MP3 Wongawilli - Australian Traditional Dance Tunes, 2 CDs including CD Rom

2CDs, of arranged music for 23 Australian traditional bush dances by Australia's award winning bush / folk band Wongawilli. Includes a CD Rom track with dance instructions and other information.

23 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Traditional Folk, WORLD: Australian



Details:
Australian Traditional Dance Tunes, Volume 1 is a double CD of 85 tunes arranged in 23 sets for Australian bush dances from all sorts of European folk dance origins. There is 2 hours of dance music! A tune book has also been produced with 185 tunes and is available from Wongawilli Colonial Dance Club.

The instruments used include accordion, piano, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, whistle, lagerphone, guitar, spoons.

This recording is part of a larger project by the Wongawilli Colonial Dance Club Inc. in its ongoing aim to present Australian traditional folk dance and music. There are accompanying books of tunes and dance instructions.

The tunes are arranged in sets suitable for the suggested dances. These sets can also be used for other similiar structured dances in regards to numbers of bars and repetitions.

The majority of the tunes used are authentic tunes collected from older dance musicians by folklorists since the early 1950s. Many thanks to the following collectors for sharing the music - John Meredith, Rob Willis, Alan Musgrove, Dave de Hugard, Mike Martin, Brad Tate, Chris Sullivan, Mark Rummery, Mark and Maria Schuster and Peter Ellis.

Review:

The tunes are mostly collected from traditional musicians and serve as an antidote to the shameless pilfering from Irish and Scottish fake books that drives so many so-called bush bands. This makes these CDs of real value to any dancers and musicians who want genuine Australian music for real Australian dances.

The CD has sheet music for 41 traditional bush tunes and dance instructions for 27 of the 33 dances on the CD (all of which can be danced to some set on the CD) and instructions for another 14 (which probably fit some set on the CD as well). There is a selection of information, articles, references, contacts and links.

Bob Bolton, Bush Music Club, Sydney Australia