The author of this encyclopaedia taught humanities at high-school and university level for many years and has authored several prize-winning encyclopaedias in subjects as varied as fable, feminist literature, the underground railroad and ballet. The acknowledgements bear witness to consultation with a wide variety of authorities, although many of them are actually US-based.
The encyclopaedia begins with a chronology, before 347 pages on an alphabetical series of subjects ranging from nationalities to dance form (e.g. veiled dance, clogging or branle), taking in other topics as wide-ranging as censorship and ceilidhs. A brief appendix lists national and state dances, alphabetically by dance rather than by nation. This is followed by a four-page glossary of necessary terms that might be unfamiliar to the average enquirer, such as “bel canto” – a singing style – or the act of “reverence” made to spectators at the end of certain dances. There is an eight-page bibliography divided into primary and secondary sources: books, journals and electronic sources; the vast majority of the secondary sources were published in the past 15 years. A very detailed index finishes off the book. Additionally, the book is well-supplied with both black and white and eye-catching colour illustrations.
The challenge for any individual compiler of a one-volume encyclopaedia is that even when there is wide consultation, one then has to bring everything together into a logical arrangement, doing justice to the international coverage of the topic whilst not oversimplifying to the point of banality. Snodgrass has produced an impressive tome with wide-ranging discussion, and the reviewer is challenged to ascertain the reliability of the information therein.
The best way to test an encyclopaedia is to interrogate it on one particular area, so the present reviewer has taken the folk dance of Scotland as an example. There is no main entry for “Scotland”, nor for “strathspey”, although there are certainly many page references to each in the index, with those in bold type flagged as the most pertinent. On the other hand, there is a two-page entry Reel, but it makes only the briefest of references to Scotland’s national dance. Because the index yields so many page references, it would take careful inspection of many different pages before the reader felt informed about the nature of folk dance in Scotland. Unfortunately, they might not be very well-informed.
The appendix listing national dances cites two for Scotland – the reel (but not the strathspey) and the highland fling. The latter is arguably more of a solo competition showpiece nowadays, compared to the very sociable reels, strathspeys, marches and so on; it does not even feature in the world’s most eminent online encyclopaedia of music, Oxford Music Online. Furthermore, whilst the acknowledgments include the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, the bibliography itself lists nothing that would enable the novice enquirer to get a quick grasp on the subject of Scotland’s national folk dance.
Even more worryingly, the primary sources are very old – for example, the author lists Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians in the 1889 edition. There have been more recent paper editions, but Oxford Music Online superseded them all, a century later than the edition used! It is very surprising indeed that Snodgrass was unable to source either the paper version that appeared when the online edition first came on stream, or the current online version itself, not just for British but for quite a few other national dances too.
Meanwhile, if proof is needed of both of the American bias and the outdated primary sources for this volume, the book on the highland fling was published in New York in 1,892: Horatio N. Grant’s The Highland Fling and How to Teach it. A “primary source” should be there because it is an important, authoritative source, as much as an old one; a contemporary Scottish dance expert probably would not refer students to an American source this old, except as evidence of how the dance was perceived by that author in that particular era.
It is perhaps unfortunate that the present reviewer happens to be based in Scotland and that Scottish folk dance does not seem to be very-well served in this encyclopaedia when there are plentiful entries on such a wide variety of other national dances and dance types. Another reviewer might have formed a more positive impression of the book, without noticing the aforementioned defects.
The book is undoubtedly of value but possibly more as an introduction to students than for experts in the particular topics it covers. Such experts would be well-advised to check the entries and provide their students with any additional commentary or references that are absent from this title.
