Larry Edelman has traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe playing, teaching, and calling for traditional dancing. Larry's colorful calling delights both novice and veteran dancers through his humor, enthusiasm, skillful teaching, and knowledge of dance history. He currently plays fiddle, mandolin, and guitar with The Percolators, Poultry in Motion, and the Soda Rock Ramblers. Larry has taught music and dance at dozens of camps and festivals including the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Ashokan, Augusta, Pinewoods, Lady of the Lake, and many more.
Larry has called for more than 30 years and is skilled in a variety of calling styles and his rich repertoire includes traditional western, mid-western, southern, and New England square dances, as well as contras. An avid dance researcher, he has intensively studied and documented the traditional dances of Southwestern Pennsylvania. He was awarded a Fellowship in Folk Arts from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in 1987 to study with elder square dance caller Jerry Goodwin, and produced the videotape Dance to the Music and Listen to the Calls that documented the apprenticeship. Larry is has been studying and collecting portrayals of dancing and country dancing in film and television. Over the past few years, Larry has been studying and collecting traditional dances from the southwest USA.
Larry appears on several recordings on the Wildebeest, Kicking Mule, D & R, and Yodel-Aye-Hee labels. Larry's music is featured on Timepieces, a cassette of his original tunes, accompanied by a book of the same title that contains the written version of the tunes. Larry is the author of Square Dance Caller's Workshop, a text on the art of calling square dances that accompanies his acclaimed workshops for square dance callers.
