Laura Light

Laura Light is a fiddler, singer, and composer from Virginia, to whose music I had the pleasure of contradancing a few years ago. (She snuck in a swing tune as well, which was a fun surprise.) For those of you in the Bay Area for Thanksgiving, she'll be out here again this weekend, playing at the Palo Alto Contra Dance on the 29th. Come dance off the extra calories!

I've got her album No Gravity (Amazon, eMusic, iTunes), which has a lot of good fiddle tunes and a few good couple-dancing tracks to call out:

• Two Rivers - Cross-step Waltz, 121 bpm
  This is probably my favorite of the batch. Really lovely.
• This Was Meant to Be - Swing, 145 bpm
  "How can I explain this incredible feeling? / Feet on the ground, I'm dancing on the ceiling...."
• Mid-Winter Waltz - Rotary Waltz, 174 bpm
  A great Larry Edelman tune that I remember from one of the first cassettes of "real" music I ever owned.
• The Last Waltz of the Millenium - Cross-step Waltz, 111 bpm
  Probably won't be relevant again for a while, but it's a waltz, nonetheless. :-)

Also, in the process of writing this post, I found that she has another album, called Katchemak Bay Waltz, which is entirely waltzes. Unfortunately, I can't find anywhere to buy MP3s -- it looks like you can only buy a CD here. So I haven't listened to most of it yet, though there are a couple sample MP3s on that page. (Including an interesting version of "Scarborough Fair.")

Friday Night Waltz Set List

What did you think of the music? Let us know in the comments!

Vermillion Lies

Vermillion Lies is my latest jackpot find from my random Last.fm browsing. They're one of those bands that has such a delightful variety of styles and sounds that you never quite know what you're going to hear next. Their press page talks about their "unique brand of beauty, silliness, and creativity," and "songs ranging from lyrical folk ballads to raucous circus marches." I've been listening to their two albums on repeat for the last day or so, and I was also glad to find a number of danceable songs, so here they are.

• I Should Fly (Rotary waltz, 160 bpm) - Amazon MP3, Last.fm
  And if you can't fly, you should waltz. :-) Good contrast between verses and chorus, which is always nice to have for dancing.
• Shady (Polka, 130 bpm) - Amazon MP3, Last.fm
  Nice mandolin part in this one. Would need some shortening and maybe a little slowing down for dancing purposes, though.
• Blue (One-step, 112 bpm) - Amazon MP3, Last.fm
  One of the sisters can do a vocal style that reminds me of Ingrid Lucia (of the Flying Neutrinos), or maybe Billie Holiday, which gives it a very vintage sort of sound with the swing guiter. Plus, there's a kazoo!
• Done Wrong (Polka, 122 bpm) - Amazon MP3, Last.fm
  Similar style to "Blue," but the instrumentation makes it sound more polka-y.
• Bone Yard (Cross-step waltz, 118 bpm) - Amazon MP3, Last.fm
  Sort of a dark one, and with a lot going on the arrangement which could potentially muddy things, but I think the piano keeps the beat consistently enough to dance to.
• Global Warming (Rotary waltz, 155 bpm) - Amazon MP3, Last.fm (free download!)
  This one is probably better for listening than dancing, but I wanted to include it just for general amusement and silliness. "Everything's going swimmingly."

Laurent Fourgo

Special bonus today: The music in this post is not only purchasable and downloadable, but go-hear-them-live-able as well. (Assuming you live around the Bay Area.)

I had dinner last Friday at Mandaloun in Redwood City, to the music of Laurent Fourgo & His Ensemble. Lots of good, standard swing stuff, with the added interest of having French versions of lots of the lyrics. In fact, the CD (Amazon MP3, Last.fm) appears to be entirely bilingual. Anyway, they're perfectly danceable, and if you sit in the right spot you can have a little bit of floor space to hop into and dance when the mood strikes. (As long as you watch out for passing waiters, not to mention the clarinetist who would sometimes get loose and start wandering around on his solos.)

They seem to have been a hit with the rest of the customers and the management as well, since they announced that they now have a regular gig there, twice a month. Keep an eye on their calendar to find out when those will be. The restaurant itself was good as well, so all in all it makes a quite recommendable outing for a Friday evening if you're stuck without an FNW or other dancing (or even a Friday evening on your way to other dancing).

Box of [Fast] Ghosts

Brave Combo has been to Stanford once or twice to play for a Dance Week, and they're an absolute hoot to dance to. A partial description from their website:

Brave Combo is America's premier contemporary polka band, and a Grammy winning one at that. In the same breath, to name some but hardly all of the colors found on Brave Combo's musical palette, one can describe them as a groundbreaking world music act, a hot jazz quintet, a rollicking rock'n'roll bar band, a Tex-Mex conjunto, a sizzling blues band, a saucy cocktail combo, a deadly serious novelty act, a Latin orchestra, and one of America's dance bands par excellence.

One of their albums I particularly like is Box of Ghosts (Brave Combo's store | Amazon MP3), a collection of famous classical pieces, rearranged for accordions, horns, and dancing. A number of the tracks are danceable, but here are my favorites:

• Mozart - Rondo a la Turca - polka (160 bpm)
  Pretty fast. Richard pulls this one out when he's teaching people to do a turning two-step polka (as opposed to galloping) to fast music.
• Chopin - Waltz in C Minor - waltz (203 bpm)
  Any of you classical types out there will recognize this as Op. 64 No. 2, which is actually in C-sharp minor, but nobody else will probably care. If you thought that last one was fast, try this one. I love it.
• Rossini - William Tell Overture - polka (108 bpm)
  Okay, okay, here's one that's not so crazy fast. In fact, I'd probably speed it up a bit for dancing (and trim some of the ending as well).

Redowa III

Looking at the categories on the right here, it's clear we've written more about waltz music than any other type.  However, since the last three posts have been other dance music, I figure it's time for another set of good redowa songs.

• Hevia - Entremediu (152 bpm)
  I first heard this at Big Dance in 2006. It's a bit like the Corrs' "Erin Shore" (featured in my first redowa post) in that it's dramatic, Celtic, and has an energetic percussion section perfect for redowa. What "Entremediu" has that "Erin Shore" lacks, of course, is bagpipes :). The link is to the Spanish iTunes store, which probably isn't very helpful, and I'm feeling nice because I spent forever trying to find this song and ended up buying the CD online, so here's an easier option.
• Kevin Burke - La Partida (161 bpm) - iTunes, eMusic
  Picking up the tempo a bit, here's an instrumental waltz tune which Graham introduced me to. It's very bouncy and has some fun syncopated parts which lend themselves well to redowa and pivots. Mary Lea also has nice version, and I just found out from her website that this is a Venezuelan waltz, and YouTube further informs be that it was originally a piece called "Queiro ser tu sombra" (I want to be your shadow).
  
• Chantal Kreviazuk - Time (170 bpm)
  And now for something completely different. Well, okay, not completely. I love waltzing to this song, and while it's a bit on the fast side and doesn't have an obvious 'redowa break,' the energy is high enough to support a bit of leaping. I'd suggest, however, cutting it down by about a minute.  Take a listen and see if the opening measures don't just make you want to waltz:

Bollywood Schottisches

Several years ago, someone in the Bay Area dance community (maybe Deb Henigson) had the brilliant insight that the rhythms of bhangra, a folk music and dance from India, and schottische, a Bohemian dance popular in Victorian ballrooms, were the same. So here's some schottische music from India. It's worth noting that all three songs are, in true Bollywood fashion, over 5 minutes long. They're also fast, so I'd advise both shortening and slowing them down for dancing.

• Sadhna Sargam et al - Maahi Ve
  I was introduced to bhangra at Decadance's Spring Show 2005, where they performed a bhangra-schottische fusion to "Maahi ve." That piece is still one of my favourite Deca numbers, and you can see it at around 1:20 in this video. After checking out the music video for "Maahi Ve" on YouTube and finding out that it was from the film Kal Ho Naa Ho, I actually watched the whole movie to see this colourful, extravagant production in context.
• Shankar Mahadevan - Pretty Woman
  Turns out out most Bollywood films are long (we're talking over 3 hours) and chock full of singing and dancing. Here's another song from the Kal Ho Naa Ho soundtrack, and I definitely recommend watching the clip(below) if you want a taste of how over-the-top these song-and-dance numbers can be. Graham did a nice edit of "Pretty Woman" which we played at Friday Night Waltz in June.
  
• Shankar Mahadevan, Shaan, Mahalaxmi Iyer - Rock N Roll Soniye
  This is the "Bollywood schottische" that Richard Powers plays most often. I think "soniye" means something like "pretty girl" or "my love" -- it's a term of endearment.

Swing Music from Dublin

There's nothing to connect these two songs except that I first heard them when I went swing dancing in Dublin last year. I was editing the first one this morning and it made me think of the second.

• Lisa Stansfield - Why Do We Call It Love? (180 bpm) (Amazon CD)
  My favorite part of this one has got to be the horns popping in mid-chorus. I also heard this one last week played as a quickstep for a ballroom competition on PBS.
• Eileen Ivers - The Rights of Man (128 bpm) (Amazon MP3)
  Leave it to Eileen Ivers to turn an Irish hornpipe into something you can swing to. Maybe more of a bluesy swing, but still.

West Coast Swing Favorites

Speaking of the Stanford Dance Weekend, I made a point of taking all of Michelle Kinkaid's West Coast Swing classes there. I didn't pick up any specific new songs to dance to, but it's as good an excuse as any to post a few of my favorites I've had waiting around for a while in a draft. These are all ones I first encountered when I took some WCS classes at the Dance Spectrum several years ago.

• Robben Ford & the Blue Line - Start It Up (126 bpm) - Amazon
  I remember Richard Kear teaching a whole class on different things to do to the breaks in this song. (Previously seen on Rowyn's Leap Day set list.) Update: Here's a video of Richard dancing to this song. Well worth watching, in addition to letting you hear the whole thing.
  
• Cake - Short Skirt, Long Jacket (122 bpm) - Amazon
  This one is interesting because the timing of the "short skirt and a long jacket" line is different every time around. Really keeps you on your toes.
• Chris Anderson and DJ Robbie - Last Night (122 bpm) - Yahoo, Amazon, video
  If you like wacky, unintelligible vocals -- and I do -- this song has 'em. (At least on DJ Robbie's portion of it.)

Stanford Dance Weekend

This past weekend was the 2008 Stanford Dance Weekend, a total immersion in social dance — "waltz, swing, salsa, vintage dances, club dances and more." In addition to learning new moves and dancing with nice people, we also picked up some new songs to waltz to!

• Tsuumi Sound System - Tuulin ja Hannun häävalssi (Wedding waltz) (140 bpm) This is a lovely Finnish waltz which Lilli Ann Carey played in her class on musicality. It has some nice syncopations which I imagine would work well for canter pivots.
• Peter Gabriel - Down to Earth (117 bpm) (Amazon | imeem) This new cross-step waltz comes fresh off the soundtrack of Pixar's new film Wall-E, which opened last Friday. Richard Powers played it for the first time this weekend in his cross-step classes. There's a few bars in 4/4 time in the middle which need to be edited out, and it's too long to play as is, but otherwise it's a fun new song to dance to.
• Kepa Junkera - Santimamiñeko Fandangoa & Ioaeoe (130 bpm before editing) (Amazon | last.fm) New to my collection, though Richard's been playing this lively, cheerful waltz for a while. He speeds it up and plays it as a rotary waltz which also works for redowa. I haven't tried it editing the song yet, but it probably needs to be shortened even after increasing the tempo.

Redowa II

Last month I shared some favourite redowa songs, but if you attended Friday Night Waltz in Palo Alto last week you may have noticed that we didn't play any of them! Here are the ones we did play:

• Nordman - Stormens Öga (170 bpm):  I love this song.  It lacks the extra-salient percussion that graces some redowa tunes, but it's so energetic that you'll probably want to redowa anyway.  The link is unfortunately to Swedish iTunes store, which probably isn't very useful, so you can get the album on Amazon or listen to a full preview on YouTube
• Mango Groove - Two Hearts (150 bpm):  At a much mellower tempo than the other two, this up-beat Afropop hit let's you stretch out those long steps on beat two.  Though fairly obscure to American listeners (I couldn't find the song by searching for the lyrics when I first tried and also turned up no full previews online), the band is apparently a "household name in South Africa."
• Winifred Horan - Giants Fall (180 bpm) (Amazon | eMusic | YouTube) New to us a few months ago, this is a fast waltz -- I recommend cutting it down at least a minute or it'll tire out most dancers.  Love the fiddle and the driving beat!

Friday Night Waltz Set List

Update: Due to technical difficulties, the order of the two schottisches was reversed. Also, we found time for a bonus one step (Belleville Rendez-Vous) in the last set. If you liked or disliked anything in particular, please let us know. Thanks to everyone who came and danced in that icky heat!

Vienna Teng

A lot of us Stanford-types are fans of Vienna Teng. If you're in the area, she's performing in San Francisco this Friday and Saturday (details). Here are some of her songs you can dance to:

Waltzes:

• Anna Rose (121 bpm) - Amazon, full preview on imeem
  A lovely cross-step.
• Between (135 bpm) - Amazon, full preview on imeem
  Blue Caravan (136 bpm) - Amazon, full preview on last.fm
  A couple in-between tempo waltzes. You might slow "Between" down a tad for cross-step, or just deal with it (especially if you want to keep the title accurate). "Blue Caravan" might sound good sped up slightly to rotary tempo. I haven't actually danced to it yet.
• Recessional (145 bpm, sort of) - Amazon, full preview on last.fm
  The tempo is approximate because it has a lot of fermatas and ritards and tricky things like that. Beautiful song, and a good challenge for paying attention to the music.
• Drought (157 bpm) - Amazon, full preview on imeem
  An honest-to-goodness rotary waltz.

Rhumba:

• Unwritten Letter (140 bpm) - Amazon
  Not being a rhumba-er myself, I'm taking this one on faith. :-)

In addition to the Amazon links above, some (but not all) of her albums are available on eMusic.

Some Favorite Blues

I'm planning on going to Friday Night Blues tomorrow night. I haven't been before (since there are usually more convenient and more Graham-compatible dances on Friday nights) but I'm looking forward to it. So to get myself into the right frame of mind, here are a few blues songs I like:

• Delbert McClinton - Everything I Know About the Blues (73 bpm) (Amazon | eMusic | Last.fm)
  One of the first blues songs I recall dancing to. It had me from the first line: "I learned to swim when Daddy threw me in the river."
• Ike Turner - Cold Day in Hell (72 bpm) (Amazon)
  Seven minutes long and no vocals, but the instrumentation is fascinating.
• Etta James - The Sky Is Crying (64 bpm) (Amazon | Last.fm)
  I've heard a few versions of this song, but this one is my favorite so far. I love it when her voice sort of goes underwater at the end of the scat section.
• Celine Dion - Le Ballet (85 bpm) (Amazon | Last.fm)
  "The ballet is almost over, and real life will begin."

Ray Bierl

I'm back from my latest travels, so here's some traveling music for you all. Ray Bierl (a member of The Hillbillies from Mars) came out with a great new solo album last year, entitled Any Place I Hang My Hat. It's full of songs, as he puts it, "about hitting the highway, riding the rails, lighting out for the territory," and is overall an excellent piece of work. I have several favorites, but for dancing, I recommend the following:

• Down and Out (buy | listen) - Swing, 145 bpm.
  "Brother, can you spare a dime? Buck for a beer wouldn't be too bad...."
• Tramps and Hawkers (buy | listen) - Moderate waltz, 137 bpm.
  Five minutes long, but worth it.
  "Like ghosts we roam without friends or home, these tramps and hawkers and me."

If you're in the Bay Area, there are lots of opportunities to hear him perform live as well.

Redowa I

Apologies for the delay between posts -- Graham's been out of the country and work has been keeping me quite busy.

Notes on some of the redowa music from Richard Powers' Social Dance Discography:

E.S. Posthumous - Nara (152 bpm). You can hear a full preview on their website. If you've been to a Jammix or Friday Night Waltz you've probably heard this. It's a great redowa in terms of both tempo and musicality. I love the tension in the piece and the way it builds in great swells of music. The original, however, is almost five minutes long, which is tiring for a redowa. I'd suggest cutting it down to 3.5 minutes or less for social dancing, unless you have strong calves and good endurance.

Dae Jang Geum - Yun Bap (160 bpm). The link is to the CD on Amazon because I could not find anywhere to download an mp3, but you can find a WMA version linked from here. I first heard this song, which is from the soundtrack of the Korean TV drama Dae Jang Geum (or Jewel In The Palace), in Richard's "History of the Waltz" social dance class at Stanford. It has a fantastic percussion section which just begs for redowa. I spent hours and hours trying to track down an mp3 version online and eventually resorted to creating a membership on a special-interest "Asian OSTs" site so that I could access a private download link on their forum. I'd suggest using the WMA link above or asking me to send you the mp3 rather than duplicating my quest. But back to the song: it's quite dramatic and has cool eastern-sounding instruments that I can't identify (how crass).

The Corrs - Erin Shore (160 bpm). The "last waltz" at Jammix. This is the only full instrumental piece on The Corrs' album Forgiven, Not Forgotten, though it isn't the only waltz. It's based on a traditional Irish tune which is often sung with lyrics about "Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore." I found a number of different versions of the lyrics online, but here's the chorus of the one I like best:

So, fare thee well my own true love
I'll think of you night and day
A place in my mind you will surely find
Although I am so far away
And when I'm alone, far away from home,
I'll think of the good times once more
Until I can make it back some day
Here to Paddy's green shamrock shore

Like both previous tunes, this needs a bit of editing to be good for dancing, as the original is over four minutes long. I think Richard cuts some of the build up to the extra-redoway drum solo.

Idan Raichel: Mi'Ma'amakim

I've got Tali to thank for introducing me to The Idan Raichel Project. Idan Raichel is an Israeli keyboardist and vocalist who works with many other artists on his "project," mixing Middle Eastern, Ethiopian, and other styles of music.

I love the sound of the whole album, but my favorite track just happens (surprise!) to be in waltz time, at a zippy 180 bpm: Mi'Ma'amakim (Out of the Depths). (Download from Amazon, eMusic, or iTunes; hear a sample; see a video). It has gorgeous Hebrew lyrics, interspersed with parts of an Ethiopian song called Nanu Nanu Ney (for which I'm unfortunately unable to find lyrics or translation).

Of course, at nearly 6 minutes long, it needs a bit of editing so you don't die dancing to it. After (regretfully) hacking it up a bit, I got it down to about 3:30. I removed a duplicate verse and associated chorus, one of the three consecutive choruses at the end, some of the bridge, and some of the intro. The cuts were trickier than I expected: while the song seems to have a pretty consistent sound, the background vocals and instrumentation are actually changing enough to make it easy to introduce discontinuities if you're not careful. Anyway, I got Bob to play it at Faster Polka this week and it worked pretty well. The lyrics on the verses anticipate the beat a lot, so you have to be careful to follow the bass and percussion there, but overall it's good, and fun practice for fast waltzing.

Idan Raichel's Wikipedia page says there's actually a whole album titled "Mi'Ma'amakim," but I haven't been able to track down any other info about it.

An excerpt from the translation of the lyrics:
Who is it that calls to you tonight, listen
Who sings aloud under your window
Who stakes his soul just for you to be happy
Who'll lend his hand to build you a home
Who'll lay his life down under your footsteps
Who like the earth at your feet shall live on
Who'll love you better than all of your lovers
Who'll save you from the rage of the storm
Out of the depths

West Coast Swing

i5 : Ladidi Ladida (116 bpm)
I first heard this song at the Decadance spring show 2004. It made an impression on me both because Decadance does compelling choreographies and because it's a catchy song. The lyrics aren't particularly interesting, but the song has a good beat -- clear triple steps -- and some interesting background instrumentation, which I can't identify.

Rachel Stevens : Sweet Dreams My LA Ex (130 bpm)
Another catchy pop song. It's bouncier than "Ladidi Ladida," but also has nice percussion. Having never danced to the version I have, I only just realized that it's too fast for a comfortable west coast swing dance, especially given that it's 3:30 minutes long. I'd recommend slowing it down by at least 6% and cutting the second verse-chorus pair, which is about a minute of music. The resulting length is around 2:40, which is a good length for the still-fast adjusted tempo (120-123 bpm depending how much you slow it down)

J. Geils Band : Centerfold (114 bpm)
Also bouncy, but a much more comfortable tempo for dancing. My edited version is almost a minute shorter than the original, but I forget what I cut. It took me a while to find this song after I first heard and liked it. I originally mis-heard the word "centerfold" as "semaphore" (multi-threading on the brain, perhaps?) and couldn't figure out what the song was about. The actual lyrics are cute, though.

Lisa Ekdahl : Vem Vet (126 bpm)
Hmm this song is on the fast side as well. It's the most mellow of this lot, with a jazzy feel; the trumpet at the beginning and end are particularly nice. In fact, it might be better as just a regular triple-count swing (lindy hop). I've never heard it played anywhere, but presumably it has been danced to because I got it from someone else's dance music collection. Anyway, it's a lovely little Swedish swing.

Joss Stone : Tell Me 'Bout It (110 bpm)
I think it's fun to have a bit of fresh, popular music in a dance set, and this song was a big hit on the radio last year. Not only do the tempo and beat seem like a natural fit for west coast swing, but it also has an attitude that works well in my mind for this style of dance. Dancing as a follow, it makes me want to almost strut the two forward steps of a sugar push :).

Trailer Park Trio

The Trailer Park Trio is billed as the largest trio in the world, with 5 members. Because everybody knows that bigger is better when it comes to trios. In this case it certainly seems to work, because their whole self-titled album is great, and it's all danceable. They play a lot of classic swing songs from the 20's - 40's and have a great sound. A good three quarters of the entire album is actually available to stream or download on their site, so you can check it all out (and then buy the CD anyway). Some of my favorite tracks are "King of the Road," "Reet, Petite & Gone," and "Nagasaki." There are a few blues songs as well: "If I Had You," "Red Light," and "Someday You'll Be Sorry."

Jim Smith, the lead singer and tenor guitar player, also has some solo albums called "Same Old New Hair" and "Bad Then... Worse Now." I love his voice, guitar playing, and even whistling, but I only have a few tracks from these albums. (Some good ones are "Half Moon Eyes" and "I Double Dare You.") I can't find any information about them anywhere online, though. If you're in the Philadelphia area, I guess just look for him at a live gig or something and get the CDs that way.

A Yiddish Tango

For a little April Fool's Day silliness, I thought I'd share a tango. The Klezmer Conservatory Band sings "Ikh Hob Dikh Tsufil Lib," which is a Yiddish version of "I Love You Much Too Much." They actually switch into English for part of the song, but it's the incongruous juxtaposition of the Yiddish and a tango that really tickles me. You can hear the full track on last.fm, or buy it on Amazon. (Their regular klezmer stuff is also excellent, and highly recommended.)

Rowyn's belated St. Patrick's Day Picks

I picked these last week but didn't have time to write them up until today.

Altan : Tommy Bhetty's Waltz (moderate waltz, 145 bpm)
Altan is one of my favourite Celtic bands, and they don't play many waltzes, but this one is lovely. The song was written by Tommy 'Bhetty' Maguire, a fiddler from Kinawley, County Fermanagh, and was in the soundtrack for the movie Good Will Hunting, though not on the official CD release. The whole album, The Red Crow, is also available on eMusic.

Emer Kenny : The Chase (cross-step waltz, 120 bpm)
If you've been to a Jammix or Friday Night Waltz, you've probably heard this played. It's based on a traditional Irish tune, the Foxhunter's Jig, but updated with new-agey vocals and a steady, trance-like beat which makes it very danceable. Unfortunately I couldn't find a good download source, so the link is for the album on Amazon.

Clannad : Caide Sin Do'n Te Sin (cross-step waltz, 120 bpm)
Even though this is the same tempo as "The Chase," it has a much mellower feel. The Gaelic refrain "caide sin do'n te sin nach mbaineann sin do" translates to something like "what is that to anyone else." Apparently the tune is in a 'hexatonic' scale, which has six pitches per octave. Again, no good place to download, so the link is to the CD. You can hear Altan's version of the song, which is very different, on last.fm.

Ronan Hardiman : Siamsa, Cry of the Celts (polkas, 118 and 126 bpm)
Both of these are polkas from the Lord of the Dance soundtrack -- hardly traditional, but Irish-inspired. "Siamsa" is bubbly and infectious and great fun to dance to. The feel of the beat changes a few times (I don't know enough music theory to describe this more accurately), but that's part of what makes it exciting. "Cry of the Celts" is also catchy and energetic, with some nice fiddling. It's the tune Richard Powers plays -- heavily edited, of course -- for the Kerry Polka Sets he often teaches around St. Patrick's Day.

Graham's St. Patrick's Day Picks

In honor of the day, here are some danceable Irish tunes and songs. Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!

Niamh Parsons: Blackbirds and Thrushes (fast waltz, 195 bpm)
This is a great waltz, made even more interesting by the phrasing, which switches between 5-bar and 7-bar phrases (there may be some other types in there, too). Some folks might like to slow it down a tad, though.

Fresh Fish: Jessica's / Martin O'Connor's Polkas (136 bpm)
A lovely polka set from a great contra dance band. I was very disappointed when I started trying to find links to it and discovered it's out of print and there's nothing to link to. The piano player's website says to "stay tuned for a possible reissue" of the Turning of the Tide CD. Just wanted to mention these tunes anyway, though.

Nancy Kerr & John Fagan: Dance to Your Daddy (cross-step waltz or polka in 3, 122 bpm)
This is some fantastic fiddling here; it's not often you hear a slip reel (in 12/8, the way a slip jig is in 9/8). It's got a polka feel but is still effectively in 3 for dancing purposes, so take your pick, or alternate. You can hear the full track on last.fm.

Off Kilter: Follow Me Up to Carlow (polka, 149 bpm)
You can decide if you want to leave the trick ending and watch the dancers fumble or not. Fun song, though. I don't see a good place to download their music, so the link is to the CD. You can also hear it if you browse around their site (which has frames, so I can't link directly to anything).

Brave Combo: A Little Bit Irish (waltz, 240 bpm)
As long as they've got a song actually about St. Patrick's Day, we might as well include it, though it's so fast they may have been thinking slow jig rather than waltz. You can hear the song (and lots of others) on their site, and I thought at one point they had free downloads there, too, but I can't find them now.

Editing St. Teresa

Joan Osborne - "St. Teresa"
(Hear it on last.fm, buy it on Amazon or iTunes.)

Rowyn gets the credit for introducing me to this great song, but I'm the one writing about it because I recently used it as practice to learn some basic music editing. (It's 5:20 in the original version, which is a bit much at nearly 170 bpm.)

I'd post my new version here and get feedback on it, but I expect it's not altered enough for someone not to make a copyright fuss about it, so I won't. Talk to me privately if you want to hear it, though. Here's what I did, in case anyone wants some ideas (changes arranged from better to sketchier):

• Removed one verse (2nd) and chorus (1st). That seemed the most expendable part, musically, and it kept the transitions easier.
• Removed first part of the intro, so it starts with the mandolin part. As much as I love the solo (oud? steel guitar?) at the beginning, it seemed easier to do this than to break up the long mandolin section.
• Completely changed the ending. Cut off the last chorus and pasted together a few things after the "tell me" bridge, including the end of the mandolin line and the first few bars that got cut from the beginning. I was trying to get enough stuff there to have a fade out such that you get a little of the falling off a cliff feeling from the dramatic "tell me" line, but not so much that it's an unpleasant end to the dance.

Optional: You could also slow it down about 5% if you want, but I wouldn't do more than that.

Shostakovich Jazz/Variety Suite

It turns out that the set of Shostakovich pieces commonly known as the Jazz Suite No. 2 is actually the Suite for Variety Stage Orchestra. Either way, it's got a couple really good dance pieces in it, and a few others that are probably worth trying out. You can get the whole set, plus Jazz Suite No. 1, on Amazon or eMusic. Here's what I like from it:

Waltz 2 (of course). Richard used to play this one all the time, but I feel like I haven't heard it as much in the last couple years. Gorgeous waltz, with good jeté waltzes, redowas, and other variations built right in. Note: The version on the album I linked to above is very fast (210 bpm). I'd recommend instead getting one of the ones from the Eyes Wide Shut soundtrack. E.g. there are ones at 176 and 180 bpm.

March. This is the opening piece of the suite, and makes an absolutely delightful polka. It's 3 minutes long, which is probably why I haven't managed to get someone to play it at a dance yet, but it's at a decent tempo (114 bpm) so I don't think 3 minutes would be bad. Again, lots of nice variations, including a bit that would be very good for an extended bout of pivoting, if you like that kind of thing. (Which I do.)

The Lyric Waltz and Waltz 1 are both quite fast (200+ bpm) so they'd need some slowing down.

The Jazz Suite No. 1 has a waltz that's actually a decent tempo (173 bpm) though parts of it really just sound like harmony parts to Waltz 2 of the other suite. There's also a slightly fast polka (134 bpm).

Childsplay Waltzes

Childsplay (on MySpace) is a group of musicians covering a wide range of folk music styles, and connected by one thing: they all play a fiddle made by Bob Childs of Cambridge, MA. I don't know how they got the idea (or managed the logistics) to build a band around that, but they did, and it works. Enough members are multi-instrumentalists that they still have a very rich sound (so it's not too fiddle-heavy).

Their first album was called The Great Waltz, and is actually made up entirely of waltzes. The second one is Heaven and Earth, and is more of a mix of stuff while still having some nice dance tunes. (Both albums are also available on eMusic and iTunes.)

I was measuring the BPM for the ones I wanted to mention here and realized that I didn't have any standard tempo rotary waltzes. All the fast waltzes of theirs that I like are right up there at the top end of the range. I like them that way, though some folks may want to edit them for speed and/or duration. I put the BPM in parentheses after each one.

Cross-Step

• Sunday River (114) As much as I like this one, you could probably edit out a time through the tune to make it a better dance length.
  
• Michael's Mazurka (119) Don't be fooled by the name -- there's nothing mazurky about it, but it's a beautiful cross-step. Also quite long (5:28) but totally worth it. One of my favorites.
  
• Enrichez Vous! (122)
• Waltz of the White Lilies (123) Another one on the long side, but lovely.
  
• The Great Waltz of China (124) Lots of pseudo-oriental harmonies to go with the pun.
  

Fast Rotary

• La Valser Di Mezzanotte (180) I like the variations within this one; it gives you plenty to play with.
  
• Tristesse (182) A bit jazzier than the others.
  
• Kuivatusaluevalssi (182) Gotta love those Finnish names. Also the double bass.
  
• Valse De Bethmale (188) This one is probably just too relaxed-sounding for the speed, but if you're really good at efficient waltzing, you could make it a trance waltz. Just felt like putting it on here, but it's probably not for everyone.
  

Insomniac Blues

A few months ago RA Blues had a live band night (their first, I think). It was a great success, so more's the shame that the venue got lost to tango dancers. Anyway, the band we had was The Insomniacs, from Portland, OR. The three songs I most remembered, and later bought, were:

• Serves Me Right (Serves Me Wrong)
• Stuttering Blues
• I'm Not Sorry

You can get all of these on their "Left Coast Blues" album via Amazon CD, Amazon MP3, or eMusic. You can also listen to some of their songs on their MySpace page or to the whole album on Last.fm. (I just love it when artists are so internet-friendly. It makes these posts so easy.)

Set list: Leap Day 2008 (2/29/08)

Bronco Schottisches

Bob and I are teaching the Bronco Schottische at Faster Polka tomorrow night (Roble Studio, Stanford University, 9PM). If you don't know what that is, it's kind of like redowa for schottisching. As in, you get to go faster and it's fun. I learned it from Ryan and Monica at Waltz Weekend 6 years ago, but haven't encountered it much since then. Which is why we're sharing the fun tonight.

So, to make sure you all have something to practice with, here are a few schottisches that I like for the Bronco. They're all about 150 bpm, which seems to be a good tempo for it. You don't want to go too much faster, since Bronco is trickier than regular schottische, but you don't want it too slow either because then you lose the energy.

Rockapella - Zombie Jamboree

The iTunes link is to a live version; I don't know how that is for dancing. I have the version from this CD. You can also watch a performance on YouTube.

Joe Diffie - Third Rock from the Sun

I've also heard this one called a west coast swing, but I like the bounce it has for a schottische. You can hear the full track on last.fm.

Geoff Byrd - Elusive Butterfly

Disclaimer: I haven't actually danced to this one yet, but that will be rectified on Friday. It sounds like it should be fun, though. (Thanks to Rowyn for the recommendation.)

Nothing downloadable I could find, but there's a sample, a video, and a CD.

Ingrid Michaelson Waltzes

Ingrid Michaelson is a talented young singer-songwriter. If you watch television, you may have heard the song "Keep Breathing" in the Grey's Anatomy Season 3 finale, or her hit single "The Way I Am" on Old Navy Commercials. Apparently after Grey's Anatomy ended there was a rush to find her song on MySpace, which catalysed her rise to success. Her songs are melodious and catchy, her vocal style is clean, and her lyrics are clever and introspective. At her concert in San Francisco last month, I found out that she is also quirky and unpretentious.

A number of Ingrid's songs are in waltz time, though not necessarily very danceable. Having never actually tried dancing to any of these, I'm listing them all because they're nice songs. Most of them are at a good tempo for rotary (moderate to fast) waltz.

Potentially more danceable
Breakable (full preview on last.fm)
Masochist (full preview on last.fm; tempo is borderline cross-step/rotary)

Potentially less danceable
Highway (full preview on last.fm)
Men of Snow (unfortunately not available for purchase anywhere that I could find)
Keep Breathing (not for individual purchase, but only as part of the Grey's Anatomy Soundtrack; full preview on last.fm)

Some Silly Swings

Silly swings were on my mind when I got invited to join this blog, so silly swings is what I'll start out with. I'll do some more normal stuff once I get this out of my system. (Though just wait till I put together a silly polkas post....) Here we go:

Louis Jordan & Louis Armstrong - Life is So Peculiar

A nice, relaxed swing, considering the perplexing mysteries of life. "When I get up each morning, there's nuthin' to breathe but air / And when I look in the mirror, there's nuthin' to comb but hair."

Groucho Marx did a recording of this with Bing Crosby as well, with some different verses. Not danceable, though.

Hot Cat Jazz Band - She Looks Like Helen Brown

(I sadly can't find any downloads or samples, but it's on this CD. Part of another rendition of the song is here though I don't care for it as much.)

There are only a couple puns in this one, but they get a lot of mileage out of them. I first encountered this song when I needed to do a (very impromptu) swing performance for a family gathering. My partner and I grabbed the nearest CD, found something at a decent tempo and not too long, didn't really listen to it, then went out and danced. Of course, I often miss lyrics entirely when I dance, so I had no clue why the audience was laughing so much. Once I figured it out, I was delighted.

Ray Stevens - Clucking Chickens singing "In the Mood".

I believe this one stands on its own without commentary.

New Songs - 24 February

Below are a number of songs I've found and enjoyed in the last few weeks.

If a song is available for legal download, a link is provided. I always pick Amazon over iTunes because it's DRM-free and higher bit-rate. Unfortunately there's a lot of music not available for à la carte downloading, and in those cases I'll try to give other purchase suggestions. If you're stumped finding a song and/or really don't want to spend $15 for a whole CD, drop me a note.

Rotary (fast) Waltz:
Graham Colton - Best Days
Roxanne Potvin - La Merveille

Polka
Zucchero - Per Colpa Di Chi Note: this is the live version; the original, which I recommend, is available on the CD The Best of Zucchero Sugar Fornaciari's Greatest Hits

Polka/Hustle
Mika - Love Today

One Step
Benoît Charest - Belleville Rendez-Vous (from the soundtrack of Les Triplettes de Belleville)

First Post

I spend a lot of time thinking about, collecting, organising, and editing music for social dance. I also enjoy sharing my discoveries with other dancers, which is the reason for this blog. My collection is currently over 1000 songs, and there's no good way right now to share information about a collection that large, so I'm just going to post about bits and pieces as they occur to me.

To get started, here are some good online resources:

• Richard Powers' Discography of Social Dance Music


• Music recommendations from Persephone in Berkeley


• Susan's discography of slow and fast waltzes


• Music list from Portland Waltz Eclectic


• Elm City Waltz's sample program