Recordings
"The Dancing Gaida"is a cd of traditional dance tunes from the Balkan and Mediterranean. (The gaida is a bagpipe made from goatskin.) It can be accompanied by a booklet containing instructions for the dances and they lyrics of the songs. The cd contains: Dimna Juda Mome (Macedonia), Erinaki (Greece), Makedonska Devojce (Macedonia), Zemer Atik (Israel), Trgnala Rumjana (Bulgaria), Ve David (Israel),Setnja (Serbia), Ya Mustafa (French/Arabic), Bak Kardesim (Turkey), Iz Dolu (Macedonian), Ajde Jano (Serbia), Sar Planina (Macedonia), Tsakonikos (Greece)
"Tunes from the Tramstop Cafe"is a cd of original compositions by Steve Gadd of instrumental music influenced by a variety of dance rhythms including Balkan, Celtic, Tango, Calypso, Bossa Nova. The unique instrumental techniques of Gadd and Jewell create a new genre as traditional rhythms are reborn in contemporary settings.
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"Folk Dances for Little Kids"is a cdrom AND an audio cd.In your computer it demonstrates the dances in video, plays the music and displays written directions - all synchronised to provide crystal clear dance instructions. In your ordinary cd player, it becomes a standard compact disc, playing music especially recorded for the dances. The dances and their countries of origin are: Boanopstekker (Netherlands), Cross Dance (Poland),Hand in Hand (Israel), Konijnenpolka (Netherlands), Yesh Lanu Taish (Israel), Hatziporim (International), Bahana Haba'ah (Israel), Das Hiatamadl (Austria), Sicilian Tarantella (Italy), King's March (Netherlands).  |
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AMADA: a history - published by the Folk Federation of South Australia as an article by Paul Jewell in "IN FOCUS"
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My first choice for the title of AMADA's cd was "Songs from the Central Market", but we ended up calling it "The Dancing Gaida" instead. A gaida is the Bulgarian bagpipe that Ralph Knobloch plays in the band, and it's made from a goat, a fact which becomes disturbingly obvious if you stare at it for a while. The cover photo of the cd is a goat which appears to be dancing, hence the macabre title. Actually, Ralph gets flak sometimes for playing a dead goat because he's a vegetarian. (One wag suggested he play the trombone instead.) Our reply is that we don't kill goats in AMADA, we immortalize them.
The Central Market remains one of my favourite places to play, because it exemplifies nicely the somewhat tricky cultural position that AMADA occupies, somewhere between traditional authentic ethnic roots and mainstream folk music. On occasion we've left the Market stage and sound system and have wandered around the stalls playing acoustically. To our delight, stallholders briefly abandon their scales to dance in the aisles and sing the songs from their birthplaces. Back on stage, we like the appreciation given to us by the coffee and croissant crowd. There's something about Keith Preston's bouzouki delivery of those simple but subtly different Balkan and Middle Eastern melodies that grabs attention (especially when we roll out a carpet and produce a comely belly dancer).
We're a dance band, in that nearly all our tunes have traditional dances to them, which I teach and call on the spot to our audiences. Our dances come mostly from villages in Eastern Europe and around the Mediterranean, from Israel, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and Macedonia, with the occasional piece from Russia or Italy. Very occasionally we let Di Hogg and Rosemary Taylor take a rest from the mind bending task of memorizing songs in a dozen different languages and sing one in English, but somehow the words always sound more interesting when you don't know precisely what they are saying. (We know roughly, of course. We get a translation before introducing a song to the repertoire, just in case.)
The band grew out of the repertoire of Rae Marnham's famous Monday night international dance classes (which are still going, in the RSL hall, John St Norwood). Bev Barnes catalogued the instructions of eighty of the dances in her book "Folk Dances of Europe". She had to invent a dance notation to do it! She was then looking around for a new project. I said I was fed up listening to scratchy old cassettes recorded on ancient coal fired tape recorders and wanted to dance to live music and why didn't we form a band. So we did. Nobody pointed out to me my obvious logical error. If I was playing in the band, I couldn't simultaneously dance to its music, a frustration I have had to live with ever since.
This must have been in 1983, because I still have a notice from the Fedmag (as this august journal was then known) which says
The big 83 wrap up dance.The last Folk Federation dance of 83 will be on Saturday December 3rd, and what a year 83 has been. The State Festival at Gawler, the National in Adelaide and Kapunda before that, overseas visitors, interstate visitors, and locals trying out new directions, have made it a memorable year.To celebrate it, the last dance will be The Dance That Has Everything. There will be Bush dancing, Ethnic dancing, Morris dancing, Scottish country dancing, songs and concert spots, non-stop entertainment.The band will be AMADA, a new huge combination group put together by Paul Jewell and Bev Barnes, and containing people from Tinkers & Tailors, Skylark, Tullamore Dew, plus other well known faces and some new discoveries. 'Consensus Folk', to coin a phrase. This will be the Fed dance of the year.IF YOU HAVE BEEN TO THE IRISH HALL THIS YEAR, COME TO THE FINAL DANCE. IRISH HALL. CARRINGTON ST.DECEMBER 3RD 1983. FULLY LICENSED. $3 OR CONCESSION
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As the saying goes, 'Nostalgia ain't what it used to be'. The notice was carefully pecked out on a typewriter, whereas if you want to know what AMADA's final gig in 1999 is, email me Paul.Jewell@flinders.edu.au .
In the next couple of years we went on to produce a couple of book/cassette publications, namely "Folk Dances for Little Kids" and "Folk Dances for Big Kids" but in 1986 we lost Bev to cancer. Her death left a gap in the South Australian Arts which has never been filled. Cancer is a shocking disease, and it seems we are no nearer understanding it now than then. Research into genetics, growth and cloning looks like a promising investigation, but some people want it stopped because its 'playing God'. So was knocking off smallpox. Saving people like Bev seems a pretty worthwhile project to me.
Compact discs have replaced cassettes now of course. In fact, we've now released "Folk Dances for Little Kids" as a cd-rom, which provides not only the music, but video of the dances and synchronized instructions. Some teachers are a bit shy of the new technology, but not to worry, the kids themselves have no trouble using it.
Dancing is not just for kids, of course, so continuing our promotion of dance, AMADA produced the aforementioned "Dancing Gaida", and an accompanying book of dance instructions. We did a gig in Whitmore Square, North Adelaide one summer. The weather was glorious and a happy crowd danced on the grass and sampled the goodies in the food and wine marquees. What a tourist promotion a video crew could have made out of that. There's a dance we do, 'Setnja', the words of which include "Come to our village and see what heaven is like". I'm starting a movement to get that slogan on our numberplates.
What I like about Folk culture is the participation. For me, the Arts are not something to watch, its something to do. Of course there are innumerable fine performers I could never emulate but at least I can imagine myself doing it if I had just that bit more talent! I simply cannot imagine myself singing opera or dancing ballet. We have a workshop we do at Folk Festivals where we teach the words to a song, the tune, and the steps to the dance. We then divide the audience (who are, of course no longer just an audience) with half dancing while the other half provide the music for the dance. Then they exchange roles. I really like workshops where one can learn things, and better still, try them out (as opposed to workshops that are indistinguishable from concerts).
AMADA, by the way, is named for the legendary Mediterranean island where people from the four corners of the Earth would come to cast aside their differences and rejoice in song, music and dance.Alternatively, it stands for Australian Music And Dance. I neither confirm nor deny the claim that our name subsequently inspired Peter Gabriel to call his organization WOMAD...World Of Music And Dance, and to bring his festival to Adelaide, but I'm glad he did!
