Folk Dance Music Presented in the TF News No.79（ 1998/1/20:Tokyo-to Folk Dance League) We are a harmonica trio called "The Hummingbirds" and play as a back band at folk dance parties. We received a Japan Harmonica Award last year that we are the pioneer of a new category of harmonica as a back band of folk dancing. We hear folk dancing in Japan is unique in a sense that folk dance of all over the world are being danced, thus the repertoire includes over 5,000 musics. Our repertoire is about 150 musics of which records we borrowed from the folk dance officers and were able to represent in scores for our play. As we cannot dance, we assume the folk dance musics are purely the musics. Our impression of these music is that they are all cheerful. It should be natural because they are used by people of each country for dancing for long long time from the past. Russian musics are in minor scale, and are loved by Japanese people too. We like them because we can put deep feeling on them. We actually do not know to which country a music belong, although it is classified as music of Soviet Union. We can not distinguish whether it belongs to Ukraine, to Lithuania or to Russia. after the union corrupted. "Tatarochika" is a difficult music to play, but the dance is said to be easy and we have many chances to play. Our techniques are improved by playing it. "Haravodo" is a very good music to me, but we have not yet chance to play as back band of the dance. We should play in the rest of the year. "Korobchika" is our dear old music since our high school age. Musics from Israel are mostly exotic, and very enjoyable to play since their melody is not likely to that of the western music. The title of these music is myth, because we do not understand Hebrew. However when I see a lady from Israel at work, I could have some conversation about "Kama Ache" and "" with her. We talked about "Mime" the meaning of which is the water. It was interesting that she was surprised there were so many rain here. It was the rainy season and she came from the country of desert. American folk dances seem to be the mixture of musics from other countries, brought by the immigration. Some jazzy musics like "International Dance" feel us America. They are swingy and really enjoyable. We gave up some musics because they are too difficult to play with harmonica. English jigs and reels are very fast, and the sound leaps so often that they are quite difficult to play. Musics from eastern Europe, like Bulgaria. and Romania are difficult because their steps are strange to us. For example, 7/8 and 5/8 steps really confuse us. I cannot even tell where is the boundary of the bars. The musics of the heavy orchestration are also difficult. As we are trio, we can express only one melody part. Also, the chord is too difficult to catch. In other way, there are very good musics that fit to our play. Musics played by accordion become very good to our stile because the its sound is very similar to that of harmonica. I would like to play "Ice Vals" for backing the dance. Our play of "Kuyabiyak #3 of Ada" was once said to be quite fit to the dance. Several tarantellas are good for listening too for their tempo and rhythm, so we play for ourselves without dancing. They are very very good especially when dancers are dance with tambourine. Recreation dance musics we borrowed the record recently are all cheerful and enjoyable, so that we are planning to use them in elementary schools and kiddie homes. We very much appreciate the folk dance staffs to let us use their records. As the result, we could experience to play for 1,800 people dancing at Make-work Messe. We keep adapting the music and playing the good musics. Please keep help us. If there is anyone who want to play backing for folk dance, ask us. We will provide our music score, or we would like to borrow some too. Please contact below. TEL：0471(74)7504 Shoji Sanada |
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