Sparked by the North Atlantic Fiddle Conventions held in 2001 and 2006, Ian Russell and Mary Anne Alburger have begun what is already a promising set of volumes dedicated to traditional music and dance in North Atlantic cultures. The first, Play It Like It Is, came out in 2006. In this second volume, Driving the Bow, Russell and Alburger present fifteen essays from fifteen different authors, and they have organized them into a remarkably coherent collection. For example, authors Alan Jabbour, Katherine Campbell, Elaine Bradtke, and Pat Ballantyne bring individual artists (West Virginia fiddler Henry Reed, the Scottish fiddler and collector George Riddell, the English fiddler Sam Bennett, and the Cape Breton old-style dancer Willie Fraser) to life through insightful treatments of histories, playing styles, aesthetics, and repertoires. Karin Eriksson and Mats Nilsson offer complementary examinations of Swedish dance forms, and Pat Ballantyne, George Ruckert, and Gregory Dorchak all consider the implications of changing styles of dance—and dance music—in Cape Breton.
Throughout this book, phrases like “driving the bow” carry important meaning for musicians and their audiences as the authors examine rhythm as a defining feature in music and dance. Dancers must have it, and tunes like those described in this volume are for the most part wedded to it. A number of essays allude to the differences between music played for listening and music played for dance. For example, in considering what she refers to as “the problem” with Scottish dance music, Catherine Shoupe states that dancers and listeners hear music differently; music for dancers stresses momentum and a “rock-solid, consistent beat,” whereas music for listening stresses the elusive yet essential element of “lift,” a matter of modulating the notes. In the words of one player, lift is “‘sunlight and shadow,’ as if the music has to reflect the patterns of darkness and light that is so typical of Scottish weather, where clouds roll past and sunshine and shadows are constantly in play” (110). In his fascinating treatment of the Donnegal fiddle tradition in Ireland, Eoghan Neff notes that ornamentation, the individual “decoration of the contours of a tune,” need not be constrained by the parallel tradition of creating music suitable primarily for dancing (81). Matt Cranitch, a fiddle player and teacher, has observed that many young Irish musicians seldom play traditional tunes for dancers, yet their repertoire is predominantly dance music, and that this has implications for performance technique. With an increased emphasis on learning more and more tunes, more subtle factors of musicianship may be ignored (121).
Driving the Bow raises important questions for folklorists, ethnomusicologists, and performers. How is style created? How is it maintained? What threatens it? On a structural level, Jabbour offers intriguing speculations about “high-to-low” patterns in pitch ranges of Upper South tunes of the United States; Gaila Kirdiené looks at style through comparisons of folk and professional orchestras in Lithuania; Bradtke compares Sam Bennett with two of his English contemporaries in an attempt to further understand the creation and maintenance of individual repertoires; Sherry Johnson describes the conflict between individual performance style and the more predictable style that is “required” for fiddle competitions; and Elisa Sereno-Janz looks for historical connections between baroque ornamentation techniques and those of traditional fiddle players in Alberta, Canada. Change is inevitable in any tradition, and many of the authors regard it as an important lens through which to evaluate issues of aesthetics and authenticity. Is the standard AABB tune structure incorruptible? In a modern, multicultural society, is there such a thing as a national dance style? Does an increased emphasis on speed, momentum, and tune acquisition result in less attention to expression and individual style for instrumental musicians? In dance performance, does a departure from an older technique, such as dancing “close to the floor,” result in the loss of an identifiable style within a cultural region? Russell and Alburger allow their authors to raise these questions clearly, so that we, the readers can ponder them. Further, they have provided an inclusive bibliography, a general index, and a specific index of tunes, songs, and dances mentioned in the volume. A reader with less-focused musical and ethnomusicological background might appreciate the clarification of terms such as tune “strains,” or some historical context for Cecil Sharp’s harsh or favorable judgments of fiddle players that he encountered in England, or a basic description of common traditional techniques of ornamentation and individual variation in both music and dance. In general, though, there is much of value here. The next North Atlantic Fiddle Convention will be held in Aberdeen, Scotland, in July of 2010. Based on the volumes that have emerged from the first two conventions, we anticipate further insightful reflections on traditional music and dance.
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[Review length: 789 words • Review posted on February 23, 2010]