Unfortunately, Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean is not without its problems.
Despite these shortcomings, Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean has much to offer to anyone interested in examining the historical and contemporary processes of cultural creation and re-signification in the Caribbean as experienced through music and dance.
The band providing the music in the Blue Goose Hall in Maine, for example, plays "You're a Grand Old Flag" with the Dixieland sound of saxophone, trumpet, tenor banjo, piano, and snare drum while the crowd dances in
contradance formation.
Machlis, a Berkeley, Calif., pianist who plays Scottish and Bulgarian music and stages
contradances, is known for his wide-ranging and highly lyrical performances.
His sense of rapture pointed not to the music but to interest in it: "The music was patiently waiting for us to hear it again." Meanwhile, Sapoznik played rock'n'roll, made his way through the folk song revival (Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Bob Dylan), and "soon found myself getting into more traditional kinds of music: Irish, New England
Contradances, but mainly Appalachian string band music." In the mid-seventies, Sapoznik was visiting Tommy Jarrell, a senior Southern string musician, when Jarrell, observing that many Jews were interested in old-time music, asked Sapoznik: "Hank, don't your people got none of your own music?" Sapoznik was stunned.
Students progress from walks to folk dances, line games to
contradances, improvised movement to new dance forms.
In France, periodicals with the royal license to publish issued elegantly engraved chansons, vaudevilles, ariettes, drinking songs, duets, recitatives, and
contradances. Few challengers could rival the Mercure de France, but, prior to the Revolution, music by composers such as Andre-Ernest-Modeste Gretry, Niccolo Piccinni, and Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset appeared in the Journal Encyclopadique (Liege: 1756--1793), Journal de Paris (Paris: 1777--1840), and the Courier Lyrique et Amusant (Paris: 1785--1788).