Sometimes you stumble onto something unexpected in the material of the Clerk, and the other day an almost complete description of a Chartagonian walking dance was found. This dance was apparently an almost mandatory ending of festivities, before the parties returned home or continued under more informal forms (i.e., the youth kept dancing and socializing). What is particular about this dance is that it both strengthened the Chartagonian identity as well as island specific identity. The music had two parts containing two phrases, repeated as AABBAABB…e.t.c., and always ended with a single A, when everybody had danced one phrase with each person at the gathering. The A-phrase was the Chartagonian-wide melody, and the B-phrase was specific for each island. It it not clear who composed the A-phrase or the B-phrases, but it is likely that the B-phrases were changed over time, to fit the current settlements. The A-phrase has been unchanged since the first lighthouses, but we don’t know how the melody came into the descendants’ possession.
The dance is more walking than dancing, and gave everyone the opportunity to walk together in silence for a short time (or silently singing the lyrics, which is also unknown to us at this point). The dance started with everyone standing in pairs in a large circle, holding one hand of the other person, and during the dance everyone walked slowly forward in the ring to the tempo of the music, 3/4 at about 120bpm. After every phrase, the person standing on the outer side from the center moved forward to dance with the inner person in the pair in front. During every second phrase, one pair switched places, so that the outer person became the inner person, making everyone eventually dance with everyone. The last A-phrase was danced with the person you started to dance with. In practice, this meant that if there was 20 persons at the gathering, the music would play 21 phrases (with each phrase being about 16 seconds, the total duration would be 5-6 minutes).
We assume that quite a few feelings could be expressed through the light touch when leading each other in the ring, giving the opportunity to bringing people closer together or taking the edge of personal conflicts. Most of the time, this dance/walk would reduce the tempo of the party and be a real party-pooper, but most people seemed to be settling down in a good way before leaving for home.
In the example below, the melody is played as documented by the Clerk, on the form AABBAABBA (and therefore suitable for 8 people), but the first BB comes from one island and the second BB comes from another island, so you can hear the vast difference between the B-phrases of different islands. The Clerk left note transcriptions for five different islands, but leave references to other documents which we have not yet found in the archives.
The lyrics lack sophistication, and is written in an old Chartagonian style, at least in the A-phrase. There is no mentioning about lyrics for the B-phrase, but because the rhythm and length of the A-phrase does not match, we assume that there should be island specific lyrics for each B-phrase. While the known lyrics are difficult to translate to good English, the meaning should be something along these lines:
Thank you everyone for all this time
There is nothing that we should regret
This day will flee
but we will see a-
nother dawn when (the) sun has set