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Playing Music for Morris Dancing

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Playing Music for Morris Dancing Playing Music for Morris Dancing Jeff Bigler Last updated: June 28, 2009 This document was featured in the December 2008 issue of the American Morris Newsletter. Copyright c 2008–2009 Jeff Bigler. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. This document may be downloaded via the internet from the address: http://www.jeffbigler.org/morris-music.pdf Contents Morris Music: A Brief History 1 Stepping into the Role of Morris Musician 2 Instruments 2 Percussion....................................... 3 What the Dancers Need 4 How the Dancers Respond 4 Tempo 5 StayingWiththeDancers .............................. 6 CuesthatAffectTempo ............................... 7 WhentheDancersareRushing . .. .. 7 WhentheDancersareDragging. 8 Transitions 9 Sticking 10 Style 10 Border......................................... 10 Cotswold ....................................... 11 Capers......................................... 11 Accents ........................................ 12 Modifying Tunes 12 Simplifications 13 Practices 14 Performances 15 Etiquette 16 Conclusions 17 Acknowledgements 17 Playing Music for Morris Dancing Jeff Bigler Morris Music: A Brief History Morris dancing is a form of English street performance folk dance. Morris dancing is always (or almost always) performed with live music. This means that musicians are an essential part of any morris team. If you are reading this document, it is probably because you are a musician (or potential musician) for a morris dance team. Good morris musicians are not always easy to find. In the words of Jinky Wells (1868– 1953), the great Bampton dancer and fiddler: . [My grandfather, George Wells] never had no trouble to get the dancers but the trouble was sixty, seventy years ago to get the piper or the fiddler—the musician. Sometimes they had a very great difficulty in getting one, they’ve had one from Buckland, they’ve had one from Field Town. and they’ve had to go out here to Fairford and Broadwell and out that way to get a piper . 1 The best musicians knew the dances at least as well as the dancers. Jinky Wells re- membered his grandfather, George Wells, praising the playing of Richard Ford: . Dick Ford was the best fiddler we ever had. He was born and bred here [in Bampton] . He knew every movement in every dance. My grampy said he would make them do it right ... 2 In fact, “It appears that knowledge of the dance steps and movements and the ability to play . to accommodate and facilitate the execution of those features was considered more important by the participants themselves than the type of instrument used.”3 1“William Wells; Morris Dancer, Fiddler and Fool”, Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, VIII, (December 1956), p.4.19 2BBC interview with William Wells, 1943; transcript in Vaughan Williams Memorial Library; partial transcript published in Country Dance and Song, IV (1971). 3“150 years of fiddle players and Morris dancing at Bampton, Oxfordshire”, Musical Traditions No. 10, Spring 1992 June 28, 2009 Page 1 Playing Music for Morris Dancing Jeff Bigler Stepping into the Role of Morris Musician Even if you are already a morris musician, you may or may not be ready or able to step into all of the roles described above, but your team needs music, and that’s something that you’re one of the few people who can provide; in other words, your team needs you. One of the frustrating aspects of being a morris musician is that most of the dancers don’t really understand music. They can tell when the music is or isn’t doing what they need, but they don’t usually know enough to be able to articulate what’s wrong. Or worse yet, they may think they know exactly what’s wrong, but when you make whatever change they ask for, the problem doesn’t go away. They get more and more agitated, and keep telling you “You’re not doing what we want!” until you’re doing it in such an exaggerated manner that they shout, “Don’t be ridiculous! Now you’ve gone too far the other direction!” Unfortunately, although it is acceptable for a dancers to not understand the music, the musician doesn’t have the luxury of being ignorant of the dance. You may well be the only person who can understand both, so you absolutely need to become familiar with the dance and how the music fits with it. It is difficult if not impossible for a musician who has never morris danced to understand what makes the music “danceable.” The ideal morris musician should: 1. Listen to morris music, ideally in the context of a good dance performance. This is the best way to get a feel for the style. 2. Dance. Musicians should spend a minimum of 6–8 weeks learning the dances, and should be able to perform at least one dance competently. This is to get a feel for how the music fits the dance and what it feels like from the dancer’s perspective. (If you are physically unable to dance, you should go to practices and observe for several weeks, paying particular attention to the dancers and how they respond to the music.) 3. Learn and memorize the tunes, not just to the point where you can get through them, but to the point where you can play them effortlessly from memory. The less you need to think about (or worse yet, read) the music, the more you can watch the dancers and focus on creating the perfect blend of movement and sound. 4. Learn everything you can about morris music. Read about it. Talk with experienced morris musicians. Talk with experienced dancers. The more you know, the more you can do. 5. Experiment. After all, practices are for the musicians as well as for the dancers. (Just remember not to do this in a performance. The audience should be surprised, not the dancers!) Instruments Good morris musicians can convey a tune, tempo, and style on a wide variety of instruments, but there are a few caveats about instrumentation. June 28, 2009 Page 2 Playing Music for Morris Dancing Jeff Bigler Some common melody instruments that work well for morris include squeezebox (accor- dion, melodeon and concertina), whistle (pennywhistle and tabor pipe), and violin (“fid- dle”). Other less common instruments that I have seen work successfully include trombone, bassoon, and saxophone. In general, any instrument with the ability to change loudness (dynamics) and note length (staccato vs. legato) is likely to work. Some instruments (e.g., recorder and dulcimer) are simply too quiet to be heard out- doors over bells, sticks, and crowd noise. If the dancers and audience can’t hear the music, there’s not much point in having it. In addition, plucked instruments (e.g., guitar, man- dolin, banjo, and dulcimer) can be problematic because of the inability to change the note length. Most percussion instruments can be too loud and cannot convey a tune. Each of these instruments can add color and texture to the music, and there’s nothing wrong with adding them, provided that you already have a suitable melody instrument (and musician) that can do everything the dancers need. Percussion Percussion instruments can add a lot to a morris performance, but they create their own challenges. Percussion instruments by their nature play short (staccato) sounds. Short notes can be a profoundly effective way to adjust the tempo. (This will be discussed further later in the document.) This means that an inexperienced morris musician with a percussion instrument can profoundly affect the tempo unintentionally. In professional orchestras, percussionists need to be some of the best musicians. Their notes can be heard over the entire orchestra, and if they play even a few milliseconds before or after the beat, it will shift the entire orchestra. Similarly, among morris musicians, percussionists need to be excellent musicians. They should also be dancers themselves, or at least have a strong sense of what the dance feels like. The practice of handing a drum and stick to a non-musician for something to do during the performance can be substantially more detrimental than it would have been to hand the same person a fiddle. If a side uses percussion, the percussionists need to convey the beat. This does not mean playing 1–2–3–4 ad nauseum, but it does mean that embellishments need to happen in addition to the downbeats, not instead of them. Many good morris percussionists drum mostly with the dancers’ footfalls, adding embellishments like rolls or interesting rhythms to bring out certain aspects of the dance. These can be used effectively on an upbeat to add energy and excitement leading up to a caper in a Cotswold dance, or to impart energy to a surge or stick clash in a border dance. The best examples of this can be found by listening to a skilled pipe-and-tabor player. The Bodhran in particular deserves its own discussion. A well-played Bodhran is indeed a pleasure to listen to in the right context. However, the way the beater is used works well for fast rhythms and interesting rhythmic patterns, but it works poorly for keeping a strong beat. For this reason, I think the Bodhran should never be the only percussion instrument in a morris band, and that it should never be louder than the instrument that is keeping the beat. June 28, 2009 Page 3 Playing Music for Morris Dancing Jeff Bigler What the Dancers Need Other than just needing music to dance to, morris dancers have specific musical needs.
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