The Craftiest Workshop

Since my return from Saskatchewan, I have been diligently practising the fiddle every day trying to increase my stamina and improve my sound.

A family friend from Edmonton that plays the fiddle has lent me a number of fiddle books (thanks Norm). I have been playing through the tunes to see which ones I can play now and others that will take much longer to learn. I came across one tune that I knew and my mind went reeling back to family weddings as a child. It was “Heel Toe Polka”. I wouldn’t be lying if I said that I catch myself singing (or whistling) it multiple times a day.

My mind started remembering things from those weddings. As soon as the band would play the Chicken Dance, everyone would pile onto the floor to do that action based song. There was another group dance where a few people would link arms and move around the room and then stop and the middle person would take a turn with each other person and go around in a circle. No one in my immediate family had a recollection of the dance so I thought maybe it was all in my head.

Fast forward to this past Friday evening. My fiddle teacher invited me to attend an online zoom Hootenanny. It was mostly members of the Alberta Fiddlers Association playing a series of fiddle tunes together. Everyone could hear a band of three fiddlers and a keyboard while the rest remained muted. The speed of their playing was too much for me but I followed along with the music and practiced fingerings in parts that were slower. The very last song they played, which was not on the list of tunes for the night, was “The Butterfly Dance”. I knew immediately after it was announced that this was the dance I was describing above. It was a waltz played while three people were hooked together with their elbows. You would hop three times on the right foot then three times on the left foot. After a bit, the band would go into a polka tune and then the middle person would start spinning one person at a time around. The band would go back into the waltz and you would go back to linking and hopping.

The only other thing I recall from those weddings was the party favours at the tables. It was either a small individually wrapped fruitcake or tiny baskets of cream cheese mints. I remember loving those mints so much that I would go to relatives at other tables and ask to have their mints. I have seen a few recipes float around on Facebook for them and have been tempted to make some just purely for nostalgic reasons.

The other memories that fiddle playing is bringing forth are my few years of attempting to play bagpipes and all those years of listening to John McDermott songs. There are quite a few similar tunes that are played in pipe band and many of the slower Scottish tunes that John McDermott recorded on his CD’s. All that being said, there are a number of tunes in the fiddle books that I have never heard before so it is a great learning experience. Once I learn a tune, I tend to never forget it and can sing it; playing it on an instrument from memory is another thing entirely.

So, all in all, fiddle playing is quite enjoyable. I am toying with the idea of attending a fiddle camp in August for a week near Red Deer. I am also looking forward to it being warm enough to take my fiddle outside and serenade the birds.