Contra Dances Swing into Fifteenth Year

Tomorrow Cityfolk will swing into our fifteenth year of hosting contra dances. The dance was started by Cityfolk founder Phyllis Brzozowska and myself with a small group of local musicians, callers and dancers. It has flourished thanks to support from dancers in Dayton and experienced contra dancers from around the region.

The people are what make contra dancing unlike pretty much anything else I've tried. They're an open, friendly bunch who are there to have fun. Smiles and laughter abound, both on the dance floor and amongst the folks resting on the sidelines. Usually, dancers switch partners after every dance, which is a great way to improve your dance skills and meet folks. New dancers are embraced so long as they keep on trying to figure it out. No alcohol is served, so it's both kid-friendly and is a great alternative for people who want to go out dancing but not be in a bar environment. Light snacks are provided; home-baked goodies are welcomed.

This fun, social dance style suits dancers of all ages and levels of experience. You can stick to the basics if it's new to you, or add flourishes to spice things up. The caller walks the dancers through the sequence of moves at the start of each dance, and keeps prompting as the music starts. That music is provided by live bands, never recorded! The music is old-timey, New England style or Celtic. Dancing to live music brings a whole other level of energy to the dance which just can't be beat. When the groove is just right, it's like the music is moving your feet.

What to wear? Comfortable clothes; layers are recommended. I love to dance in skirts because of the way they twirl. And be sure to wear comfortable shoes that won't mark the floor. (It's a dream to dance on, so we like to take care of it!)

The video below was from a dance down in Cincinnati in January of 2006. Kathy Anderson is calling but I can't tell who's playing the tunes.

If this sounds like your kind of fun, then join us on the first Friday of the month, October to May (except December) at Michael Solomon Pavilion in Kettering. Come for open waltzing at 6:30, instruction on contra basics at 7:30 and stay to dance from 8 - 11 PM. It'll just set you back $7 at the door; $5 for students with a valid ID and free for kids 12 and under.

Spotlight: Simon Shaheen

Internationally renowned as an oud and violin virtuoso, composer and educator, Palestinian Simon Shaheen is one of the most important traditional Arab musicians of his generation as well as an eloquent champion of Arab music and culture. Shaheen will build upon his 2008 visit to Dayton, sharing his culture with more schoolchildren as part of a Culture Builds Community residency. The concert on October 21 is presented in collaboration with the Dayton Arab American Forum and in collaboration with the University of Dayton Arts Series and the Dayton Art Institute.

Below, you can sample his talents on the oud and violin:

The Hotmud Family Sings Again

For devout, longtime fans of the Hotmud Family like myownself, Christmas comes early this year. The first present arrived a couple of weeks ago in the form of The Complete Vetco Recordings, a great-looking and sounding two-CD set that reissues the band’s first four albums, released from 1974-1978. Hot on the heels of that long-anticipated treat is something that ranks even higher on fans’ wish lists—three nights of reunion shows at Canal Street Tavern in downtown Dayton, October 1-3.

The Complete Vetco Recordings—for which I wrote the liner notes—documents an especially fertile five-year period during which the Hotmud Family recorded four albums for Lou Ukelson’s Cincinnati-based record company Vetco—’Til We Meet Here Again, or Above (Vetco 501), Stone Mountain Wobble (503), Buckeyes in the Briar Patch (507) and Years in the Making (513); a single, “Redleg Rag/Old Songs”; as well as a pair of Vetco records on which Hotmud backed Fiddlin’ Van Kidwell, an award-winning old-time fiddler originally from Madison County, Kentucky, who lived in Miamisburg in the 1970s.

Suzanne Thomas (guitar), Rick Good(banjo) and Dave Edmundson (fiddle) formed the Hotmud Family at the end of the 1960s as an old-time country stringband, playing the music of such iconic country musicians of the 1920s and 1930s as the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Uncle Dave Macon and Gid Tanner & the Skillet Lickers. The band added bluegrass to its repertoire in 1974 to get a gig at the Mariposa Folk Festival in Canada, and from then until the Hotmud Family officially disbanded in the mid-1980s (with a concert at Canal Street Tavern), the band occupied a unique niche: an outfit that could perform old-time country music and bluegrass with equal facility and flair, graced with one of the best and smoothest vocal trios in the business and the soulful singing of shoulda-been-a-superstar Suzanne Thomas.

The Complete Vetco Recordings will transport Dayton-area listeners back in time to such fondly remembered musical hot spots as Sam’s Bar & Grill and the Living Arts Center with fan favorites like the heartbreaking Molly O’Day song “Teardrops Falling in the Snow,” one of Suzanne’s most compelling performances, the Jimmie Rodgers songs “Somewhere Down Below the Dixon Line” and “Tuck Away My Lonesome Blues” and the killer old-time tunes “Last Chance,” “John Lover’s Gone,” “Shuffle Creek” and “Hogdeer, Mississippi, pop. 4.” The Hotmud Family’s three-night run at Canal Street Tavern will feature—in addition to Suzanne, Rick and Dave—former Hotmud bass players Tom Harley Campbell, Jerry Ray Weinert and Gary Hopkins and perhaps a few other surprises as well.

The Hotmud Family reunion shows at Canal Street Tavern are benefits for WYSO-FM, which seems highly appropriate given the band’s long history with the station, when the Hotmud Family helped launch the WYSO Country Jamboree. These shows will almost certainly sell out, so advance tickets are probably a very good idea; you can get them from WYSO's website.

Merry Go Round Still Spinning

There was a time when live music programs were a staple of radio stations across the country. The Grand Ole Opry is by far the most famous of these, and it's one of the few that still exists. Another example is Merry-Go-Round, based at WPAQ in Mt. Airy, NC. For over 60 years, they've brought live old-time and bluegrass music to the airwaves, and they have no intention of stopping, as this NPR story shows. Thanks to the modern technology of streaming radio on the internet, we can listen in as well, every Saturday from 11 AM - 1:30 PM.

Under One Roof

At the 2010 Cityfolk Festival I had the honor and privilege of performing with Under 1 Roof (U1R), a collective of dancers from in and around the Midwest who specialize in street dance styles that sprang from the underground house music subculture of the 1980s. U1R received incredible feedback from Cityfolk Festival attendees. The crowds cheered, clapped and stuck around after our street performance sets to offer praise and ask questions. I was even pulled aside on more than one occasion by someone who wanted to express strong, heartfelt words about how our dancing had touched them in a powerful way. One woman was even in tears as she spoke. This is the kind of feedback performing artists live for, to hear that our love and passion for the art form could be felt and understood. We were incredibly uplifted by our interactions with festival goers that weekend. Perhaps this exchange of positive energy was also due to the fact that something very special was taking place among us as a group.

The Festival marked the very first gathering of all 10 members of this brand new street-dance collective, whose members come from Nashville, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Dayton. Collectively we aim to affect a shift currently taking place in the cultural underpinnings of the dances through which we live, breathe and express ourselves.

Laying the Foundation …
House music started in Chicago towards the end of the disco era, when DJs playing in African American gay night clubs began experimenting with ways to make disco music more danceable. The result is faster, bass-heavy, and features vocals and melodies which express the social and cultural context where it was being created. The people at these clubs, ostracized from many angles of mainstream society, could come and let down their guard and be accepted for who they were. It became a space representing themes of acceptance, love, and freedom. Soon this infectious music and culture spread not only to other cities, but also outside of the African American gay community. Soon people of all races, genders and sexual preferences began to fall in love with the sound and spirit of house music and its surrounding culture. The lyrics of "Can You Feel It," by the legendary house DJ Larry Heard (AKA “Mr. Fingers”) in 1986, captures the vibe of that time well:

Jack is the one, that can bring nations and nations
of all jackers together under one house.
You may be Black, You may be White.
You may be Jew or Gentile.
It don’t make a difference in our house… (full lyrics)

Building the frame…
Dance was an important facet of this subculture. Street dance refers to dance forms developed within everyday spaces such as schools, streets, and clubs as opposed to formal places such as dance studios. Styles such as locking, popping and breaking, often referred to generally as “hip hop dance,” are important fixtures within the underground street dance community. House dance – now considered a significant style in its own right – is the most recent form to be incorporated into the underground street dance scene.

As house dance gains popularity, more and more practitioners are learning the style outside of its cultural context, for instance by watching YouTube videos or taking classes at a studio. A great deal of the originality, freedom of expression, and spirit of the dance is being lost. There are also wide differences in the aesthetics of house dance across the country, and new practitioners are primarily only learning styles of house dance that are particular to New York. Even the newer generation of house dancers in Chicago have been more influenced by New York dancers than those of the original Chicago house community.

Moving in…
My personal dance style was strongly influenced by dancers in the Chicago house scene starting in the early 1990s. Though far removed from the original house culture in time and space, the group of dancers who pulled me in have a flavor that is distinct to Chicago. When I moved to Dayton in 2005, I became connected to the wider street dance community in the region. This is where I first became aware of just how popular house dance was becoming around the world, and I was amazed at both the similarities and differences to the way we jacked in Chicago. I have long lamented the fact that very few people in the street dance scene really know anything about Chicago house history and culture, nor the aesthetic aspects of the dance styles that have accompanied it.

Under 1 Roof was born from conversations with other house dancers in the region. We want to draw attention to aspects of house history, culture and dance that are specific to the Midwest—particularly Chicago and Detroit—as well as to develop a force of house dancers in the Midwest who can create a strong presence within the street dance community. Our hope is that this presence will help us educate others about the historical and cultural contexts of these styles.

Dance photos from the 2010 Cityfolk Festival taken by Andy Snow.