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Once upon a time, Ian MacPherson, a Scottish fiddler, and Liam Dowling, an Irish piper (or was Dowling the fiddler and MacPherson the piper?), a pair as well known for their late-night carousing as for their musicianship, grew tired of nursing their hangovers on English breakfast tea, and set sail for the New World and a good strong cuppa joe. They were hoping to land in Boston, where a red-haired man was rumored to have formed a band of Celtics who played in a Garden. The pay was good; the house was packed nightly. "What could be better?" they asked, for a pair of Gaelic musicians such as they. But, alas, most of their funds having been flushed down the loo of the local pub, the only passage they could afford was aboard a tramp steamer bound for Nicaragua by way of Iran. (I'll bet you thought this connection was first made by Ollie North) "Nicaragua……hmmmm. Well, at least they grow coffee there." So off they went, pipes and fiddle in hand (though which instrument in whose hand I still can't recall), shirts on their backs and naught else. After a long and arduous voyage, most of which was spent either leaning over the rail or convulsed in their bunks, they arrived, nearly as green as the Emerald Isle itself, in the port of Managua. Their first employment upon arrival was unloading, and then reloading, the very ship which had brought them there. Given the circumstances, they performed these tasks diligently, filching the occasional banana or handful of coffee beans to keep up their strength. `With a bit of cash in their pockets and their instruments once again in hand, they sallied forth to do the town. True to form, they soon blew their hard-earned wad. Untrue to form, they were rousted out of barroom after barroom by the Spanish speaking locals who couldn't stand the sound of the bagpipes (the Scotsman, after all, really was the piper). Ian and Liam headed for the hills. There they took up with a tribe of indigenous mountain folk who loved their music and apparent good humor in spite of a seemingly impenetrable language barrier. They also admired the pair's capacity for strong drink. Ian and Liam, in their turn, were grateful for the generosity of their new-found hosts and discovered them to be quite musically adept, especially in the rhythm department. They also grew fond of the local coffee, and some of the other locally grown stimulants as well. Soon the nightly revels grew to resemble those they had left behind in the Old Country, with one major exception: the language differences made singing along impossible, so the gathered throngs began dancing instead. They danced in a long line down the narrow street that was the site of their gatherings. Men and women chose each other as partners and often switched partners when the musicians switched tunes; couples danced past each other in the line to exchange greetings (and sometimes locally grown stimulants) with their neighbors. A good time was being had by all, Liam and Ian were playing with increased energy, and as the partners started dancing across the line from each other, the term contra started being used. Unfortunately, this term proved their undoing; those other Contras, the ones that really were funded by Ollie and Iran, began to foment trouble. The government sent the army to quell this uprising, and by understandable error our heroes' village was included on the list of Contra strongholds. The villagers scattered and fled for mountain hideouts. Ian and Liam got lost in the woods and somehow found themselves back in Managua, where they were all too well remembered by the local barkeepers. They slunk back to the harbor and stowed away in the hold of a banana boat bound for the USA. By chance this boat landed them in their long sought after Boston, a city which has historically shared both their love of Gaelic music and their ambivalence toward British tea. There they soon fell in with a pair of dancemasters named Page and Laufman who, given the circumstances of their arrival, called Ian and Liam The ContraBand, and added some good, solid Yankee structure to their wild Nicaraguan dances. The lads have since toured throughout New England, playing the traditional music of their homeland, along with tunes of their own composition, such as the Macpherson Strut and the Dowling(or Doweling) Jig. The rest, of course, really is history.- March 11, 1998
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DANCE HUMOR:
Guns and Etiquette at the Dance.*~*~*BACK TO HOME PAGE*~*ED'S DANCES*~*CONTRADANCE (and other) LINKS*~*~*
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