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Routes & Roots: Fiddle and Dance Studies From Around the
North Atlantic, 4
Eds. Ian Russell and Chris Goertzen
241pp
ISBN 0-9545682-7-3
The North Atlantic Fiddle Convention (NAFCo) was initiated by its
current president Professor Ian Russell, director of
Aberdeen University's Elphinstone Institute, and has so far been
held in Aberdeen in 2001, 2006 and 2010, Newfoundlandand in 2008,
and Ireland in 2012.
NAFCo is an international conference of fiddlers, some from as
far afield as Texas and Lithuania and Scandinavia, and including a
small English element , but to date mainly representing the
Scottish and Irish traditions and their North American offshoots.
It's a mix of performances, sessions, and workshops, and includes
an academic conference.
This well-produced paperback volume presents fourteen of the papers from the 2010 Aberdeen conference, and there are companion volumes available for the other conferences.
There are interesting papers on P.W. Joyce and Frank Roche, who published historic collections of Irish traditional music, Elaine Bradtke on the Bidford Shakespearean Morris tunes, the community role of old-time fiddlers in Florida, drone styles in Lithuanian fiddling, Texas contest fiddling, contemporary New England contra fiddling, influences on Cape Breton music and dance, how the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance tries to reflect Irish stepping in both its local amateur and global professional senses, transmission of style in Scottish fiddling, Irish music in Newfoundland, Highland bagpipe ornamentation and its separation from the danceability of the music, an article on Scottish fiddler Aidan O'Rourke, and a summary of the methods of four fiddle teachers.
All this ''where do we fiddlers go from here to achieve even greater success'' talk caused me to reflect enviously upon the high regard in which fiddling is held in other parts, in contrast to the present situation here, where our many fine English fiddlers and their music are nevertheless culturally marginalised. But that's another article entirely.
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/elphinstone
Chris Partington 2013
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