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Volume XXVI, Number 3 • September 2005

Music around the Folk Arts Center 

[Reprinted, with permission, from FolkNews: Volume III, Number 2, June 1982]

Playing international folk dance music requires a special kind of insanity to be done well. Even then we can get into debates about the final result. In the Boston Folk Ensemble [one of Boston’s international dance bands of the time -Ed.], we have developed some definite guidelines for how we go about our job. Early on, through many discussions and arguments, we agreed that we wanted to try to “get inside” the music as much as possible. A musician could play one particular style of music for many years before feeling that close kinship. If an international folk dance musician can play the basic melody and get the rhythm somewhat close, he/she can be satisfied. This is a rational, sane approach when faced with upwards of a dozen musical traditions at any given folk dance evening.

However, being slightly crazy and having met similar-minded musicians, I tend to be a lot more intense than that about things. In the BFE our preferred mode of operation is to have each member of the band separately listen to a tape of the tune being learned. This will, hopefully, include a careful study at half speed of the particular embellishments being used. We may not know exactly how a musician is fingering a particular passage, but we’ll do our best to make it sound the same. In essence, we will try to duplicate the recording the first time we play a tune publicly. After that kind of study, we use written music to remind ourselves of sequences or phrases. The amount of discipline this requires can be enormous. I remember the first Bulgarian dance tune I learned using this approach. It's called Hora “Zagorka” (maybe you know it as Marichensko) and I must have spent close to three months working on it. I also wrote down the music for it at the same time. Why spend all that time on one tune? Because the better I understand the style, the better I’ll be able to play it. Since the style was so utterly foreign to me, I had a lot to learn.

But what about the old “folk process”? You know, you just play the tune and don’t worry about all that technical stuff like proper embellishments, rhythm, or “feel” in general!

There is nothing wrong with that approach; I believe there is a place in the world for that kind of thing. But if a foreigner really wants to capture the true spirit of a particular style, she/he needs to do a lot more work.

As we grow up, our ears become very biased. We hear things the way it seems they ought to be. There is a definite “language” in any particular style of music, and a certain effort must be made to understand this language. Just as in verbal language, you can play music with an accent. For a while, when BFE accordionist Alan Bern first became involved with the Klezmer Conservatory Band, we played with a Jewish accent. (I’ll never forget the comment we got at the Pittsburgh Bulgarian Festival-- “Anybody who’s heard Klezmer music would know what you’re up to!”) To overcome this accent, we have to do very careful listening and studying. Personally, I’m not sure my goal is the elimination of any accent in my playing; however, I would like to know how the language really sounds.

International folk dancers are probably more sensitive to musical style than is generally believed, but they don’t necessarily have the vocabulary to express their observations. I remember a conversation with Tim Rice in Toronto (he has started a group somewhat like the BFE up there and is an ethnomusicologist at the University) in which we talked about tempos. His story goes as follows:

“We were playing some slow Macedonian dance and the dancers kept saying ‘Faster!’ We couldn’t seen to satisfy them and by the end of the dance they were moving incredibly fast. We were disturbed by this and checked our tempo with a Macedonian woman who said our original tempo was just right. Apparently the folk dancers were simply noticing that something was not quite right and all they could think to say was ‘Faster!’”

The BFE has had similar experiences. I was so pleased once when two different dancers shouted across the room to us-- one saying “faster,” the other saying “slower”-- and made the problem public. This is one of the more frustrating aspects of playing in a folk dance environment. When someone comes to me and adamantly insists “you were playing that last piece too fast,” I’m often not quite sure how to respond. It helps to have someone in the crowd we can trust and who understands the problems involved.

Also under the heading of style comes the question of ethnic instruments. Needless to say, this puts on the musician the additional pressure of learning new instruments as well as new styles. (Not to mention trying to buy the instruments when they don’t exist in this country!)

The last problem to deal with is repertoire. Over the many years of recreational international folk dancing, there have been literally thousands of dances done by folk dancers. One of the things that folk dance groups pride themselves on is the sheer quantity of dances they know. (This is, after all, why many people are into this type of dancing-- for the variety. Many folk dancers seem to get bored at English dances or the numerous New England contra dances in the Boston area.) In most cases, there is a specific tune for a specific dance in international folk dancing. I once heard someone say that on Sunday at MIT there were probably around 600 active dances. That’s 600 tunes a band would have to know intimately to really play an all-request evening at MIT.

Even if a band permitted themselves to sight-read music (a poor second best to knowing it), where would the music come from? Most of that music hasn’t been written down; or, if it has, not in the Boston area. (The Cambridge Folk Orchestra has the largest collection, and I don’t think they even begin to scratch the surface.) [Many more folk dance tunes have been transcribed and published since Bill wrote this in 1982. -Ed.] Add to that the fact that every folk dance group has many, many dances not done anywhere else locally, and the problem is essentially unsolvable. The best that any international folk dance group could expect with live music is that the band will know quite a few of their favorites. To some people this isn’t acceptable on a regular basis.

The Boston Folk Ensemble has a repertoire of over 120 dances; that’s really quite good for a band to have at any one time. But sometimes I shudder to think that certain ones of those dances might be requested. Some of them are unique as to their style and the type of dance they are. So after not playing one for a year, it’s like reinventing the wheel. Hopefully no one will notice when we really forget how to play a tune. Better yet, hopefully we’ll remember how to play it in the nick of time.

[After several years of providing great music for dancing, the Boston Folk Ensemble disbanded in June 1982. -Ed.]

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