This page contains some links to other websites relating to country dance, traditional music, and other related phenomena.

Country Dance Sites

Traditional music sites

email-based discussion groups

USENET newsgroups

Country dance sites

What is Contra Dance?, you ask? Click on this link and find out! Authored by Santa Barbara contra-enthusiast, Gary Shapiro.
 

Country Dance and Song Society is an umbrella organization promoting North American and English folk dance. They sponsor the famous Pinewoods Dance Camps, and also run a webstore sporting all sorts of dancerphernalia including books and recordings.
 

SeattleDance is a website maintained by Matt Fisher containing valuable info about a variety of folk dance events around the Puget Sound area.
 

Northwest Folklife Festival ...an amazing event which happens every year at Seattle Center over Memorial Day weekend. Literally thousands of musical groups of all shapes, sizes and styles, participatory dancing all weekend, great food, and all sorts of revelry. Not to be missed! The only drawback is that it occurs during Bellingham's Ski-to-Sea weekend.
 

Vancouver Country Dance, our neighbor to the north has their own site.
 

The Dance Database is an incredibly comprehensive searchable data base of nationwide dances, bands, callers, and the occasional set of dance figures maintained by Ithaca NY caller, Ted Crane. Use this site to plan your next cross-country dance tour.
 

Contra Dance Links for the United States, Canada, and the World is maintained by Charlie Seelig. As the title implies, it's a huge list of contra dance links worldwide. Check out this site before any " dance gypsy" vacation you may have planned.
 

Contra Corners is a site produced by Dwayne Johnson. Another dance directory and includes a clickable map of the US which will point you to other dance sites by locality.
 

Community Dance Project is the brainchild of Vancouvarian, Marian Rose. Marian does a heck of a job bringing country dance to schools throughout British Columbia (and the rest of North America as well!) You can also preview her two book/CD sets containing some great dance music and really fun dance instructions suitable for kids of all ages!
 

The Contra Dance Designer is Greg Hopkins' way-cool computer-simulation game where you can design your own contra dance. It runs on your browser. That is, only if your browser was born in Redmond, WA. At the time of this writing, it only works on Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher on Wintel platforms and IE 5.0 on the Mac. A Netscape-friendly version is in the works.
 

The South Seattle Friday Night Square Dance is an honest-to-goodness traditional southern-style square dance held in one of Seattle's oldest and most endearing community halls and featuring some of the Northwest's great old-time musicians. Usually held the 4th Friday of the month, the series is the result of the tireless efforts of Seattle's Catherine Alexander. Besides, with a domain name like "squeakyfiddle.com", it's gotta be great!

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Related traditional music sites

Thirty Below ...brrr!!!...is a web resource and webstore devoted to the traditional music of Quebec. Maintained by Guy Bouchard and Laura Sadowsky
 

The Old-Time Music Homepage is a remarkably thorough resource relating to the fiddle music of the Southern Appalacians. Maintained by David Lynch.
 

Roots of American Fiddle Music is another page dedicated to old-time fiddle. Lots of bios and sound samples from many of the fine old-time stringbands of the 20's and 30's.
 

So you've heard ABOUT Old Time Music, and maybe read bit about it, but still want to hear how it was done 70 years ago? Check out Old Time Music from 78s. This is a THOROUGHLY AMAZING site which contains Real Audio samples from a whopping 683 of the most important recordings of Old Time Music from the 20s and 30s. A MUST-VISIT site!!!!!. Your humble webmaster cannot say enough good things about this site!!!!
 

Floyd's Record Shop in Ville Platte Louisiana is THE definitive record store for Cajun, Zydeco and Swamp Pop music.
 

Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, WA. 2002 will mark its 26th year. Held during the week surrounding July 4th, the festival features intensive workshops in a wide variety of North American traditional music styles, evening concerts (open to the general public on the weekend), lots of dancing, jamming, and camp-raderie. The ultimate sleep-deprivation experiment! Your humble BCDS web-guy has missed only three out of 25 years!
 

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Email-based discussion groups

Fiddle Players' Discussion List (FIDDLE-L) is an email discussion list relating to many aspects of fiddle music. Everything from old-time to Celtic to Swing is fair game for discussion as long as it can be played with a bow on 4 strings. To sign up, visit the above link and follow the directions (this site also contains their archives) or send an email to: FIDDLE-L-Request@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU with the words "subscribe Fiddle-L" in the subject and body of the email. Warning: traffic on this list can get pretty heavy at times. Worth every download, though.
 

SeattleContra is an email discussion list relating to contra dance happenings around the Puget Sound area. To sign up, check out their website and archives by clicking the link. The list can be viewed either through their website or by signing up for email delivery.
 

Contra Sound Forum is an email discussion group relating to the arcane black art of providing sound reinforcement at contra dances...a task often akin to trench warfare! Discussions range from beginner's questions and answers to very technical matters. Great reading, though!

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USENET newsgroups

The following are some USENET newsgroups. They require a newsserver and client-side newsreader to access. If you don't know how to subscribe to a newsgroup, I suggest you find a personal net-guru to talk you through the procedure (or email me and I'll gladly walk you through the drill.)

rec.folk-dancing is a newsgroup dealing with many types of folkdancing, but usually the discussion centers around the more esoteric aspects of contra dancing. THE resource where one can find out how many claps are appropriate after the "Petronella Turn" (short answer: zero!)
 

rec.music.country.old-time is a newsgroup relating to the often fiddle-centric music from the Southern Appalacians (as well as other places) in a genre loosely termed "old-time music". Hard to define, but you'd recognize it you heard it! Remember: Old-time music is better than it sounds!
 

alt.culture.cajun. In the absence of a Cajun music-specific newsgroup, this is about as close as you can get. Not just music, but other aspects of Cajun culture are also discussed.
 

rec.music.makers.squeezebox. Who says the accordian is for lounge music only? Not me, I assure you! Technical aspects of all types of accordians and styles of playing are discussed from the player's perspective.
 

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