Ramapo Rangers - Rod LaFarge, 1945

This is a full year of the newsletter issued by Rod LaFarge for his local dancers in northern New Jersey. The following year, LaFarge began publishing Rosin the Bow, a more ambitious commercial project that reached a wider audience. The newsletter is a mixture of news of interest to his dancers, plus occasional reminders of the calls for dances that were part of the programs put on by the group's square dance exhibition team.

(This collection of newsletters has also been made available on the Internet Archive.)

LaFarge himself was a serious scholar of American social dance and published in American Squares a lengthy series of articles looking at the various cultural influences that formed our dances. He was ahead of his time in recognizing the African-American influence, and clearly was aware of related forms of squares. See, for example, “I’ve dug up music to use with some of the Bahamian dances that I picked up from that colored quadrille club up in Harlem…” (issue #3, page 2)

Viewers interested in other magazines might enjoy other examples in our collection or this exhibit.