Ralph Page on Live Music

Ralph Page was a very influential dance caller who published Northern Junket, a square dance magazine. This was "square dance" in the broad sense, before the club and trad communities divided, and while he came from a strong live music tradition he was living through the transition to recorded music. I looked through the Northern Junket archives to see his perspective on live music, and I came across a few passages that show the wave of the contra dance revival sweeping across New England in the early 1970s. In Vol 9 No 8 (1969), Page is writing about live music as something so rare that most haven't danced to it. An evening dance in Cambridge with live music is an exciting exception: How long has it been since you danced to good live music? I'll imagine that seventy-five percent of the club dancers in this country have never had that pleasure. What a pity! It might be a way of keeping your group interested in dancing. Certainly nothing would be lost if every square dance club started…

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