Australia Dancing - Bush dancing in Australia

Bush dancing in Australia

Bell, Brendan: Australian Pioneer Dancers at the National Folk Festival, 1997

The local social dances held in rural Australia, which have come to be described as the bush dance, can be divided into two distinct phases. In the 19th century various popular dances such as the waltz, the schottische, the mazurka and the lancers, and the music and musical instruments that accompanied them, became established. These dances were popular in many Western countries and their colonies, and although often appropriated from peasant cultures rarely had a direct traditional link with their creators. However, some immigrants to Australia at this time brought with them traditional music and dances some of which were also incorporated into social gatherings.

The music associated with the resultant dances was creatively assembled from a number of sources, including traditional tunes known to musicians and modified to suit the new dances, compositions in the particular style, as well as from the burgeoning popular music publication industry. In the early part of the 19th century the dances in the cities were similar to those in the bush, though written reports suggest that the musical component in the cities was more formally organised around composers and bands.

The second phase correlates almost exactly with the new century, though it was particularly exacerbated by the First World War. New dances, while quickly replacing all the dances in the city, were no longer incorporated into the dance repertoire of many of the rural dances. The dances of the 19th century came to be described, somewhat pejoratively, as 'Old Time', with the 20th century dances eventually grouped under the name 'New Vogue'. Some dancers and musicians actively rejected the new music and dances. Bill McGlashan, mentor to Harry McQueen, whose bands both played in the district around Castlemaine, refused to play tunes for any of the new dances, and his protege carried on his wishes well into the 1960s. Other musicians, such as Charlie Batchelor from Bingara, motivated amongst other reasons by a foreboding of change, attempted to preserve the old traditions by learning the tunes. Still others managed to bridge both, such as John McKinnon who maintained the old tunes on his accordion, but learnt the new tunes on a saxophone.

In the early 1960s the interest in dance and dance music grew, with Shirley Andrews central to this development. Presentations of folk dances at an international youth festival in the 1950s apparently sparked Andrews' interest, and she began encouraging collectors to document dances and dance tunes. Travelling to country centres to learn the dances, she discovered in the memories of musicians and dancers a range of dances and in a few rural communities some of them still being danced, including the quadrilles, mazurkas, varsoviennas and schottisches.

The bush band, the bush dances they held, and the type of instrumentation that became so common in Australia from the 1960s, developed as a result of this folk revival. The ensemble with its mix of guitar, accordion, fiddle, lagerphone and various other instruments, is a clearly a recent innovation. The dances which were popular in this later revival tended to be drawn somewhat eclectically from published international sources. While some performers in the modern bush band tradition have worked diligently with collected materials, and met and learnt from older traditional musicians, and some dance callers and teachers have researched and taught the collected Australian dances, many more have learnt and performed for no other reason than the joy of participating, with little regard for historical accuracy, and both are part of the modern Australian bush music and dance revival.

Bibliography:

This entry was written by Kevin Bradley, Curator of Oral History and Folklore at the National Library of Australia

See also: Andrews, Shirley

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