Traditional dance and folk music in ​Paris and Birmingham in the 1980s

At the end of the 1970s two traditional music dance bands – Pigtown Fling, from Birmingham, and Passacaille, from Paris – started a relationship that developed over the next decade. For several years the Birmingham musicians and friends organised concerts and dances in England where the French musicians could play, and the French musicians, dancers and singers likewise organised venues in France for the British band. ​

French, British and Irish traditional dance music

 
Over the years of exchange, the French learned polkas, hornpipes and reels from Ireland, England and Scotland, and the British learned bourrées, mazurkas and rondeaux from Occitanie, Bourbon and Brittany. They danced to each other’s music, learned how to call each other’s dances, and travelled to each other’s festivals, celebrations and weddings.

​ This was a time before digital photos and widely-available video recorders. The only records from the time were photographs on film and tunes recorded haphazardly on portable cassette recorders. Now photographs can be digitised, and tunes on ancient cassettes can be transformed into MP3 tracks. 

​The aim of this website is to bring together the material from that decade – the photographs, the concert fliers, the dance posters, and any of the music that could be rescued from the old cassettes, regardless of quality. Over time, perhaps, more people will send in their own ephemera from that era, lost contacts may be restored, and new folk musicians may make connections and find tunes to learn amongst the old material.