Old-Time Music and Dance
Community and Folk Revival

John Bealle (Author)

9780253346384

Paperback / softback, published 31 August 2005

368 pages, 30 b&w photos, 1 map
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.5 cm, 0.517 kg

". . . excellent . . ."—The Old-Time Herald

In the summer of 1972, a group of young people in Bloomington, Indiana, began a weekly gathering with the purpose of reviving traditional American old-time music and dance. In time, the group became a kind of accidental utopia, a community bound by celebration and deliberately void of structure and authority. In this joyful and engaging book, John Bealle tells the lively history of the Bloomington Old-Time Music and Dance Group—how it was formed, how it evolved its unique culture, and how it grew to shape and influence new waves of traditional music and dance. Broader questions about the folk revival movement, social resistance, counter culture, authenticity, and identity intersect this delightful history. More than a story about the people who forged the group or an extraordinary convergence of talent and creativity, Old-Time Music and Dance follows the threads of American folk culture and the social experience generated by this living tradition of music and dance.

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Conjuring History
1. An Apocryphal Story
2. Old-Time Music Revival
3. Banjo Pedagogy
4. Back to the Land
5. The Green House
6. The Old-Time Community
7. The Jukebox
8. The Orange Sheet
9. Anne's a Bride Tonight
10. Opening Up
11. Gardening and Dumpstering
12. The Bean King
13. The Indiana Contra Dancers' Lament
14. The Gang of Four
15. Easy Street
16. Dance Camps
17. The Sovereign Self
18. Bloomington Quarry Morris
19. May Day
20. Dare to Be Square
21. The Shuffle Creek Cloggers
22. The Old Library
23. Sugar Hill
24. Young Audiences
25. Little Bloomington
26. Eight Miles from Town
27. The Piano Controversy
28. The Book
29. Collection Time!
30. The Reclusive Muse
31. Lotus Dickey
32. Breaking Away
33. Blue Spruce
References
Index