FIELDNOTES

Key to the font colors:

Very general explanatory summary.
things I remember but did not write down
written the same evening as the session
written at the session

I attended three meetings of the Sunday Night Jammers, 9/21, 9/28, and 10/5. Sessions take place in Goff Memorial Hall, in Rehoboth. It's about a half-hour drive from Providence.

9/21 I was not sure where I was going to focus on the Jammers as a research project, so I brought along no notebook to the first session and I stupidly did not write anything down afterwards. Here is a little of what I thought about it beforehand, extracted from a journal entry 9/20:

"I am going to a Rehoboth contra dance tomorrow. Playing fiddle. P came over to bring me the tunes so I could look at them. Most contra tunes go pretty damn fast, so I'm a little scared."

The 9/21 session was a bit unusual in that it was one of the three community dances held by the Jammers. There was a potluck with very good food beforehand. It was a small group of dancers--only about 6 or 7 couples--most of whom I have seen at the Brown dance. And eight fiddle players, one mandolin, one guitar, one pianist, one accordion, one recorder. Other people who play recorder or flute in addition to their other instrument would pick it up when they felt like it. The caller takes a surprisingly long time from the musicians' perspective: M, my stand partner, leaned over and said, "We always get to play more when there's not a dance." I didn't really look up except to notice the crazy "Oxdansen." It's a Danish or Swedish dance about the buying and selling of an ox. Looks pretty kooky. J left the stage to teach a couple of folk dances. P and some other people (I don't know their names yet) called. It was really, really fun!

9/28 This was just a regular session with no dancers. Here is what I wrote later that evening.

the place: Goff Memorial Hall, Rehoboth
the music: Jammers has a 150-page book of tunes people have collected and everyone reads from that. Thus, when we take turns picking out the tunes, we refer to them by page number. The more well-known ones get referred to by name. For example "Gathering Peascods." Should I be keeping a list of the tunes we play?
I'm so excited! J and P have started arrangements to get me my very own tune book. Yes! And B made brownies in a bread machine. J said, "I don't know what the question is, but the answer is chocolate."

This was when I first realized the very flexible nature of the group. I met people who hadn't been at the dance the previous week. I tried to explain the ethnomusicology project to P and J and didn't get very far; I had confused the performance paper and the fieldwork presentation and so it sounded like I was talking about two of the same things. We did get to play a lot more without dancers; I got teased for picking a waltz and then confessing that I love waltzes. (The joke here--I think--is that everyone REALLY does.) C took pictures for the website at the end of the session: I hung back until J asked if I was coming back next week. When I said yes, he said, "then get in the picture!"


10/5 I haven't gotten quite bold enough to pull out the notebook during the session, but afterwards, when people had split into small talking groups, I scribbled the following notes.

10/5/08
Goff Hall
after session

• Baghdad Gus
• Ashokan
• Coffee/Coffee!!
• new green book
• carpool

Later that evening, I wrote:

I dashed out to wait by the Patriot Court Gate promptly at 6:30. Wait for 5 or 10 minutes perched on the ledge that runs along the fence. It's low and I had a fiddle; there was at least one person who nearly tripped over me.
P and J had L in the car. She is a lovely lady. Went to college in the days where the housemother told off the boys who set "one foot" up the stairs to the girls' floor. her response to my living situation: "Times have changed."
The hall was dark and locked when we got there. When we got it all open and lit up we had to set up too--it'd been all cleared because there was a concert this afternoon. Goff Memorial Hall is very much a NE town center. It's got a large room with two pianos and many chairs and then the library takes up the rest of the building. A community place. Great acoustics. But cold. I pulled out my fingerless gloves (which are purple--and I was wearing orange!) and everyone stayed in their coats.
I didn't take notes during the rehearsal. Tonight there were a lot of people I hadn't ever seen before. Everyone else in the group seemed to know them. Membership in the group fluctuates from week to week. So does instrumentation. Here's this week:

• piano (did not play flute)
• guitar
• mandolin
• recorder
• fiddle
• mandolin, fiddle and euphonium. He table-sawed his hand a few hours before and still showed up! Mostly E. because it can be played with one finger out of commission.
• fiddle and recorder
• recorder
• me, fiddle
• everything woodwind
• guitar
• guitar
• fiddle

So many guitars! And a entire recorder section. They all sat near each other.
We played around a dozen tunes, mostly three times a piece. [According to a band member who read the blog, it is closer to two dozen tunes. True!] Each person gets a turn to pick the tunes and so we made about two circuits of the group. Baghdad Gus is a tradition--it's such a great tune and I'm so glad we ended with it. I kept forging onward and missing repeats because I kept having these OMG fieldwork moments.
The end of rehearsal sees B breaking out the brownies his bread maker has produced over the two hours. At that point and in that cold hall, warm chocolate gooeyness was vital to existence. The brownies didn't scorch our mouths because C had more band pictures taken. People made each other laugh. It was claimed that the old picture on the website looks like a bunch of serial killers. In this one, to paraphrase P, we just all look like we need new clothes.
Left with in a carpool. P dropped me off first, which he totally didn't have to do. I got food at Jo's and stored the fiddle back under the bed.