The Other Sword Dance

Perhaps it's just me but I've noticed recently that most old photos of Morris and Sword dancers from the last two centuries feature a wall. The interesting exception seems to be a set of Handsworth taken by Cecil Sharp where the dancers are on a bowling green. I wonder how many felt that, in terms of keeping their dance alive, they had their backs to that wall?

A few years ago I did a course on Japanese music in Bolton. The tutor on song was a chap called David Hughes. During coffee we chatted about the parlous state that Japanese folk music is experiencing and he recounted how he had been contacted after his TV appearance in Japan, by a group of old men living way out in the sticks who begged him to come and record their sword dance. David duly went and filmed the dance and its accompanying songs. The old men, in their eighties were most grateful and told him that now they could die because their dance was safe.

I've seen a stuffed Dodo - it was dead! How is a video recording in the hands of a foreigner, being taken to a foreign country considered a safe way of sustaining a tradition? I bet there's a wall featuring prominently in the footage.

Last November the Grenoside lads gained regional TV coverage for their dance and for the instructional they were about to hold in order to gain some new blood. It seems simple enough, here we are being told by all and sundry that the tradition is safe in the hands of the youngsters. Well the bad news is that only one person attended the said day of instruction. And, with respect to the single man of conscience, he is no bright young thing. So, since nobody wanted to preserve a traditional dance of great worth, why are more people dancing Morris than at any other time in history?

If you ask you are sometimes told the truth - 'so that I can paint my face, dress like a prat and make a complete idiot of myself in public.' Usually you get the other answer, 'to keep our culture alive.' What a sad state of affairs.

Why does a sword dance tradition of great beauty, and amazing display potential get overlooked the way the the Grenoside dance has? This is a complex dance which could, in the hands and feet of a young side literally make sparks fly. The present dancers know this, I think. I know they would welcome the opportunity to put such to the test. The paradox is that they actuallly do keep an old tradition alive and they, like the guys in Japan should be entitled to pass their expertise on to the next generation and not to have to rely on the services of professional or amateur collectors.

I find myself mystified and confused at the folk scene in South Yorkshire. This is the richest area of the country for folk plays, folk dances and singing? For singing there's nowhere - sorry Wales but when it comes to lands of song you can't touch South Yorkshire!

Despite this it's like the whole region is the National Centre for Popular Music - full of potential but everyone relying of good old so and so to do the job instead of getting off their collective behinds and doing it themselves.

Consequence? Nobody cares until one day someone says, "Do you remember those cold wet Boxing Days at Greno? Isn't it a shame that they stopped doing it? I used to enjoy that".

Notice the use of 'they,' it's always 'they' it's always someone else who did it so that when it's dead, it's someone else who let it die. If there is anything of the 20th Century I wish to leave behind it is that, the culture of "it's not my fault," the continous carping about why don't 'they' do something about this, that, or the other.

Folkies should be caught up in the future, not bewailing the past. Choose again.