Just thought some of you might enjoy this clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOtnZEsbQew
I’ve played at a session in the Cumberland a couple of times and could hear these guys practising in another room,couldn’t hear the fiddle just the stomping. Looks good fun though!
The guy talks for a wee while music and dancing starts around 1min 40 secs
Rapper, as far as I know, is always danced to 6/8 jigs played at a furious speed. It’s something of an art to play them that fast and still make them sound like music.
Good kick! I enjoyed that…
Thanks flossie! That was great.
But lok at the performance at Whitby on the same page - blindfold Morris! I am standing just behind the camera (I WAS there boyo!). It was as hilarious then as it is now!
I love Rapper!
Brilliant stuff. A Rapper group from Aberdeen were in the Sunday afternoon session in Glasgow a few weeks ago and treated us to a couple of dances. A memorable event.
No somersault though, the punters weren’t given the full business…
(Have *I* ever done a rapper somersault? No bloody fear…)
Seeing a rapper somersault at close quarters is possibly the nearest thing in the everyday world to one of those nature programmes where a humpback whale the size of a Tesco lorry hurls itself skyward out of the water just in front of you, for no reason at all.
Oh dear be afraid be very afraid
(I am, of course, aware that not every rapper dance *does* include a somersault…perhaps, in these cases, it’s because Cecil Sharp turned up a few minutes before last orders, and was treated to an abbreviated version of a dance…)
This team is for hire at a low amount of cash but a high amount of alcohol. They have danced a number of times at the Friday session in the Cumberland Arms, Byker , Newcastle and a number of the regular players at the Friday session are ex kingsmen players and dancers.
And yes summersaults do feature at times . The team has been going I think it is for over 50 years although not with the same people. It just looks it sometimes.
I can vouch for the difficulty of making it sound like music having played for a local rapper side - not to mention changing the tunes along with the figures.
Mind you I should love to have a shot at playing for dem boys!
Great stuff.
You mean, Dave, that they all become the same, portly, bearded, somewhat grizzled bloke with a tankard in the belt and plastic flowers up and down him sticking out at random…
This process starts young.
In Durham, there is quite often a band of three or four youngsters playing decent enough trad in the street. This has been the case for some time. There will be one girl, the rest lads, quite slightly built, swaying like grasses through the energies of their playing and Durham’s Arctic draughts. The music stays more or less the same, and the players always look the same. However, I have the impression that they are not the same, but are actually changing all the time.
But it’s still the same band.
Weird!
Magic! Thanks.
