Roaring Jelly

Contra Dancing with Roaring Jelly

Roaring Jelly is the Boston area's "massed" contra dance band that has been playing together since 1970. We play for a monthly dance in Lexington, and appear occasionally at other dances in the area.

Here's a flyer for 2008-2009.
We have a CD! Here's an excerpt, our version of Lady Anne Montgomery's Reel.

Follow these links for:

If you don't know what contra dancing is, click here for an attempt at a definition. Here are some lists of contra dances in the greater Boston area:

FAC (Folk Arts Center of New England)
NEFFA (New England Folk Festival Association)
Open bands lists dances in the Boston area that allow sit-in musicians.

More generally, these organizations both maintain lists of all sorts of folk-dance events in the area:

FAC home page.
NEFFA home page.

Roaring Jelly has been a sort of "farm team" for Boston-area dance musicians. Here are some bands started by Roaring Jelly members:

We've found two other bands in the world called "Roaring Jelly". One is in New Mexico, and they have a style much like ours. The other was in Derby, England, which was a musical comedy group, but they disbanded back in the late 1980s. Recently they formed a new group, the Omega 3. They have a page about the old band. They sound like a fun gang, but they're not really much like us.

Roaring Jelly at the Old Manse, Minute Man National Historical Park, Concord, Massachusetts, USA
August 14, 2005

Send comments about this web site to John Chambers at MIT.