Our contra dance band played a well-attended dance the other night. Early on, our caller requested that we do a set of "smooth tunes", to match the dance she was teaching. We weren't exactly clear about what she meant, so I showed her our tune list with 60 or more tunes on it. She immediately chose a set comprised of "Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine", "Jamie Allen", and Huntsman's Chorus".
Discussing this at our following rehearsal, we realized that each of these tunes is actually a march. As such, we naturally play this set with a slightly different rhythm than any of our faster reel sets. We concluded that we all need to do some research to add a few more marches to our repertoire.
Can anyone here suggest some marches (or even better, entire march sets) that will work in a contra dance setting? Keep in mind, that any march we ever do, will be played for dancing, not marching.
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