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Well here we are again. The year seems to have shot past and no significant event has deflected me from my evangelical crusade to put peoples' backs up. The cover of this issue is no exception. I stood and watched a series of dance displays in the Piece Hall in Halifax the other week and was overwhelmed by the range and quality of the programme. I couldn't find fault in any of the performances. All were traditional, all were peformed with respect for the tradition and for the material. Each of the dances had been introduced into this country at some time in history and was now part of the English tradition.
Why then do the dancers from the P8njabi traditionb have to be seen as 'ethnic minority?' The audience seemed to be composed of a variety of people from a wide range of income groups and racial origins. There wasn't at any time a sense of 'theirs' and 'ours,' just an audience watching traditional dance. So what I want to know is, how long does a tradition have to be in a country before it becomes part of the culture? The braided Maypole made it in a matter of decades and only a hundred and fifty years ago or thereabouts. The Sword dances certainly have an air of antiquity but much of the Morris seems to date from around 1492 - Moorish expulsion from Europe? The Notting Hill Carnival is a recent import but part of the Cultural Calendar every bit as much as Abbotts Bromley. So what's going on? Are we so insular that we can't recognise a Morris dance unless the performers are from families named in the Domesday Book?
Our young musicians seem quite cosmopolitan in their tastes except they don't want to play English music. Still there must be scores of Danish, French, Irish and Swedish teenagers playing English stuff, areb't there? From audience responses the other week I don't think the lads in the Punjabi dance side have any illusions about the future of their dance tradition - the attitudes in the Asian community seemed to reflect that of the majority when faced with Morris dancing. Perhaps the only way to protect traditions is to take on each other's? After all, they're not that far apart.