listen to our California colleagues: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCMJLszNyoo
Listen to the Parcel of Rogues: Susie Petrov, Calum Pasqua, fiddle and Dan Houghton, pipes (who both danced in utero!) www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNkQ4JUEDEI
Contact Susie: susiepetrov@gmail.com www.susiepetrov.com
