One With the Music: Cape Breton Step Dance Tradition and Transmission is informed, in part, by Melin’s PhD research on transmission practices—how the tradition and steps of generations of dancers in Cape Breton get passed on to subsequent generations. His research gives us insight not only into the processes of transmission but also into the complex ways dance and music in Cape Breton are deeply ingrained in the island’s culture. In this book, the home, classroom, and square-dance contexts—and, to some extent, concerts—are examined and analyzed following years of interviews and participation.
The Book is published by Cape Breton University Press and now available through Nimbus Publishers and can be purchased on Amazon as well.
REVIEWS of One with the Music
“One with the Music is a deeply insightful account of choreomusical expression in Cape Breton. Its focus is solo step-dancing, but it provides a much broader account of what Melin learned in and about Cape Breton, and how he learned it, since a first encounter in 1992 and subsequent
engagement with the whole of the music and dance tradition. This publication is based on substantial fieldwork and analysis carried out since 2006 and the completion of his PhD dissertation ‘Exploring the Percussive Routes and Shared Commonalities in Cape Breton Step Dancing’ (2012). The time and care taken throughout is reflected in the present book-length revision of that work.
Its focus, the author states, is on ‘how aesthetic preferences and step-dance movements are maintained, undergo change and are transmitted within the Cape Breton music and dance community’ (p. 3). But this rather narrowly characterized analytic focus on ‘transmission’, carried over from the dissertation, belies the more general interest this book will hold for a wider readership. It is informed by engagement with current theorization of movement perception and cognition in ethnochoreology, as is to be expected in a specialist study. Proprioception and kinaesthesia play a central role in his analysis, and he effectively introduces and explicates these in his opening chapters. It is Melin’s profound personal connection with the place and its people, however, that generates its most compelling arguments. This immediately strikes the reader in the opening sentences, which take one directly into the action and sensory world of a dance event in a detailed, first-person, present-tense account of the scene that he sees, hears, feels, and senses all around him.
Subsequent chapters examine specific performance and transmission contexts: house ceilidhs, classrooms, concerts, and square dances. He notes changes in transmission processes that have occurred as the occasions and venues for dancing have changed over time, but emphasizes continuities in the tradition that hold this community together across the generations. He discusses the social history of the region and its cultural ties to Scotland. The aesthetics of good dancing are examined in detail. The importance placed on dancing the music and musicking the dance in Cape Breton step dance performance is at the core of Melin’s more technical analyses.
An appendix offers a formal analysis providing notated movement examples. More extensive transcriptions can be found online at http://insteprt.co.uk/cape-breton-step-dance/ as well as in the dissertation online at the University of Limerick Institutional Repository http://ulir.ul.ie/handle/10344/2489 which also includes references to online video recordings of these performances. Biographical sketches representing the wide variety of age and experience among Melin’s consultants are also included as an appendix. ‘These stories are, in many ways, central to an understanding of Cape Breton dance culture and its community’s aesthetic preferences’ (p. 187). In a more thoroughgoing phenomenologically hermeneutic account of this world of shared understanding these life stories would be integral and ‘central’ to the text. Their relegation to an appendix reflects theoretical and methodological perspectives between which Melin’s work is poised somewhat awkwardly. On the one hand, it takes from its incarnation as a dissertation in ethnochoreology that discipline’s legacy of empirical formal analysis. On the other, its revision in this book is more strongly informed by interpretive methods taken from ethnomusicology which have only begun to be adopted in its so-called sister field.
It is the personal voice of an understanding subject who has extended the horizon of his life-world profoundly to share complex and multiple understandings that most impresses the reader, both opening and closing the text. From his beginning as an active and attentive observer, Melin leads us – step by step, we might say – to the account with which he ends the book: ‘I have been dancing for about three hours and all my senses are alert. I have become “one with the hall” and those around me. I feel the music flowing up from behind me on the stage. I can hear every note from the piano. My leg muscles are working hard. The hips and knees feel fluid, with my feet responding to other joints’ commands. I see the two musicians playing and how they move as they do so. Each variation on a tune triggers movements that I “hear” in the music each time I dance’ (paraphrased from pp. 247-48).
This moment-by-moment, impressionistic account of a performance finishes and Melin interrogates more closely just how he chooses, or not, to dance a step. It is not a simple process and it is entwined in the immediate experience of the environment from which the dance emerges, as suggested in this quote, but it is also deeply connected to shared knowledge and memory of other dancers and other performances. As one of Melin’s consultants reported to him after reading and concurring with the above description, ‘No-one has ever written this from the mind’s thoughts – you’ve managed to create an absolute snapshot… I absolutely couldn’t agree more. The only thing I have to add personally – is that every single time I spontaneously get up to dance – Mama Maggie Ann (Cameron) Beaton comes back to me – her presence is there – and I always include a step or two that honour her memory’ (p. 252). This affirmation of Melin’s hard-won understanding of Cape Breton dance provides the closing words of this thorough and compelling ethnochoreological account of a vibrant community dance tradition.”
Folk Music Journal 2018. Colin Quigley (Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick)
Review of One with the Music, by Mairi Britton, March 2016
Mats Melin is a well-known researcher and practitioner of Cape Breton/Scottish-style step dancing and his new book, One with the Music, will no doubt enhance his standing as a primary academic authority on this fascinating and vibrant tradition. His book offers meticulous academic analysis of the dance’s history, transmission and stylistic development in Cape Breton alongside a warm affection and respect for the tradition bearers who have been so generous as to share their knowledge and friendship with him and others over the years.
Guided by the discipline of ethnochoreology, Melin utilizes frameworks such as linguistic theory, phenomenological hermeneutics and developments in neuroscience to offer new insights into the dance tradition. Despite this more ‘academic’ approach, however, Melin’s writing style is clear and concise and the book will be accessible and engaging to academic and non-academic readers alike.
The first part of the book examines the contexts of home, class, square-dance and concert and explores these through visual, aural and kinaesthetic channels of transmission. The second half deals with dance style and aesthetics and offers biographical sketches of the main dancers who are quoted at length throughout the book. In doing so, it seems Melin is striving to honour the exponents of the tradition in allowing them to speak for themselves.
At its heart, One with the Music is a celebration of a beautiful dance style rooted in the homes and local gatherings of the Cape Breton community. As such, it will be of use and interest to those within the tradition as well as those exploring step dance for the first time. As a step dancer and a student within the field of ethnochoreology and folklore studies I have found it exceptionally informative and enjoyable. I hope others will also, and I thank Melin and the Cape Breton dance community for giving us this valuable resource.
Personal reflections on Mats Melin’s impact on traditional dance knoweldge:
I believe Mats Melin has had a considerable and positive impact on traditional dancing in Scotland over a period of many years as both a dance scholar and practitioner. Although I only met Mats in 2014 I was aware of his academic research on Scottish and Cape Breton traditional dancing before then. As far as I am aware he is the only academic to have carried out significant research on the recent reintroduction of percussive step dancing to Scotland, and one of a very few number of scholars who are researching Cape Breton step dance as well. As a postgraduate student looking into these topics I have found Mats’ work invaluable and I continuously refer to and quote from his publications. Mats has been exceptionally kind and supportive to me as I venture through my studies and I am grateful to him for generously sharing his time and knowledge with me.
I know several dancers of my generation who have positive memories of being taught step and social dancing by Mats at various points. Through his work as dance development officer in a number of Scottish communities, as well as visiting lecturer and dance teacher at the (now) RCS in Glasgow, Mats has worked tirelessly to share his knowledge and encourage his own love of dancing in others. All I know who know Mats speak of him warmly and with a respect and appreciation for what he has given the dance community both in Scotland and Cape Breton. For example, the recently formed Cape Breton dance performance group Fileanta refer to Mats’ expertise on their own regional square sets, and also on stage presentation (drawing on Mats’ experience in successful traditional Scottish dance performance group Dannsa).
Mats and I both sit on the board of the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland where Mats’ insights and experience are always valued. Through his work at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance Mats works energetically to promote traditional dance generally, and especially to foster links between dancers in Ireland, Scotland and Cape Breton. I believe his contribution is valued by the many people who benefit from, and are inspired, by it.