The Music

The Band

Pig Dyke Molly has always had a reputation for its music which is quite unlike that of any other dance team. That's partly due to Dave Parker's Sousaphone and Chris Kempton's percussion, but the real inspiration behind the music was Robin Griggs who played melodeon and composed nearly all the tunes.

Rob died in January 2008, and there is a page of tributes which give a flavour of him and his influence on the team.

During 2007 Tom Sennett (melodeon) and later Mary Humphreys and Anahata (melodeon and English concertina) took over as Rob became too unwell to play in his last months.

The music is not quite the same, but it's still distinctive. We still have Dave's Sousaphone and Chris's percussion. We have some less well-known traditional tunes that work well for the dances and the tradition of writing our own tunes has continued, with contributions from Tom and Anahata. We use some of Rob's tunes too, which we had to learn from recordings as Rob didn't actually read and write music - he had them all in his head!

In 2011 Kai Jenkins joined us, having demonstrated astonishing talent on the melodeon for a player of any age - and he's only 11! He'd already danced with the team for 2 years. Kai has learned all of Rob's tunes so the dancers are now having to get used to more than one tune for the same dance, depending on who's playing that day. You'll find some videos of Kai playing here: Sidmouth Morris Jig competition and At Home playing one of Rob's tunes