SOAS has a ceilidh band!

SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Music at the University of London, focusses its research and teaching on Africa and Asia.* Big surprise. Diaspora countries also come into focus, such as Black African communities in the Caribbean. This is particularly evident in the activities of the Music Department, recently rated the best ethnomusicology programme in the country. And it's not just British students wanting to learn about these other countries but many foreign students coming to learn about their own or other Asian and African countries.

SOAS regularly runs concerts of ethno-music, usually by visiting musicians but sometimes by their own members. A World Music Summer School is also offered (sign up now!) for learning these various music traditions. However, Ireland and Irish music are not on the agenda.

SOAS ceilidh band in action (before the trombone joined in)

So how did SOAS end up with a ceilidh (pronounced 'kay-lee') band? Ceilidhs are an Irish phenomenon that have been taken up with gusto in the university community here. The Durham University Folk Society has a ceilidh band and periodically runs ceilidhs in the Student Union building. But Irish, and British folk music in general, is so far from the remit of SOAS that it seems incongruous, but not unwelcome.

Teaching the dance moves at the SOAS ceilidh

For those of you who don't know, ceilidh dances are line dances (like the "Virginia Reel", often done at ceilidhs), square dances (like country western square dancing), circles or sets. The moves are called by a caller, and each dance can be accompanied by a set of two to four tunes played by the band. Students who play in ceilidh bands are often classically trained and then get into folk music at university; others come out of folk-music families who participate from birth. (They are really hard for beginners like me to compete with.)

So the band existence can be explained to some extent by previous exposure unrelated to what the students are studying; and besides, many band members aren't SOAS students anyway. But what about the dancers? When I was at university (granted, it was a long time ago), square and line dancing were really 'square', and you'd have to go to special folk nights to participate. That attitude is not found here. The SOAS band played squashed into the SOAS bar, where tables had to be removed and drinkers shooed into other corners. But everyone enthusiastically clapped after our first tune.

Granted, not too many people got up to dance, and by our accounting, many of the dancers were also not SOAS students – or else, they were SOAS students from foreign countries. One of the latter for sure was having a great time, he told me; I imagine this was a real "English" experience for him. So it all comes down to the attraction of the 'other', a concept in anthropology that allows us to explore and understand what isn't a part of oneself but what can surely be made into it.


* Not just South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) that's usually meant by the term 'Asia' in Britain, but also western, eastern, and southeastern Asia.