High Mountains Rising
Page 20
The diversity displayed by Appalachian-born musicians is impressive, but in many people’s minds it is overshadowed by the romance that clings to the concept of mountain music. Appalachian music conjures up simpler and time-honored notions of purity and ancient moorings, appealing to those who envision a culture unspoiled by urban conceits and machine technology. Among musicians and fans in the highly commercial and urban-based genres known as country and bluegrass, one finds frequent assertions that their music was born in Appalachia (an idea that is often coupled with the thesis of Celtic identity).47 Rather than acknowledging that these styles of music were born in many places, including Appalachia, it is more tempting to claim exclusively the seemingly pristine origins identified with mountain life (even though the music made by Appalachian people themselves occurred as often in bars, honky tonks, radio stations, and recording studios as in churches and homes). If such presumptions encourage an appreciation for old-time musical styles and songs and a desire to preserve them, we can forgive the narrow understanding that they convey of Appalachian history and music. However, it is less easy to tolerate those who glibly describe as “Appalachian” any expression of music that seems old or based on traditional rural sounds, whether it be the homespun pop songs written by the California convert to old-time music Gillian Welch or the classical adaptations of old-time material performed by Mark O’Connor, Edgar Meyer, Bela Fleck, and Yo-Yo Ma. O’Connor and his colleagues commented in one of their three CDs dealing with presumed Appalachian material that they proposed to celebrate American “roots,” “folk,” and “traditional” songs (thereby suggesting that such descriptions were synonymous with the word Appalachian).48
Welch, O’Connor, and Yo-Yo Ma may be simply using a shorthand and appealing way of labeling their music, knowing full well that hosts of fans and critics are more than ready to accept any acoustic “rural” sound as Appalachian. More likely, these sophisticated musicians themselves may have succumbed to the romance of Appalachia. After all, it has happened many times in the past and will continue to do so in the future. As America continues its irreversible journey down the road toward industrial and technological hegemony, many of us will cling to the visions of another time and another place. The reality of our lives may not change significantly, but at least for the duration of a song or concert, our immersion in Appala chian music—either real or imagined—will link us once again to a land of presumed simplicity, moral rectitude, and honest emotion.
NOTES
1. Richard Harrington assessed the effects of the movie and soundtrack in the Washington Post, Aug. 12, 2001.
2. Guthrie T. Meade Jr., Dick Spottswood, and Douglas S. Meade, Country Music Sources: A Biblio-Discography of Commercially Recorded Traditional Music (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Southern Folklife Collection, 2002).
3. Jean Ritchie, Singing Family of the Cumberlands (New York: Oak Publications, 1955), 73–75.
4. Emma Bell Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains (New York: J. Pott, 1905), 69.
5. Musical Traditions, published in Great Britain and available online at
6. Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil J. Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1917), viii-ix.
7. Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882–98).
8. Songcatcher, the popular movie of 2001, was a very loose and highly romanticized version of the role played by settlement school teachers in the discovery of balladry in the Southern mountains and of Cecil Sharp’s arrival on the scene.
9. Cecil Sharp, The Country Dance Book (London: Novelle, 1918), pt. 5.
10. All of the recordings made by these performers are listed in Meade, Country Music Sources.
11. Charles Wolfe’s notes to The Bristol Sessions, CMF Records-011–1; Nolan Porterfield, Jimmie Rodgers: The Life and Times of America’s Blue Yodeler (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 105–14; Ivan M. Tribe, The Stonemans: An Appalachian Family and the Music That Shaped Their Lives (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 56–62.
12. Charles Wolfe and Richard Weize, In the Shadow of Clinch Mountains (Bear Family BCD 15865).
13. White Country Blues: A Lighter Shade of Blue (Columbia/Legacy C2K 47466).
14. Cecelia Conway, African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995).
15. Bill C. Malone, Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers: Southern Culture and the Roots of Country Music (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993).
16. Loyal Jones, Radio’s “Kentucky Mountain Boy,” Bradley Kincaid (Berea, Ky.: Appalachian Center, Berea College, 1980).
17. Pete Stamper, It All Happened in Renfro Valley (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999).
18. Lily May Ledford, Coon Creek Girl (Berea, Ky.: Appalachian Center, Berea College, 1991); William E. Lightfoot, “Belle of the Barn Dance: Reminiscing with Lulu Belle Wiseman Stamey,” Journal of Country Music 12:1 (1987): 2–16.
19. Loyal Jones, Minstrel of the Appalachians: The Story of Bascom Lamar Lunsford (Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1984).
20. Annabel Morris Buchanan, “The Function of a Folk Festival,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 1:1 (Mar. 1937): 29–34.
21. David E. Whisnant, All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983).
22. See Anglo-American Ballads, vol. 1 (Rounder 1511; originally recorded in 1942 by the Archive of Folk Song, Library of Congress); Anglo-American Ballads, vol. 2 (Rounder 1516; originally recorded in 1943); Texas Gladden: Ballad Legacy (Rounder 116611; originally recorded in 1941 and 1946).
23. Jones, Minstrel of the Appalachians, 71–73.
24. Archie Green, notes to Sarah Ogan Gunning’s Girl of Constant Sorrow (Folk-Legacy Records FSA-26).
25. Jim Garland, Welcome the Traveler Home: Jim Garland’s Story of the Kentucky Mountains (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983); John Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953); Robbie Lieberman, My Song Is My Weapon: People’s Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930–1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995); Richard Reuss, “American Folklore and Left-Wing Politics, 1927–1957” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1971); Shelly Romalis, Pistol Packin’ Mama: Aunt Molly Jackson and the Politics of Folksong (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
26. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987).
27. Richard D. Smith, “Can’t You Hear Me Callin’”: The Life of Bill Monroe (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000).
28. Neil Rosenberg, Bluegrass: A History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985).
29. Tribe, Stonemans, 86–88.
30. Neil V. Rosenberg, ed., Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993).
31. Jean Ritchie’s instruction manual The Dulcimer Book (New York: Oak Publications, 1963) went through numerous printings in the ten years after its first issuance.
32. Ritchie deserves a comprehensive biography. Her Singing Family of the Cumberlands (New York: Oak Publications, 1955) is an excellent account of her youthful experiences. She is the subject of a video documentary, Mountain Born: The Jean Ritchie Story, produced by Kentucky Educational Television.
33. The anthology was reissued in 1997 on six compact discs by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings: Anthology of American Folk Music (SF 251, SF 252, SF 253).
34. Greil Marcus, Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes (New York: Henry Holt, 1997).
35. New Lost City Ramblers, The Early Years, 1958–1962 (Smithsonian Folkways SF 40036).
36. Mike Seeger, The New Lost City Ramblers Song Book (New York: Oak Publications, 1964), 22.
37. Bill Clifton, 150 Old-time Folk and G
ospel Songs (Privately printed ca. 1956).
38. Doc Watson Legacy (High Windy Audio, Fairview, N.C.).
39. The High Lonesome Sound (Smithsonian Folkways CD SF-40104).
40. Rod Amberg, Sodom Laurel Album (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), and the companion CD, Appalachian Ballads from Madison County, North Carolina; Tommy Jarrell, Sail Away Ladies (County 756); John Hartford, Wild Hog in the Red Brush (Rounder 0392) and The Speed of the Long Bow: A Tribute to the Fiddle Music of Ed Haley (Rounder 0438).
41. Mary Battiata, “A High and Lonesome Sound,” Washington Post Magazine, June 24, 2001, pp. 8–15, 21–25. Dickens is preparing a collection of her songs, along with commentary, which will be published by the University of Illinois Press.
42. Alan Lomax, “Bluegrass Background: Folk Music with Overdrive,” Esquire, 52:4 (Oct. 1959): 103–9.
43. Mountain Music Bluegrass Style (Smithsonian Folkways CD SF-40038).
44. Robert Cantwell, Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984).
45. John Wright, Traveling the High Way Home (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993); Short Life of Trouble: Songs of Grayson and Whitter (Rebel CD-1735); Ralph Stanley (DMZ/Columbia CK 86625).
46. Niki Denison, “A Mountain Music Master,” On Wisconsin 104:1 (Spring 2003): 40–45.
47. It is amusing but irritating to learn that although the spurious doctrine of Anglo-Saxonism has been largely abandoned by students of mountain music, it is being replaced by the equally shadowy thesis of Celticism.
48. Gillian Welch, Time (the Revelator) (Acony 0103). For examples of the romantic classical depiction of presumed Appalachian themes, see Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O’Connor, Appalachian Journey (Sony Classical 66782) and Appalachia Waltz (Sony Classical 68460).
10
Folklife
Michael Ann Williams
Folklore is the study of artistic and expressive behavior in everyday life. Folklorists often focus on the aspects of artistic expression that are passed on orally or learned by example in informal situations, things that most people label as “traditional.” However, folklorists realize that new traditions constantly emerge in our lives, and something does not need to be old to be folklore. The concept of “folklife” expanded traditional folklore studies beyond verbal and musical traditions to study the wide range of material and spiritual, as well as oral, expressions.
Folklorists study a variety of cultural groups, based, for example, on shared ethnicity, occupation, age group, or regional identity. For many Americans, the mention of folklore often conjures up thoughts of one particular region: Appalachia. In the Southern mountains, early folklorists and collectors such as Cecil Sharp found English ballads still preserved in living tradition. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the first modern folk festivals were created in western North Carolina, eastern Kentucky, and southwestern Virginia. The early fieldwork and public festivals all confirmed the belief that southern Appalachia’s folklife was uniquely composed of ancient traditions of British and Celtic origins.
Although Child ballads and storytelling are a significant part of Appalachia’s folklife, the exclusive emphasis on English and Scotch-Irish traditions obscures the contribution of many other cultural groups. People from continental Europe, most notably those of German ethnicity, followed the same migration routes into the Southern mountains. The German influence is found in log construction, the Appalachian dulcimer, weaving patterns, and quite possibly the Jack tale.
Even before a variety of settlers of European descent arrived, a rich culture was already present. The Southern mountains have supported human habitation for millennia, and a variety of Native American groups made this region home. However, by the time of European contact, the Cherokee dominated most of the Appalachian region from Kentucky to Georgia. Cherokee folkways are still a vital part of Appalachian folklife, and the Cherokee have influenced the region’s Anglo-American traditions, particularly in areas of folk medicine, dance, and basketry. Other native groups have also made a mark on local folk traditions. For example, the Catawba Indians strongly influenced the pottery made by the Cherokee in the twentieth century.
African Americans have also had a profound influence on Appalachian folklife, even though they represent a smaller proportion of the population in the mountains than elsewhere in the South. In the eighteenth century, escaped slaves took refuge in Cherokee territory (and some Cherokee were themselves slaveholders), so that in some areas of Appalachia, people of African descent lived in the mountains before permanent white settlement. The impact of African American influence is seen in two traditions that are often seen as quintessential parts of Appalachian folklife: banjo playing and clogging.
Another quintessential part of the regional folk tradition, the Appalachian log cabin, is an excellent example of the mixing of a variety of cultural traditions. Probably the first people to build log dwellings in the Southern mountains were Cherokee. Although the building technique was not native to them, they adapted the log house in the eighteenth century from European settlers further east. By the time of the Cherokee removal of the 1830s, the Cherokee were building dwellings similar to those of the European American pioneers.
Had the early white settlers in southern Appalachia been exclusively of British or Irish descent, the log house would not have become the norm. Horizontal log construction was unknown in Ireland and the British Isles and was rare in the early English colonies. Settlers from Sweden, Finland, and the regions that are now Germany brought log construction to the mid-Atlantic colonies, and it was probably the interaction of people of Germanic descent with people from England and Northern Ireland that created the American log cabin. German house types are found in Pennsylvania and the Valley of Virginia but are not common in most of the Southern mountains. Here the small houses most often resemble in size and layout, if not construction, dwellings found in England and Northern Ireland.
Log homes also tell us much about social life in the Southern mountains and the persistence of tradition. The small, single-unit log house could be expanded by placing two equal-size rooms on either side of a massive log chimney (saddlebag), putting the two rooms side by side with chimneys on the end (double-pen), or putting an open breezeway between the two rooms (dogtrot). Oral tradition tells us that until the early twentieth century, the additional room was thought of as a parlor. Although the larger house created more privacy, because beds were often put in every room except the kitchen, the additional space was thought of foremost as a room for social interaction. Despite the stereotype of Appalachians as being wary of strangers, most rural people in the Southern mountains had a strong ethic of welcoming visitors, even if they were total strangers. In this way, problems of traveling through the region could be overcome and communities could support an active social life, even if it meant putting people up on pallets on the floor.
Log construction was not solely a product of necessity. Some families quickly replaced pioneer log structures with homes of frame construction as the means became available. However, log construction persisted in many parts of the Southern mountains, even after milled timber became readily available. It was supported, in part, by a strong community work ethic that one owed his or her neighbor “a day’s work.” As long as one did not want a house that was significantly different from one’s neighbors, the community would help build one’s home. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as more and more Appalachians were pulled into “public work,” that is, work away from the farm, fewer people had as much time to help their neighbors. Community building did persist, but more often they built less labor-intensive structures, such as the single-wall, vertical board “boxed” house. Log construction continued to be used through the first half of the twentieth century (and experienced a small revival during the Great Depression), but it was more typically used for barns and agricultural outbuildings.
Another form of material culture
in southern Appalachia that shows cultural intermixing, as well as the impact of social change, is basketry. Quite probably the oldest continuous craft tradition in the Southern mountains, basketry has been found in some form in the region for approximately 9,000 years. Twilled rivercane basketry was introduced as early as five hundred years ago and is still used by some Cherokee basketmakers, although the raw materials are becoming more difficult to obtain. In the nineteenth century, white oak became the most common material used by both Cherokee and Anglo-American makers of baskets.
For two centuries, Cherokee and Anglo-American basket traditions have influenced each other. Settlers of European descent had to adapt to the native materials and were undoubtedly influenced by Cherokee practices. Possibly the most radical early change in Cherokee basketry was the inclusion of handles on many baskets, a change inspired by a desire to market baskets to a non-Indian clientele.
Through the early twentieth century, both Cherokee and non-Indian craftspeople made baskets for home use, but baskets have also long been traded or sold commercially. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, peddlers often bought wagonloads of baskets in the mountains and took them out of the immediate region to sell them. Baskets were once used for functional purposes, for holding and processing food and, among the Cherokee, for catching fish and as backpacks. However, in the twentieth century the lower cost of factory-produced items has generally reduced this functional use. Instead baskets, along with many other handicrafts, have become works of art rather than functional crafts.