This was originally on the home page.

Well, it’s just not possible to write about the Ralph Page Weekend or Star Hampshire, never mind the many other events I talk about on  this web site without noticing a few things:

1. There are a lot of pretty amazing people around who have done a lot to enrich the lives of those of us who are interested in traditional music and dance.
   

2. Some of them, like Ralph Page, Duke Miller, Patrick Stevens, Marianne Taylor and others aren’t around any more.
   

3. Some, like Bob McQuillen and Dudley Laufman have been doing it for a remarkably long time but are still around, going strong, but they’re undeniably not young any more. I mention Bob and Dudley in particular because I just can’t imagine the world without them in it - so I hope you heard that and both remain healthy for a long time.
   

4. It must be said that the people who were the young radicals of the dance community when I started dancing aren’t exactly young any more either; by clear implication I must not be either, even if I don’. (By the way, the only time the Newsletter commentary ever provoked massive, mostly negative, feedback was when I attended a dance I hadn’t been to for a number of years and noted that the people at the dance, and thus probably those I saw on a regular basis, weren’t as young as they used to be. Apparently that’s a taboo subject, even in our relatively open community!)
   

5. Fortunately, at the other end there are marvelous musicians like Lissa Schneckenburger coming along who are playing for dances, learning about the tradition and earlier fiddlers and about the dance; and while changing it fairly substantially just as we did from the ones before us, are providing the foundation to keep it going yet another generation. It’s wonderful to see Lissa bringing in younger musicians and getting them excited about the traditions just as she was, and I was before that, and Dudley and Mac were previously.
   

As I’ve spent time updating the Star Hampshire and Ralph Page web sites, both of which are for weekends that are so connected with our local traditions, I find it impossible not to think about all the people who are still very real to me, but who aren’t around any more - Pete and April of course, George Hodgson, Ted, and so many others.

I should imagine that everyone thinks a bit differently about this sort of thing. I don’t have any standard (or nonstandard) religious beliefs to use as a guide for thinking about some of the issues that come up. On the other hand I’m really good at asking questions; and many of them don’t have easy answers.

Right now I don’t have any specific questions in mind, but the observations I presented above lead me to think that something important is going on that deserves some thought.

It seems that this context always gets me to think about one of the most important and influential people in my life, undoubtedly an inspiration for many others as well, Woody Guthrie. I can’t remember not knowing his music, and don’t remember when I first read one of his books but I was fairly young. Many of his songs were instrumental in helping me to form my own ideas about music, and about the world we live in.

After Woody saw the movie Grapes of Wrath, he was inspired to write a tune based on the film. One characteristic I appear to share with him is the inability to be concise, and the song, The Ballad of Tom Joad, was 17 verses long. It had to be split between the two sides of a 78 rpm record; and in fact that’s how I remember listening to it when I was young.

Without reviewing the story or the song (you can find the words to the song online at the official web site of the Woody Guthrie Foundation), and listen to Woody singing it at this web site), the relevant part is after Preacher Casey died and he woke up his mother to say goodbye to her. Woody wrote,

1. Ev’rybody might be just one big soul
   Well it looks that-a way to me
   Everywhere that you look in the day or night
   That’s where I’ gonna be, ma
   That’s where I’m gonna be
   

I see no need for a religious interpretation of that usage of the concept of “soul”; and doubt that it was meant that way in the context. But I think there’s an important concept here that often is forgotten in the outside world, but that is a pretty central part of the contradance world: the concept of community, and how we all fit together.

Quite a few years ago Jack Beard recorded what was probably Duke Miller’s last dance; certainly the last Fitzwilliam dance he called. Jack interviewed Duke and at one point (I need to get the exact wording of the tape sometime) Duke was talking about the large number of people who came out to the dances and put so much into it, and his comment, with typical Yankee understatement (even if he was from upstate New York) was to the effect that with so many people being so involved with the dancing, it must be more than just something superficial.

In fact, the dance community has for years been one of the most striking examples of a caring, tight community that still exists in the modern world, and it exists despite dispersal over both time and space, in a world that is characterized by the breakdown of most meaningful forms of community.

As I dance, as I play music, and as I call dances in Dover or Contoocook or Wentworth or Concord, on Star or at the Ralph Page Weekend, I feel like in part I’m carrying on the still living traditions of people who are in fact long gone. I call the dances of Phil Johnson in the same Dover City Hall that he called them in sixty years ago. I start the dance with Lady Walpole’s Reel and think of how Ralph and Duke used to do the same. I call the Crooked Stovepipe and I remember how Phil used to call it and also how Duke used to call it.

On the other hand, at Maine Fiddle Camp and at Ashokan more and more of the staff are young, and I see the passing on of the tradition to people 30-40 years younger than me; and I learn from them too. Recently Lissa spent the night at my house after a local concert, and stayed much of the next day. The plan was to listen to old records from my collection; it was one of the most pleasant and relaxed days in a long time! And of course I’ve learned a lot from her over the years as well. We also had the pleasure of getting to know Bethany who was playing guitar for Lissa and who is from the next generation of dance musicians.

The following weekend we went to a party at Milt Appleby’s and played music with Milt and Joe and several others. Afterwards Milt told stories about the old-timers he remembered; and you can be sure that when Milt talks about the old-timers they would go back well into the 1800’s!

All this continuity across time and space is fascinating, and one of the reasons why the world of music and dance is such a wonderful world to be a part of. Where else do people of such different ages and backgrounds - teenage to ninety’s; farmers, college professors and more - all play music and dance together with no concern about differences that in the rest of the world might be considered great enough to prevent socialaizing? I’m sure I’m not the only one who experiences disorientation when I leave the dance community and go into the outside world. In our community I have friends that span a nearly eighty-year range, and really consider them to be friends. But when I go in to work I remember that all those people who are not really all that different from my younger friends now think I’m a professor, a totally different class of person, and I’m also an old person.

And that reminds me of a final quotation from Woody, which is a pretty good description of some aspects of this strange world we live in ...

1. Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see
   This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
   Oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor,
   And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
   

All of Woody’s lyrics are reprinted without permission, which I should think is the way he’d want them to be reprinted.