Metadata for Called Folk Dances

Introduction Many traditional folk dances including Contra Dance, Square Dance, English Country Dance (ECD), and others from a variety of cultural backgrounds involve a caller who leads the dance by speaking or singing the choreography in time to the music. The caller will help the dancers perform the choreography until either the music that is pre-selected for a particular dance ends (in the case of ECD) or until the caller decides to stop (contra, square). For archivists or modern callers selecting recordings of called dances there are a number of properties of the music that are not described by traditional music metadata that may be desirable to know. For example, an archivist may want to find all recordings of a specific caller playing with a specific band, but the callers name is not a commonly used metadata tag. Or a modern caller may want to filter out all tracks that have their own calls or are "crooked" (ie. don't perfectly align with the phrasing of the particular dance they are calling) to select recordings to call to when a live band is not available for a dance. Having a set of standardized tags to describe such dances is of use for archivists preserving field recordings, and for modern day callers of folk dances such as Modern Urban Contra callers who can use such tags to more rapidly select music that is suitable for calling when working with recorded music.

Requirements Language The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

Assigned Tags

Called Tracks The tags defined in the following table describe recordings that incude sung or spoken dance calls. If the recording includes a separate track for the caller or otherwise includes multiple audio tracks (ie. an entire evening of dances in a single file separated with a CUE track) these tags SHOULD set a target pointing to the exact track containing the calls. Tags

Tag Name	Type	Description
DANCE_FORM	UTF-8	The form of the folk dance such as "contra" or "square". Because a large number of different folk dances exist (and because this tag may be broadly useful for dances other than called folk dances) no particular format or list of dance forms are defined. Archivists may choose to be much more particular about this tag, for example listing the specific formation of a contra dance such as "duple minor improper contra" while a caller may simply list the dance as "contra".
DANCE_CALLER	UTF-8	The name of the caller heard in the track. This may be the special value "[unknown]".
DANCE_TITLE	UTF-8	The name of the dance being called. This may be the special value "[unknown]".
DANCE_CHOREOGRAPHER	UTF-8	The name of the author of the dance being called. This may be one of the special values "[unknown]" or "[traditional]".
DANCE_CHOREOGRAPHY	UTF-8	The moves of the dance in plain text format. No exact style is specified. The dance author, choreographer, difficulty, or any callers notes SHOULD NOT be included and should instead be read from the appropriate tags.
DANCE_CALLER_NOTES	UTF-8	Any notes provided by the choreographer or the caller related to calling the dance. For example, many choreographers will provide notes such as "When teaching the A1 part, have the Larks cross over first...". Or individual callers may provide notes on their calling card such as "Beginner friendly" or "Advanced dance".
DANCE_ROLES	UTF-8	Role terms used in the calls. For example, "Larks/Robins" or "Leads/Follows" or "Positional" for dances that explicitly do not mention role terms for a partnership. No specific format is defined.
DANCE_LICENSE	UTF-8	Like the LICENSE field defined in except relating to the choreography of the dance being called.

Called or Uncalled Tracks The following tags are generally applicable to tracks that include the caller as well as to tracks that are uncalled but fit the form of a particular folk dance or are commonly used for folk dance. If the file contains multiple audio tracks these tags SHOULD set a target pointing to the track containing the music. Tags

Tag Name	Type	Description
DANCE_HAS_POTATOES	UTF-8	"Potatoes" are a term used to describe the syncronization beats played by the band before the tune starts to get the caller and dancers on time. If set, this key MUST always be the value "TRUE" or "FALSE".
DANCE_POTATOES	UTF-8	The number of beats (not bars), regardless of whether they are traditional potatoes or an introductory phrase, of music before the first time through the dance. If the `DANCE_HAS_POTATOES` tag is "FALSE" this represents beats in an introductory phrase, otherwise it represents the number of traditional potatoes (normally 4). If the `BPM` () and `DANCE_START` tags are set, this should be approximately `DANCE_START / 3600 * BPM` rounded to the nearest natural number.
DANCE_START	UTF-8	The start time (in milliseconds) of the first time through the dance. This is where the dancers would start moving, not where the caller would start calling. If the `BPM` () and `DANCE_POTATOES` tags are set, this should be approximately `DANCE_POTATOES / BPM * 3600`.
DANCE_TIMES	UTF-8	The number of complete times through the dance excluding any intro, outro, or potatoes. The exact definition will depend on the tpye of dance. For example, a contra dance has 64 beat (32 bar) phrases so the number of times through the dance will be the number of beats of music (excluding intros, outros, and any crooked phrasing) divided by 64.
DANCE_CROOKED	UTF-8	Whether the dance is a "crooked" tune (ie. not in perfect dance form). If set, this key MUST always be the value "TRUE" or "FALSE".
DANCE_IS_SONG	UTF-8	Whether the track is a song (has sung vocal lyrics other than the calls) or a tune (instrumental only). If set, this key MUST always be the value "TRUE" or "FALSE".

Special Values Several tags that take freeform text may also have certain special values such as "[unknown]" or "[traditional]" as described above. These values MAY be shown as a different string, possibly translated into the users native language.

Use with Vorbis Comments Though these tags were defined for use with Matroska files, they may be used in other common tagging systems such as Vorbis Comments and in systems which re-use Vorbis Comments such as FLAC tags. To use tags from this document in Vorbis Comments remove the "DANCE_" prefix and instead use the namespace "DANCE:". For example, the "DANCE_POTATOES" tag becomes "DANCE:POTATOES".

IANA Considerations This memo modifies the "Matroska Tag Names" registry defined in to add the following values: Additions to the "Matroska Tag Names" Registry

Tag Name	Tag Type	Reference
DANCE_FORM	UTF-8	This document,
DANCE_CALLER	UTF-8	This document,
DANCE_TITLE	UTF-8	This document,
DANCE_CHOREOGRAPHER	UTF-8	This document,
DANCE_CHOREOGRAPHY	UTF-8	This document,
DANCE_CALLER_NOTES	UTF-8	This document,
DANCE_ROLES	UTF-8	This document,
DANCE_LICENSE	UTF-8	This document,
DANCE_POTATOES	UTF-8	This document,
DANCE_START	UTF-8	This document,
DANCE_TIMES	UTF-8	This document,
DANCE_CROOKED	UTF-8	This document,
DANCE_IS_SONG	UTF-8	This document,

Security Considerations This document does not affect the security of the internet.