Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Interview with Ned Quist of Brown University Contra Dance and the band White Squall

David: What is your musical background? What bands or ensembles have you been apart of?

Ned: Well, I started playing guitar in high school, and I played in a rock band like almost everyone did at that time. I also played saxophone in my high school band. I taught myself guitar for the first five years before I received classical training while I was in college. Most of my training has been classical oriented, so I'm probably one of those people who wouldn't be considered authentic (laughs). I started playing this kind of music (folk) when I got here (Brown University) and joined Jeff Titon's Old Time String Band. He knew I played guitar and asked me to join. That's where I met a lot of other people who played at the Contra Dance dances. They asked me to try it so I did. I also met Andy Grover, a recent Brown Graduate (2001), who played fiddle, and we ended up playing gigs together at Contra Dance.

D: So is guitar your main instrument?

N: Well, also I play a lot of saxophone. I used to take sax lessons from an eighty year old nun who was one heck of a sax player. In college I took lessons with David Starobin the founder of Bridge Records. I also took lessons with Ray Chester who was at Peabody where I worked at the time.

D: So how did White Squall come about, and how did you guys get involved in Contra Dance?

N: It came about with me (guitar), my wife Alice (percussion), and Andy (fiddle). Alice were actually both dancers; we had been dancing at the Contra Dance since we had been dating. We met Andy at the dances through a member of the Old Time String Band.

D: So has Contra Dance always been with the Brown Community?

N: Contra Dance is a bit of a movement? You should see a movie called Paid To Eat Ice Cream which is about the history of Contra Dance which has been around for the longest. It goes back to English contra dancing, and it was very much a rural thing here in New England. It has spread all over the world now. I remember a while back when I was in England, I went to a country *edit* dance, and it was completely different from what we do here. It was much more stylized versus contra dance here in New England which is much more athletic and “flirtatious.” The English musicians also tended to use more sheet music in their performance than we do here.

D: I noticed that your wife used a lot of different instruments in the performance. Can you tell me about those?

N: I don't know if the instruments we use are considered authentic contra dance instruments or not. Around here you can utilize pretty much anything in performance. The frame drum she used is an Irish instrument called a Bodhran. It's pretty authentic for playing gigues and reels which is mostly what we play. We play gigues, reels, marches, and a few waltzes. Her Bodhran is actually made by a man in Cumberland, RI who makes the instruments and teaches lessons which is how she learned. You can see and hear the same music played at sessions down at Ri Ra.

D: What style of dances are typical here at the Contra Dance on campus? What is the Cajun Waltz in particular?

N: The Cajun waltz tends to be more shuffling. Depending on whose dancing, people who know the dance shuffle in a straight line and turn in corners rather than a circle like a more Viennese style waltz. They turn in right angles and make a square.

D: Who are the artists that the caller calls out before a dance? Are they the composer?

N: No, they are actually calling out the choreographer of the dance not who wrote the music. He names the choreographer and the name of the dance. The caller tells us what style of music he wants (reels, gigues, etc.) for the dance. Chris Ricciotti is an interesting caller because he actually dances while he calls and does so very successfully. Callers are very particular about naming the choreographer. Tony Parks is one of the well known choreographers in this area. Boston has one of the most well-run contra dances I've ever seen which is the Gay and Lesbian Contra Dance at Jamaica Plain. Many Boston contra dances often have a fund-raising approach where people actually sponsor dances.

D: So is there an umbrella organization over contra dance in New England?

N: Not particularly, but there is NEFFA (New England Folk Festival Association). NEFFA is coming up in April, and there will be tons of contra dancing as well as many of the bands like Wild Asparagus and Nightingale which are two famous bands in the area, but each individual dance throughout New England is its own association which does its own booking and organizing.

D: So do people come far for the Brown Contra Dance?

N: Yes, people come from all over, but it is mostly students. Brown of course is a “crunchy-granola” type of place, and there are a lot of contra dancers here. A lot of kids come with their parents for contra dancing and a lot of students here grew up contra dancing especially those from New England.

D: What is Contra Dancing for you? Is it a hobby? Is it a side gig?

N: Well, its definitely not a vocation or a job for me, but it's fun. It's not a lot of money, but you do it because you like it and you get enough money to pay your expenses for it (instrument costs, travel and what not). It's also good to hear people enjoy themselves and to have fun.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Turino

Turino discusses Peruvian music of the Andes, particularly that of the Aymara in Conima. Turino presents Aymara culture as fundamentally based on how the society functions as a whole which is "as one." From what I gathered. The Aymara are staunchly rooted in the notion of "all for one, and one for all." The community is meant to function for the sake of itself, and actions that divide the community in favor of individualism are discouraged. The thematic motif of binary symmetry is present in Aymara art, music, and even cooking. This binary symmetry mimics the pattern of the sun in that everything radiates from one central source to create one functioning system. In Aymara music, performers work as a whole to produce one musical system and thus essentially play as "one performer." The modus operandi for composition is very intriguing in that one person's idea is never truly attributed to them. Although one performer or composer may be sought out for their talents, it is seen as prideful to claim their own creativity. Also, the musical community is encouraged to alter or re-write a composer's music whoever they see fit to meet the majority's own tastes. Basically, NO DIVAS ALLOWED. In American culture, we champion virtuosity in all walks of life (arts, academics, etc.) Specifically in the U.S., the capitalist attitude favors individualism, and in the arts, we usually see individualism as essential for cultivating one's artistic identity. I feel as though our attitudes toward individualism favors the artist versus the community in a way that is not seen in Aymara culture. Does the Aymara attitude toward the arts truly allow for cultivation of individual creativity?

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Agawu and Waterman

(This was totally sitting on my desktop when I thought I had submitted it)
Agawu and Waterman both discuss the state of African music as it is viewed outside of the continent. They come to the conclusion that African music has been pin-holed into becoming a generalized genre that reflects how it is portrayed in film/ musics in western countries. Agawu is more concerned with the aspect of crossover and how the vast variety of music throughout the continent, each with its own cultural and historical significance for the hundreds of African ethnic groups is deduced to one or two generalized styles that are perceived, in the west, as African. This deduction has resulted in stereotyping African music as being some form of a rhythmic, tribal-like, tune. Waterman delves into the influence of African musics on American music by way of black Americans. He discusses notions of African-esque musics as being ideally rhythmic in character. Agawu makes the statement that not enough African ethnomusicologist are presenting African music in a way that combat's this phenomenon in the west. Is this really the responsibility of African ethnographers? Aren't Western ethnographers knowledgeable enough to combat the in authenticity of African music in the West?

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Fieldnotes: 3/5/2010

Last night was the first contra dance meeting of the month. The band was white squall who consisted of Andrew Grover (fiddle), Ned Quist, yes Ned Quist at Brown in Orwig who plays guitar, and Ned's wife who plays precussion. She utilized some very interesting instruments which I will question her about later on in my interview with them. The caller (the person responsible for calling out the steps of the dance) for the night was Chris Ricciotti, and the dance took place in Sayles Hall. The attendance was fairly large with a 50/50 mix of students and non-students consisting of a vast variety of ages (even some pre-teens). I will admit that I entered the situation not wanting to participate in the dance , but several of the participants were not having it, lol! So, I joined in, and it was very enjoyable. One woman remarked, "How on earth can you study it without doing it!" It wasn't that I was never going to participate, but I didn't plan on doing it so soon. Better now than never I guess. In a conversation that I had with one of the participants (A middle aged woman), she said that the contra dance was therapeutic for her and that it served as a wonderful outlet during a trialing time in her life.

All of the songs were in 4/4 time which was ideal for the types of moves involved in the dance. The style was reminiscent of Appalachian/ Bluegrass/ Cajun tunes which all derived from an American adapted mix of folk Scottish/Irish/ British music. Two of the song's names I recorded were Ricky Hill's City Swing and Ted Sheneller (?) Love and Kisses. Most of the dances took place with 2 lanes of dancers. Each lane had two rows made up of dancing pairs across from one another. One dance consisted of everyone in a circle. The following are a few bits of dance vocabulary used in the contra dance that night:

hands four- four people hold hands in a circle
swing - swinging/turning in a circle with your partner
promenade- take one of your partner's hands in the back and one in the front and
walk them in a line
turn 'em round- turn partner in a circle
allemande- *to be defined when I get a better definition*
return to the one you left behind- return to your partner

Friday, March 5, 2010

Wong

Deborah Wong discusses Asian American musical tastes in relation to the plethora of American music genres. She centers the article around an interview she conducted with colleague Rodney Ogawa. Rodney discusses how his musical tastes evolved with age and how that music correlated to his Japanese American background. Wong churns the interview to make a bigger point about how Asian Americans' cultural tastes fit into American racialized culture. Here she focuses on the racialization of music. Wong feels as though Black and White are the only to cultures represented on the American music scale, and that other cultures like Asian Americans have musical tastes that lie somewhere in between. The title "Finding an Asian American Audience" is suggesting that music in America is never directly "marketed" towards Asian Americans (which further proves her point). This issue of Asian American musical tastes could have been better explored if more than one interview was sighted or if Wong had spoken more from personal experience, but overall the material was extremely stimulating.

In the article, Wong makes a statement that essentially says that the music itself is never what draws in the listener, but it's the cultural connection (if there is one). I would have to heartily disagree that this is the case ALL the time. Obviously culture has a direct connection to taste, but how domineering is this connection overall to musical tastes?

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Agawu

In the Ethics of Representation, Kofi Agawu discusses the need for taking ethics into consideration when conducting fieldwork. He considers ethics to be important for conducting research that maintains an "honest" relationship with those who are being researched, but at the same time, he denotes "deception" as being a necessary evil in the overall process. He sees upholding ethics as a problematic to researches who continue to research other cultures from a prospective dictated by there own background. He doesn't mention epoche' as a means of correcting the problem, but he does recall several experiences where ethics are either compromised or applied in his researched.
One experience that fascinated me was the occurrence of him asking to film the drum. Here he remembered feeling as if in that instant, the the Peki saw him as "other" (a spy) rather than a participant in the culture. Is this the deception Agawu was talking about?