Training 5

A lot of people from Northern Ireland used to come to the Edinburgh sessions, and they were a strong influence. There are some pubs where people play Irish music, and some where people play Scottish music. There were always more people playing in the Irish sessions, maybe because in Irish music you often find five or six fiddles playing together or because songs were more common in the Irish sessions.

My friend Alexander, who is Russian, told me an interesting story about a trip he made to Damascus, in Syria, a few years ago. He was working in a city in the heart of Siberia as an interpreter for a dancing group, composed of boys and girls aged between about fourteen and seventeen. They were a very professional dancing group, as they’d all started dancing at about the age of six, and had been training intensively since then, every day, learning many different types of dances, so it was very impressive to see them. It was a real pleasure for my friend to work with them, and to see them dance so often. Every time he looked at them, he couldn’t help admiring them, as they danced so magnificently, better than many adult dancing groups that he’d seen.

Anyway, they travelled to Damascus in July or August, in the middle of summer, so it was rather hot in Siberia at that time, about twenty-nine degrees Celsius, so everybody was sweating. He said to them before they left, “Don’t forget where we are going, we’re going to Damascus, very close to the desert, and it’s going to be something like forty-seven or even fifty degrees.”

When they arrived at the airport, however, and got out of the plane, they didn’t believe that they were in a desert region, as they all felt a little bit chilly! When it was announced at the airport that it was just eighteen degrees, they couldn’t believe their ears.

The next day, however, the heat wave came, and it was blistering hot. The temperature reached forty-seven degrees, and so during the day it was almost impossible for my friend and his group to go out into the street without staying in the shade. They could walk along covered walkways, or stay under the canvas awnings of cafes, but it was absolutely unbearable to be in the open.

My friend said that during the daytime in the summer there it is just like a dead city, with nearly empty streets with only very few people walking here and there and no other signs of life. But when the sun goes down, at about nine o’clock in the evening, life there really begins. All of the people come out into the streets, the cafes and restaurants open, and the social life starts. They go to parties, visit each other, buy, and sell things, go to the cinemas – everything starts at nine in the evening and carries on until about two or three in the morning. For my friend it was like an upside-down world, as in Siberia everything closes at about nine, life finishes and everybody goes to bed.

Another thing that surprised Alex was that whereas in Russia it’s very unusual for children to go out with their parents to restaurants and to places in the evening, in Damascus it’s normal. The children may be three or four years old; you will be sitting and drinking and talking, and the children either sit down next to their parents or, more usually, run around between the tables and play. This was so unusual for my friend to experience, especially as Russia had been so restricted because of the Iron Curtain and he’d never had the opportunity to travel abroad before.

Their dancing tour was a great success. They were in several cities – Damascus, Aleppo and two or three more, and in each place that they danced the audiences went wild. They applauded and called for encores again and again and again. They were accompanied by a small group of musicians playing Russian instruments, balalaikas, and this was very unusual for the local people who were mostly Arabs, as their music was absolutely different, so they were altogether amused, amazed and thoroughly entertained.