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The
Appalachian Music Trail
TO properly understand how traditional Appalachian music grew and
dispersed it helps to have some understanding of how the Appalachians were
settled. During the 17th century the largest and most influential group of
American immigrants sharing an ethnic heritage were those from England,
Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. The immigrants began
pushing westward but, barred by the continuous ridges of the Appalachians,
people settled more between the coast and the mountains. The ridges were
four thousand feet high and only crossable where rivers had cut transverse
valleys. Most settlements started north in Pennsylvania and it
wasn't until in 1750 an opening called the Cumberland Gap was discovered,
leading to the fertile bluegrass country of Kentucky, however, the mountains in
that area were still not successfully settled until 1835. Communities
settled in the mountains were isolated geographically and somewhat unstable
compared with the Eastern Seaboard. Settlers found frontier life rigorous
and a constant struggle; people needed each other, and anything social,
including religion, was highly important, producing a generally deeply religious
population (the Bible Belt). Musical traditions from home were cherished
links to their past and passed down to the next generation.
Appalachia Music is a unique style and may be classified as follows:
(the music may be vocal,
religious or instrumental)
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Ballads: songs that tell a general story; different variations of
the same song may exist, and frequently do.
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Lyric folk songs: tell a specific story of a specific event;
don't necessarily have a set form.
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Recreational songs: songs mostly for fun, or songs by which to do
chores.
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Protest songs: songs sung about events that infringe upon
people's rights; frequently coal mining
songs.
Music in Appalachia has and continues to play a vital role in the lives of
the mountain folk. The music has been passed down from grandfather and
grandmother to grandchild, playing the fiddle and dulcimer, leaving an
easy and mythical trail to follow:
Ballads
According to records the TRADITIONAL Appalachian
music is primarily based upon Anglo-Celtic folk ballads and instrumental dance tunes. Almost always sung unaccompanied, and usually by women,
fulfilling roles as
keepers of the families' cultural heritages and rising above dreary monotonous
work through fantasies of escape and revenge. These ballads were from the
British tradition of the single personal narrative such as Barbary
Allen, Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender, and Pretty Polly. A
large percentage of the American variations of the ballads tend to be about
pregnant women murdered by their boyfriends.
The ornamentation and vocal improvisation found in many Celtic ballads seems
to have led to that particular tonal, nasal quality preferred by many
traditional Appalachian singers, content was changed to reflect American
locations, contexts, and occupations and retaining as their central theme love
affairs and interpersonal relations. The churches of America were also
very influential and usually more puritan in nature.
Broadside Ballads
Popular up to the end of the 19th century showcasing male
dominated occupational experiences such as logging, coal mining, ranching and
sensational topics like murders and tragedies.
African-American Influences on Appalachian Music
Reflecting an actual event or action with true
historical characters. The flow of text was highlighted by an emotional
mood or grief or celebration. The slaves brought a
distinct tradition of group singing of community songs of work and worship,
usually lined out by one person with a call and response action from a group.
The percussion of the African music began to change the rhythms of
Appalachian singing and dancing. The introduction of the banjo to the
Southern Mountains after the Civil War in the 1860s further hastened this
process. Originally from Arabia, and brought to western Africa by the
spread of Islam, the banjo then ended up in America. Mostly denigrated as
a 'slave instrument' until the popularity of the Minstrel Show, starting in the
1840s, the banjo Parlour/Sentimental
Ballad
From the Victorian/Edwardian eras presented in
the Minstrel Show or Music Halls.
Religious Appalachian Music
Religious music, including white Country gospel, was probably the most
prevalent music heard in Appalachia. There were three types of
religious music: ballads, hymns, and revival spiritual songs. The
These were popularized among the white inhabitants after the revival circuit
started in Kentucky in 1800. Their simpler, repetitious text of verse and
refrain was easier to sing and learn and produced an emotional fervor in the
congregation. Shape-note and revivalist gospel still flourished in the
southern mountains.
Czech, German and Polish Influences
There were other ethnic pockets in the southern mountains - mostly Czech,
German, and Polish - but their music, as well as other cultural aspects, was
generally assimilated in an effort to become more 'Americanized'.
Instrumental Traditions of Appalachian
Music
Instrumental traditions started as
Anglo-Celtic dance tunes and eventually was reshaped by
local needs. The fiddle was at first the main instrument, often
alone, as a piano would have been too expensive to purchase. Originally
the tonal and stylistic qualities of the fiddle mirrored those of the ballad.
The 'reel' is generally thought to have developed in the Scottish highlands in
the mid-eighteenth century. In the 1740s, Neil Gow, a Scottish fiddler, is
credited with developing the powerful and rhythmic short bow sawstroke technique
that eventually became the foundation of Appalachian mountain fiddling.
More modern repertoires took shape in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, with the waltz showing up at the beginning of the 1800s. Square
dances slowly developed out of mostly a middle or upper class dance tradition,
based upon the cotillion; black cakewalks were a burlesque of formal white
dancing; and the Virginia Reel was a variation of an upper class dance
called Sir Roger de Coverly.
Irish immigration also added its own flavor. The sound of the pipes and
their drones added a double-stop approach where two strings are usually played
together. Popular music - such as ragtime - at the turn of the century
started the rocking of the bow, another distinctive Appalachian feature.
Players began to use tunings different from the standard classical - sometimes
one for each tune - to heighten the 'high lonesome' sound. Many tunes
acquired words, so the caller could take over and give the fiddler a break by
singing the calls. Dances changed: American squares and promenades
featured a change of partners more often than their British counterparts, as it
was often a couple's only chance to meet in such isolated communities. It
also kept down the fights although, by the 1930s, liquor and fighting had ended
most southern mountain dances. Introduction of the Banjo and
Guitar
TUNES changed a lot, first with the introduction of the banjo after 1860,
and then with the popularity of the guitar, starting in 1910. Early tunes
tended to be more rhythmic as the fiddler was often playing alone. With
the luxury of percussive rhythm from other instruments, tunes became more
elaborate and melodic. Having a chordal structure also evened out
irregularities as the guitar produced the even backup of a measured beat.
The guitar also greatly redefined singing traditions in the same way. It
evened out rhythms and gave singers a 'floorboard' to mount their songs.
Bands that used exclusively to play tunes gradually added songs, mostly from
popular and commercial sources.
Folk Music
All through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries this music was truly
'folk'. Singing was used for personal and group enjoyment and continuation
of historical narrative. Contact was limited regionally as travel was
difficult. But late nineteenth century industrialization produced
mobility, and the advent of recorded sound in the 1920s brought popular music to
the mountains. Radio stations started barn dances with live performances of
local talent, and styles began to cross over.
'Old-time' Music
Music now known as 'old-time' became prominent in the Appalachians as
a
new interest in fiddling arose, especially as a decline in local dances started,
probably owing to the radio's popularity. The 1920s was a decade of string
band popularity. A string band was usually one or more fiddlers, a banjo,
bass, and guitar, with possibly a piano. In 1922 the first recording of a
rural performer, Eck Robertson, was made. Many followed. To the
absolute amazement of the urban record companies, recordings made by groups from
the mountains sold in huge numbers and an 'industry' was born. Bands were
able to quit their day-jobs and make a living from music, although their
audiences preferred versions of popular songs played in an old-time manner over
the old traditional songs heard at the kitchen and the Skillet
Lickers were more spontaneous, with multiple fiddlers, and more of the 'rough
and ready' sound heard in earlier string bands. Singing was usually a
single male voice; duet harmonies became more prevalent during the 1930s.
Ma Maybelle of the Carter Family introduced a guitar style where lead melodies
were picked out by the thumb. The term 'old-time music' began to show up in the early twentieth century.
In 1908 a newspaper, the Iredell North Carolina Landmark used the term to
describe fiddling and dancing at Union Grove. Okeh and Vocalion Record
catalogs listed Old-Time Tunes as a category, and the Sears Catalog of 1928 used
Old-Time in its advertising.
The Great Depression of the 1930s put an end to the commercial viability of
old-time music. The 1930s and '40s brought in an individual star system
with people like Hank Williams, and the advent of Brother Groups like the
Delmores, Stanleys, and the Louvins, and the introduction of swing, horns,
electricity, and bluegrass. The old traditional music of the mountains
gave way to the beginnings of modern commercial country-western music.
BUT the traditional old-time Appalachian music never really died off; it
just reverted back to being a participatory 'folk' music. Fiddlers'
Conventions, house parties, and back-porch jams kept the music alive. Few
old-time musicians can, or want to make a living playing a style now considered
archaic by the general public. Many old songs, originally written for
commercial reasons, are now considered traditional, their composers gradually
forgotten. A visit to the Southern Appalachians, particularly Virginia,
West Virginia, and North Carolina, will still find singers and musicians holding
forth on banjo and fiddle, still playing Soldier's Joy and Arkansas
Traveler with love and gusto.
Mike Seeger -
"I travel by air quite a bit and as I put my fiddle in the overhead luggage
bin someone often
asks what kind of music I play. Sometimes I've answered
"Old-time music"
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If My Heart Had Wings
Songs
of the Old Regular Baptists
Real
Audio (40sec / 79kbs)
Sound sample in RealAudio format (40-50k)