Driving the Bow: Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic 2

edited by
Ian Russell and Mary Anne Alburger

226 pages
247mm x 175mm softback
ISBN 0-9545682-5-7
£12.00

Available from the Online Store

Click here to see figures from
Eoghan Neff's article

Driving the Bow is the direct result of the 2006 North Atlantic Fiddle Convention: Connecting Cultures.

The cultures connected were not simply those of nationality, ethnicity, or community, but also those of academia and fiddle and dance performance.

The book provides an important contribution to the study of the role of fiddle and associated dance traditions at the beginning of the twenty-first century and celebrates the contribution of performer-scholars to our understanding of the subject's complexities.

The selected essays cover a range of themes, from cultural politics and authenticity to the aesthetics of fiddle music and dance, from the performer's creativity to the contesting forces of continuity and change.

Rhythm is acknowledged as the defining feature of different fiddle styles, such that bowing is not merely about sounding the notes correctly, but rather it articulates the essential meaning of the music.

Articles include:

• Fiddle tunes of the old frontier
• The folk fiddle music of Lithuania's coastal regions
• George Riddell of Rosehearty: fiddler and collector
• Sam Bennett: a case study in the English fiddle tradition from James Madison Carpenter's ethnographic field collection
• The fiddle in a tune: John Doherty and the Donegal fiddle tradition
• Engelska as understood by Swedish researchers and re-constructionists
• Sweden as a crossroads: some remarks concerning Swedish folk dancing
• The 'problem' with Scottish dance music: two paradigms
• The rhythmic dimension in fiddle-playing as the music moves to newer performing and learning contexts
• Closer to the floor: reflections on Cape Breton step dance
• John Campbell and the Cape Breton fiddle tradition
• The formation of authenticity within folk tradition: a case study of Cape Breton fiddling
• 'I don't want to sound like just one person': individuality in competitive fiddling
• Bridging fiddle and classical communities in Calgary
• Canada: the Baroque & Buskin' String Orchestra

Authors include:

The North Atlantic, in providing a unifying frame for these studies, is not conceived in terms of boundaries that separate and divide peoples, but rather as a corridor through which cultures have flowed and continue to flow in a process of exchange and communication.

This fascinating and timely collection of new insights in the field of international folk music and ethnomusicological studies represents the diversity of current research, and deserves to be read widely by scholars and enthusiasts alike.

Driving the Bow book, £12.00, is available from the Online Store.