Spring 1996

Features

• New England Contradance Fiddling (and the tunes "The Growling Old Man and Grumbling Old Woman," "Kangaroo Jig," and "Ross's Reel #4");
• Alasdair Fraser: Playing, Promoting and Exploring the Music of Scotland and Beyond (and Alasdair's tunes "Tommy's Tarbukas," "Independence Trail," and "Galen's Arrival");
• Mark O'Connor: From Camps to Concerts -- Doing it All! (and Mark's tune "Fair Dancer Reel");
• Hungarian Dance Fiddling (and the tunes "Olahos" and "Harom ejjel, harom nap");
• The Nyckelharpa: Sweden's Unique Folk Instrument;
• Violin Books for Makers, Collectors, and Enthusiasts, Part Two.

Columns

• The Practicing Fiddler: Slurring across strings (and the tune "Speed the Plow");
• Bluegrass Fiddling (and the tune "No One But My Darlin'");
• Contest Fiddling: "A First-Timer at the Old Timers";
• Irish Fiddling (rolls);
• Writing Tunes ("The Northeaster");
• Books and Instructional Tools;
• Recordings.

Tunes

• The Growling Old Man & Grumbling Old Woman
• Kangaroo Jig
• Ross's Reel #4
• Tommy's Tarbukas
• Independence Trail
• Galen's Arrival
• Fair Dancer Reel
• Oláhos
• Három éjjel, három nap
• Speed the Plow
• No One But My Darlin'
• The Northeaster

ARTICLE EXCERPTS

Alasdair Fraser: Playing, Promoting and Exploring the Music of Scotland and Beyond

By Mary Larsen

Alasdair Fraser is widely acclaimed as the top Scottish fiddler on the scene today. Alasdair began fiddling as a young boy, learning classical violin in school and traditional fiddle at home. He continues to study, and cherish, the traditional fiddle music of his native Scotland. A wearer of many hats, Alasdair the teacher runs two successful fiddle camps, one on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, and one in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. Alasdair the performer is constantly touring, both with his latest band, and solo, where he plays everywhere from the local dance to Lincoln Center. And Alasdair the scholar and explorer is ever discovering new ways to express himself musically. Whether he is playing classic Scottish strathspeys and reels or experimenting with rock and roll, medieval, or Baroque music, Alasdair is a true artist on the fiddle, and ever willing to share his gifts and discoveries.

This interview took place at Alasdair's Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddling School in Boulder Creek, California, in September 1995, during a break from his teaching.


I'd like to start with your background -- where were you from in Scotland, how did you get into fiddling_

Oh, no, not that!

Briefly!

Okay. I started when I was eight years old. There was a fiddle under the sideboard that belonged to my grandfather. He was a fiddler. He was a founding member of the Strathspey and Reel Society in Stirling. My family was actively involved in music. My dad's a piper. So this fiddle was lying there, not being used. I had the chance to get lessons at school. This great teacher was going around to schools at that time. He didn't teach me Scottish, he taught me classical violin, I suppose, although I don't like the term "classical violin." He gave me technique on the violin. So I did violin at school, and then I'd come home and play Scottish fiddle at home. It was kind of a two-pronged attack on the violin.

Who were some of your favorite Scottish players?

There were very few. Scottish fiddle music, even now, is reconstructing itself, because it was so devastated. The Scottish culture, not just the fiddle -- the language, song, music, everything was devastated by the Church and the British government basically. So there weren't many heroes for me to copy. But I guess, ultimately, in my late teens I was listening a lot to Hector McAndrew, Angus Grant, Farquhar MacRae, west Highland fiddle player. Of course, I was listening to anyone I could get my ears on. In terms of trying to work out what Scottish fiddle actually is, there were very few role models.

What happened to Scottish music is that it got "cleaned up," in the same way that the Scottish accent was cleaned up -- people were told to speak "properly," and they were taught to play their fiddle tunes "properly." Instead of speaking in a Scottish accent, you were taught to speak standard English, BBC English, in the classroom. So the same happened on the fiddle. People would play in a very cleaned up way, almost like a classical version of the original fiddle tunes. The ornaments were taken out, and they were taught a nice vibrato and a warm tone and all this stuff. So I started thinking, "There's something missing here. Scottish fiddle music is not really alive and well in Scotland." So I had to look elsewhere for my heroes. I started turning over stones and seeing what would crawl out. That's how I got into the Cape Breton thing, a long time ago. I needed to find Cape Breton to fill in the missing links back home. Because there was a whole area of Highland fiddle music that was gone. So you have to go to Canada for it. And then you have to look to the Appalachians to find out how dance fiddlers would have played, using double stops and things. And then Donegal for older ideas on strathspeys and highlands. So from Scotland I started looking out around Scotland, where the emigrants went, to try and find out where my music went. Because I couldn't find it at home. What I was finding was a cleaned up version. So that's basically my journey. It's still going on.

I also like to listen to singers a lot. I grew up with Gaelic singing, my grandfather was a Gaelic speaker, my folks were from the Inverness area in the north of Scotland. So I grew up with the Gaelic sounds in my head, and you can translate the Gaelic sounds to the fiddle. There's a great correlation between fiddle and language. You could stop the fiddle style and go check out the language of the area where it came from, like in Aberdeenshire, they speak in a very spikey way, clip their words, and the fiddling is all very clipped, very snappy, unlike Gaelic speaking areas. So these are all things I get my head into.

How did you start the Valley of the Moon fiddling school?

Well, I'd always been playing, and I came over here. I was determined to be a good traveler, you know, I was going to go and learn American fiddle tunes, which I did do. I used to go and hang out with bluegrass or old-timey circles, and all that. And people were interested in what I was doing. And one thing I love about the American approach is that it's not superficial. When people get interested in something, they really want to know. They want to get down to details and work out what's going on in someone's playing. So I was being asked all these questions about strathspeys and Scottish jigs and things that made me really look at my own tradition, in a big way, and I love that. So when I gathered how much interest there was, with a few friends, we started this Valley of the Moon school. Basically we rented a camp for the week, put a table out in the middle of the woods, put some fliers up that said "Scottish Fiddle Camp: Come and learn how to play Scottish fiddle music." And we asked Tom Anderson, from the Shetland school that year, but he couldn't come. So we had Alasdair Hardie_ I wasn't even teaching then. I taught privately, but I was still too busy checking out my own stuff. We had thirty-five people the first year, and then it doubled every year. Now it's a waiting list situation.

What about your school in Skye [The Alasdair Fraser Fiddle Course, at the Gaelic College in Skye]?

It's a similar thing. It's very much the same philosophy. There's a philosophy through all these camps that I do, which is, "find your own music on the fiddle." It doesn't have to be Scottish. Find out what the idiom is, and speak in that idiom on the fiddle. Make the fiddle speak with an accent. Or with a bunch of different accents. And it's okay to be creative on your instrument. You don't have to be scared that you're not playing the tune right, or anything like that. You have to do your homework and know where the music has been. If you're studying Irish music, if you've listened to a lot of Irish music, and you've got a sense of what the idiom is about, and you've copied your heroes, then at some point, you say, "Well, I play this music." And then you make it your own and you make statements from yourself, but using that idiom. So that's what these [schools] are about. We declare it as a safe environment to find your own self expression. People come here and they feel okay, they know no one is going to laugh at them and say, "No, that's the wrong way to play that." They try things, and that leads to quick growth. They just get positive reinforcement. So it's that, it's finding your own voice on an instrument and expressing yourself, getting in touch with the emotionality of that music, and relating the fiddle to the dance. That's a huge thing that I really believe in. I love to play for dances, always have. So playing for dances teaches you a lot about how you bow tunes. Tunes and dance evolved together. So if you want to learn something about one, you look at the other. So you watch the dancer's feet, an old highland strathspey step in Cape Breton teaches you how to bow.

Mark O'Connor From Camps to Concertos: Doing It All

By Jack Tuttle

Over twenty years have passed now since the child prodigy fiddler from Washington State first walked onto the contest stage, and the fiddling world has never been the same since. As a young teen, Mark O'Connor became the most celebrated contest fiddler ever, forever changing the standards by which fiddlers are judged. One can still hear the echoes of his playing in virtually every young Texas-style contest fiddler in competitions throughout the U.S.

Contest fiddling was merely a springboard for the young fiddler in the late seventies and early eighties. Due to his technical mastery and prodigious improvising skills, Mark's forays into bluegrass, western swing, jazz and new acoustic music left fiddle observers everywhere shaking their heads in disbelief. By the age of twenty, he was already generally regarded as the greatest all-around fiddler ever.

After stints in the early '80s with the David Grisman Quintet (primarily as a guitarist) and the rock-fusion based Dregs, Mark moved to Nashville and quickly became the leading studio session fiddler, picking up numerous Country Music Association Instrumentalist Of The Year awards. He also became the musical director of the weekly television program American Music Shop on TNN, recorded several solo albums for Warner Brothers, and still managed to perform around the world.

Several years have passed since Mark decided to cut back on his session work in order to tour more and promote his solo career. Now at the age of thirty-four, he is without doubt the most influential fiddler of our day. Only has the classical violin world seen technical virtuosity at the level displayed these days by Mark O'Connor, and probably never has this been combined with such stunning improvisational skills.

The following interview took place at the Strawberry Music Festival just outside of Yosemite, California, in September, 1995.

Why don't we start with what you've been doing lately -- you're balancing recording, solo performances, even some classical concerts.

This has been my most enjoyable year in my music career, I believe, because of the broad range of possibilities that are out there for me at this point. I started out my career with a variety of music tastes_ I've actually successfully made a career out of having no particular direction. That's really satisfying. It must be obvious to most people that have followed me along the way that I kept mixing it up, and just following my heart wherever it leads me musically and not ever trying to force anything to be different, but just being different naturally. And addressing it, you know. I feel I really need to do a blues album now. I want to try to be in a position where I can pull that off. I think I've got a record company -- Warner Brothers -- that has seen me through some of these changes, and the latest one, of course, in a classical setting, was a fiddle concerto for violin and orchestra, and my string quartet for violin, viola, cello and double bass.

Let's talk about how you've risen to the level of technical ability that you have, and a little about your practice history, and what got you to this level. Because other fiddle players have never gotten to the technical level that you've risen to, and I'm wondering if you know why that is. Can we look historically at how you've practiced, since you were a kid and on_

Well, you know, to be frank and honest, I don't practice. And I haven't practiced at great lengths since I was thirteen.

You began at about age eleven_

Well, I actually began playing the guitar when I was five or six, and I started playing the fiddle at age eleven. And I really practiced and played like crazy for two years. I must have learned two hundred fiddle tunes.

Would you say you were putting in four or five hours a day?

More. And I was doing it because I wanted to, but sometimes I practiced all day, maybe seven or eight hours, learning these fiddle tunes. And I learned two hundred fiddle tunes in two years. And I learned most of them from Benny Thomasson.

So they were mostly Texas style.

Yeah. And I think when I was fourteen, I said, "I've done enough of that. I've got enough fiddle tunes now." I wanted to try other things. And then I went into a slump, because my teacher, Benny Thomasson, left and I couldn't find a replacement that was inspiring to me up in the Northwest at that time. This was at age fourteen. And everything just went downhill as far as playing outlets, practicing_

Still, you were doing contests on a regular basis_

In the summer. Once in a while in the winter. But I wouldn't even prepare for the fiddle contests. I wouldn't even go over, even run through any tunes until I arrived. And the same way with Weiser. For some reason, it was a mixture of losing my teacher, I think it was mid-teenage blues, it was feeling like I had more talent than I had an outlet for, and I was sort of misunderstood, and people didn't know where to put me_ I didn't understand all that at the time_ As a matter of fact, Rounder Records -- I made two albums for them when I was twelve and thirteen -- and age fourteen went by, age fifteen went by_ All this time they were calling, saying "We'd like another record from Mark," and I said, "No, I don't want to." When I was sixteen, they kept calling every couple of months, and my mom would say, "Well, he says he doesn't want to." I look back at this and say, "here's a record company begging a musician to record an album -- they weren't begging, but they were asking many, many times. I can't believe it.

You just weren't inspired to do it.

I didn't want to do it. I remember when I was sixteen they said, "Well, what about a guitar album?" They were trying to use a different line with me, and I said, "I don't wanna." And they'd call in a few months again, and said, "Tell Mark if we could get him anybody he wanted, would he do one?"

And I said, "Well, what about David Grisman and Tony Rice?" Just to dare them -- all my heroes, right?

And they called back and said, "We can get them." I said, "Yeah, right. Well, I still don't want to do it." And then my mom put her foot down and said, "You know, we've given you guitar lessons for all those years. The least you could do is think about music for fifteen minutes a day. I'm not even asking you to play guitar -- just think about it. Think about what you would do if you had a chance to make an album of guitar music." So that was how out of it I was, as far as practice. But what was weird about this was, all of a sudden, after a couple of days, I started getting ideas. And then when I picked up the guitar, I was better. I was way better than I ever was before. And the Markology album came out and is still available.

At this point, you still hadn't won Weiser, the National championship. Were you not practicing? Didn't you have that as a goal, to win Weiser? I would have thought you were putting massive hours in for Weiser_

No, it was anti. Everybody was telling me, "Mark, if you could just play like you were thirteen, you would win."

Is it because your note selection was too progressive?

Yeah, and it was just too wild sounding. It wasn't old-timey enough. It impressed some people, but it scared other people. When you're playing for old time music judges, some of them are going to be impressed, some of them are going to mark you down. So everybody was saying, "Regress, regress." So there was no need to practice. I had to strip it down. And so when I showed up, the first time I was actually trying to play to the judges, was when I was seventeen, when I won the national contest. Every other time I was just trying to do what I do, the best I could.

New England Contradance Fiddling

By Donna Hebert

Fiddling in New England has always been tied to dancing from its earliest beginnings in the 1600s. The lives of early settlers were hard, and music and dancing was a very welcome break from their labors, serving a valuable social function in the communities of New England. Our contradance comes from the French "le contredanse," a dance figure where a line of women faced a line of men and couples moved up or down the line in a continuous pattern of dancing to live music. This New England tradition of community contra and square dancing and fiddling has come down to us unbroken today from colonial times. Callers and composers have added new favorites to the music and dance tradition with each era of history, from "The Girl I Left Behind Me" in the War of American Independence, to "Hull's Victory," a tune and dance figure written to commemorate a battle of the War of 1812, to Gilbert and Sullivan quadrilles and lancers sets in the 1890s, to New England caller and composer Ralph Page's great tunes and dances in the 1930s. We carry on today with the highly prolific callers and fiddlers of my generation, and watch the younger folks pick it up, knowing it will continue.

Today, the magic of music and dancers moving perfectly in time with each other, with two hundred feet hitting the floor at once in response to the rhythms the fiddler and band are putting out is a heady experience. The psychological term is "entrainment," where you and others are pulled along together non- verbally, perfectly in sync with each other -- sheer bliss when it works. This is the nirvana of the contradance, that every musician, dance leader and dancer aspires to. This holistic interconnection between music, dancer and caller is key.

Fiddling has grown in tandem with the growth of New England contradancing in New England itself and elsewhere, especially up and down both coasts. It is a growing tradition that embraces within itself many other traditions, including the music of the waves of immigrants from Scotland, Ireland, England, Quebec and Maritime Canada who settled here over 200 years. In one evening's dance, Irish jigs, reels and waltzes find room next to Quebecois reels, two-steps and waltzes, New England hornpipes, marches and set dances (dances that have their own special tune), Swedish hambos, American pop & jazz tunes, as well as original tunes in the traditional style. These ongoing additions to the repertoire from dance musicians like pianist Bob McQuillen, whistler Sarah Bauhan, and fiddlers like Rodney Miller, Jay Ungar and myself, to name only a few, indicate the current health of contradance music, dance and fiddling.

Perhaps the biggest influence on the current wave of interest in contradancing and its music was a group begun by New Hampshire dance leader and musician Dudley Laufman in the late 1960s. His "Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra" toured all over New England, (they even played the Newport Folk Festival the same year Dylan went electric), bringing the old contras and quadrilles to towns like Amherst and Concord, Massachusetts; Peterborough, Nelson and Francestown, New Hampshire; and Putney and Plymouth, Vermont. Dudley's charismatic personality attracted hordes of hippie teenagers and dancers of all ages with the old dances and a big band playing terrific tunes from Ireland, Scotland and Quebec. Even more importantly, Dudley had an open stage policy; musicians on just about any instrument were welcome to sit in with his great rhythm section that usually included Bob McQuillen on piano and the late Pete Colby's melodic flatpicked banjo. Dudley gave a lot of musicians a start playing for dances; many of us (the author included) have gone on to play for dances for many years. There are now over 400 contradance groups in the U.S. and Canada, nearly all having started up since 1975. All use live music for dancing. (Hooray!)

What other styles and repertoire do we draw from in New England? Well, by now, most of us are eclectic children of the electronic age as well as fiddlers, with widely differing tastes and experiences. Personally, I was lucky enough to work with three great traditional fiddlers. I watched Allan Block's right hand in the Canterbury Orchestra. He taught me great dance rhythms and New England tunes. From the late Franco- American fiddler Louis Beaudoin of Burlington, Vermont, I learned the great Qu‚b‚cois tunes of my heritage and "le swing." Acadian fiddler Gerry Robichaud of Waltham, Massachusetts, caught me up with his flowing style, which rolls along with plenty of triplet ornaments and syncopation.

Generally speaking, for contras we play jigs, reels, hornpipes, French-Canadian two-steps, and marches. These are most often traditional tunes from New England, Canada, Ireland, Scotland and the Southern U.S. Then there are couple dances like schottisches, polkas, waltzes, as well as jazz or Latin numbers, show tunes, or even television theme songs ("Leave it to Beaver" is a jig, so is "Mr. Ed"). We like to surprise and amuse the dancers (and ourselves), and if we like a tune and it fits into 32 bars, we'll play it, especially as a change tune in a medley.

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