fi ddle and dance studies from around the north atlantic 4 R o u t e s & R oo t s edited by Ian Russell and Chris Goertzen ELPHINSTONE INSTITUTE Routes & Roots Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic 4 The Elphinstone Institute Occasional Publications General Editor – Ian Russell 1. A�er Columba – A�er Calvin: Community and Identity in the Religious Traditions of North East Scotland edited by James Porter 2. The Bedesman and the Hodbearer: The Epistolary Friendship of Francis James Child and William Walker edited by Mary Ellen Brown 3. Folk Song: Tradition, Revival, and Re-Creation edited by Ian Russell and David Atkinson 4. North-East Identities and Sco�ish Schooling The Relationship of the Sco�ish Educational System to the Culture of North-East Scotland edited by David Northcro� 5. Play It Like It Is Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic edited by Ian Russell and Mary Anne Alburger 6. Driving the Bow Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic 2 edited by Ian Russell and Mary Anne Alburger 7. Crossing Over Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic 3 edited by Ian Russell and Anna Kearney Guigné 8. Routes & Roots Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic 4 edited by Ian Russell and Chris Goertzen Elphinstone Institute Occasional Publications is a peer-reviewed series of scholarly works in ethnology and folklore. The Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen was established in 1995 to study, conserve, and promote the culture of North-East and Northern Scotland. Routes & Roots Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic 4 Edited by Ian Russell and Chris Goertzen The Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen 2012 Copyright © 2012 the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, and the contributors While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, copyright in individual contributions remains with the contributors. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The moral rights of the contributors to be identified as the authors of their work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. ISBN 0-9545682-7-3 Cover photograph: Nic Gareiss (dancer) and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh (fiddler) at the Blue Lamp, Aberdeen, NAFCo, 16 July 2010. Photo by Geoff Banks. The background is a detail from the 1661 map of ‘The Old and New Towns of Aberdeen’ by James Gordon of Rothiemay. Cover design by Thomas A. McKean Typese�ing by the Elphinstone Institute Printed by Berforts Information Press Ltd Southfield Road Eynsham Oxford OX29 4JB UK h�p://www.informationpress.com First published in 2012 by The Elphinstone Institute University of Aberdeen MacRobert Building King’s College Aberdeen AB24 5UA UK h�p://www.abdn.ac.uk/elphinstone Contents 1 Routes & Roots Ian Russell and Chris Goertzen ......................................................................................1 2 ‘The paper fiddle’: reconstructing the repertoire of late nineteenth-century fiddling in Limerick from the music collection of Patrick Weston Joyce (1827–1914) Lisa Morrissey .................................................................................................................6 3 Frank Roche – fiddler, dancer, and music collector: a musical life in turn-of-the- twentieth-century rural Ireland Cole�e Moloney ............................................................................................................20 4 John Robbins and the Shakespearean Bidford morris tune repertoire Elaine Bradtke ................................................................................................................34 5 Pranking and tall tale telling within Florida’s old-time fiddling tradition Gregory Hansen ............................................................................................................51 6 The drone styles of Lithuanian folk fiddle music Gaila Kirdienė ...............................................................................................................73 7 Texas contest fiddling: what modern variation technique tells us Chris Goertzen ..............................................................................................................98 8 The transmission of style in Sco�ish fiddling Emma Nixon ............................................................................................................... 112 9 The end of a revival: contemporary New England contra dancing and fiddling Lesley Ham ..................................................................................................................121 10 Local, global, and diasporic interaction in the Cape Breton dance tradition Mats Melin ..................................................................................................................132 11 The roots and routes of Irish step dancing: issues of identity and participation in a global world Catherine E. Foley .......................................................................................................145 12 Pu�ing down roots: playing Irish and Newfoundland music in St. John’s Samantha Breslin ........................................................................................................157 Routes & Roots: Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic 4 13 Why can’t you dance to the piper? Patricia H. Ballantyne ................................................................................................ 176 14 Tradition and creativity: the roots and routes of fiddler Aidan O’Rourke Chris Stone ..................................................................................................................190 15 Passing the bow: a Canada-Scotland panel on personal experiences of teaching and learning traditional fiddling Anne Lederman (Convenor), Claire White, James Alexander, Cameron Baggins .... ....199 Bibliography ..............................................................................................................213 Contributors ..............................................................................................................230 Indexes .......................................................................................................................233 1 Routes and roots IAN RUSSELL and CHRIS GOERTZEN This volume, the fourth in our series of selected papers that have resulted from the North Atlantic Fiddle Convention, represents the pick of the crop from the Aberdeen meeting, 14–18 July 2010, on the theme of ‘Roots and Routes’. This well- trodden postmodern theme was chosen to encourage presenters to focus on the ways in which music and dance items or repertoires with local roots have been transformed, through passage along transnational routes and through time, in countries and communities that border or access the North Atlantic. Contributors explored the interrelatedness of fiddle and dance traditions and how they are or have been changed by processes of globalisation as well as complementary processes of self-conscious localization. Some of the topics also addressed in this volume include: historical influences and voices of change; the importance of place and how this relates to identity; the nature of performance and the role of the individual; innovation and virtuosity; socialisation and competition; the interplay of dance and music; and the natures of performance styles and of transmission. The title of this collection deliberately inverts the customary order of the two thematic terms to suggest a different relative weighting, informed by the writing of James Clifford.1 As a conceptual starting point, ‘roots’ may be interpreted as dwelling, belonging, and a�achment to place, suggesting fixity, whereas ‘routes’ encompasses travel, migration, and displacement, implying movement. These terms are not, however, dichotomous, but rather denote emphases within the roiling spectrum of human experience. Clifford argues: ‘Stasis and purity are asserted – creatively and violently against historical forces of movement and contamination’.2 Within the several subjects of our volume such ideas resonate, whether it be in the Irishness of session music in St. John’s, the Englishness of contra dancing in New England, or the Sco�ishness of dance music in Cape Breton. Where does purity end and hybridisation start? When can revivalism be said to have succeeded? When and how does a new authenticity coalesce? Clifford also observes that, traditionally, ‘Dwelling was understood to be the local ground of collective life, travel a supplement; roots always precede routes’.3 He then proceeds to conjecture if ma�ers were ever really that simple, which certainly reflects our growing understanding of the interactions of fiddle and dance traditions, whether we approach the issues as folklorists, ethnomusicologists, or ethnochoreologists. Are our collective life experiences or cultural traditions formed 1 Routes & Roots: Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic 4 from the start by routes of encounter and migration, and moulded by movements, ever fluid and dynamic? Are our roots, in fact, be�er understood as routes? The point is that musical identity, manifested in repertoire, style, performance, context, meaning, and function, is as much a product of cultural encounters and experiences outside of group or community life as