Festival of American Fiddle Tunes/Paul Conklin

 

Spring 2006

Articles

Columns

  • Fiddle Tune History: Ryan's Mammoth Collection, Part IV, by Andrew Kuntz
  • The Practicing Fiddler: Fiddle Orchestra: Learning and Teaching in a Group Setting, by Hollis Taylor
  • On Improvisation: The Elephant in the Dining Room: The Circle of Fifths, Part 2, by Paul Anastasio
  • "Up to your Knees in Sand": Practical Hints on Irish Fiddling, by Brendan Taaffe
  • Cross-Tuning Workshop, Part 31: AEAE and AEAC#, by Jody Stecher
  • Cross- Canada Fiddle Tour: Ontario's Ward Allen, by Gordon Stobbe
  • Bluegrass Fiddling: More Classic Stanley Brothers Fiddling, by Paul Shelasky
  • Knotting the Chord: The Art of Accompaniment, by Mark Simos
  • Reviews

Tunes in this Issue

  • "Ducks in the Pond," transcribed by Alan Jabbour as played by Henry Reed
  • "Szapora" from Kalotaszeg ( Hungary ) as played by Sanyi Neti, from a book of transcriptions by Márta Viágvölgyi
  • "Sallai Verbunk" from Kúrt ( Hungary ), transcribed by Tamás Gombai
  • "Minnie Foster's Clog" (Ryan's Mammoth Collection, Fiddle Tune History)
  • "Lotta's Favorite" (Ryan's Mammoth Collection, Fiddle Tune History)
  • "Flat Creek Waltz," by Jim Wood ("A 'Winning' Contest Round")
  • "Molly Brannigan" (a version of "The Green Fields of America), transcribed by Brendan Taaffe as played by Bobby Casey (Practical Hints on Irish Fiddling)
  • "The Drunken Hiccups," transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by Art Stamper (AEAC#) and Hobart Smith (AEAE) (Cross-Tuning Workshop)
  • "The Old Box Stove," by Ward Allen (Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour)
  • "Nobody's Love Is Like Mine," solo transcribed by Paul Shelasky as played by Joe Meadows (Bluegrass Fiddling)

article excerpts

Caoimhin Mac Aoidh: Friend of the Fiddlers

By Ben Nelson

Fiddler Magazine has featured music and musicians from County Donegal , Ireland , five times in its dozen years of publication. Undoubtedly, the county would not be such a friendly place for fiddlers were it not for Caoimhin Mac Aoidh. For the last thirty years, Caoimhin has dedicated most of his evening hours (not to mention many early mornings) to recording, documenting, teaching, and living the rich Donegal fiddle tradition. He was instrumental in the founding of Cairdeas na bhFidléirí -sometimes translated from the Irish as "The Friends of the Fiddlers"-an organization that sponsors a summer fiddle school in Glencolmcille and an annual meeting and festival weekend in Glenties, as well as smaller educational events throughout the year. In 1994, Caoimhin's decades of playing, collecting, and researching culminated in the publication of Between the Jigs and Reels: The Donegal Fiddle Tradition, a comprehensive account of the history, folklore, local styles, and individual players that have collectively woven the rich texture of the county's musical heritage. His dedication to the preservation of the music's past is only surpassed by his commitment to its future, revealed by his eagerness to teach anyone with a passion for Donegal fiddle. I spoke with Caoimhin over bottomless cups of tea in his home in Ballyshannon, County Donegal .

You were born in Philadelphia , right? What age were you when your family came back to Donegal?

I would have been pretty young when we came back. In fact, I was about forty-five before I actually found out where I was born. But, I mean, the important thing was that the music was always there. My father had built a pub downstairs, in the house in Philadelphia . I can remember, as a very young child, lying on the floor, pressing my ear to the floor to hear the music coming from downstairs. Now, I was supposed to be asleep, but that whole thing seemed incredibly exciting, because there was music, and there was fun, and it was an adult thing, you know. But the music was the thing that was obviously driving it, and I would really be attracted to the music. I thought that was brilliant.

At what point did you actually start playing the fiddle?

I actually started on the whistle, on the grounds that when I was that young, if I was given a fiddle, I would probably break it. But I used to go to Vincent McLaughlin-a relation of mine from County Derry -and play on his fiddle, unbeknownst to anybody. We were at a party one evening, and both of us had forgot I was learning in secret. You know, everybody was doing their party pieces, so I played a couple of very simple jigs or something-in fact, it was "The Trip to the Cottage," a double jig that I had learned from Vincie-and all of a sudden, there was this revelation of, "What's he doing playing the fiddle?" So, I would have been "let at" the fiddle, let's say, from then on.

When did you develop an interest in documenting the Donegal fiddle tradition?

By an age when I still was young, I knew that I didn't want to just learn the music. I wanted to know the background to the melodies, the folklore. I wanted to know about the people who played it, the people who were old, who were great players, and who I still had direct access to. I might not necessarily have very comfortable access-you know, there was a generation gap between us, so I wasn't meeting them as social equals-but music transcends that. So certainly by the time I was eighteen, I wanted to know everything about it. That might be unusual because for a lot of people, that additional desire doesn't come until later on, and for a lot of people, it never comes. I think for the music, for the tradition, it's not important that everybody has to be that way.

Was there anyone you looked up to as having the same kind of desire to know everything behind the music, and not just the melodies?

Danny O'Donnell, definitely. As I said, to keep all elements of the tradition alive and being passed on, you only need a couple of people doing that in each generation-but they have to be really, really good. And Danny was that man of that generation, and he was incredibly good. I used to pass Danny's door, twice a day every day, and if I was inquiring about a tune I would call in. I would just play the first phrase of something and ask him about it, and if it was in O'Neill's, he would give me the number-with no reference to book nor paper nor publication. He would actually know the numbers! I went to him once and I told him I found something in Dublin about a dance that was done in Donegal called the Berlin Polky. As soon as I said that, he says, "If you go to the first collection of Kerr's "- Kerr's Merry Melodies, which in Donegal was more important than O'Neill's, because it had all the highlands and Scottish tunes-he said, "on the lower right hand side of the page there's a 'miscellaneous' section, and if you look in there you'll find a tune called the 'Krakoviak.' That was the tune played for the Berlin Polky." I would write this stuff down on my hand in case I forgot it. I would have done this hundreds of times, and he was never wrong once. It was incredible.

Other than Danny, who were some of the "legends" of Donegal fiddle whose music you first had access to?

Well, if you like, the "legend" would have been certainly John Doherty. But probably the first player who really impressed me as a fiddle player would have been Vincie-I made mention of Vincie McLaughlin. He was what John would have probably called a "country player." He was good at what he did, he lived in the tradition, he knew the background, the tunes, the history-and he was happy enough to just play in his house and to play locally. I know that I'm lucky to have met him when I was young, because that showed me that you don't have to tour the world to find a very big personal meaning and personal enjoyment in the music.

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Sadly, I know that a few of those people are gone now. Between their generation and yours, what do you think has been lost, and what's been maintained?

We're probably the luckiest people in the world, and I say that with consideration and reservation. I mean, regional styles in Ireland were probably pretty strong up to the 1930s. And from that period to the 1960s, there was a social dropping-off of the status and currency, the local social value of fiddle playing and traditional music in communities. And what happened was-there's a lot of agreement on this-that where it was appreciated at all, music became increasingly standardized during those three decades, and the regional flavour went out of it. Everybody's just eating burger and chip; nobody's getting the local taste, if you like. Because of its isolation, Donegal continues to have the longest remnants of a traditional society-in terms of its economy and its social approach to things-of any area, or any county in Ireland. While things were declining in the rest of the island, you'll find that we just battered on with things here the way it always went.

I'll put it to you this way. John Doherty was born in the first two or three years of the 1900s. And the music that he inherited from his father was absolutely pre-Famine. Now to us, in 2005, the Famine is something which we're still intensely aware of and sensitive to, but, you know, it's still a good way back. And I'm fifty-two years of age, and that music was presented to me live. If I didn't understand something he was doing he would clarify it for me-you know, physically put his fingers in front of me and say, "There, that's how you do that." Very few places had that connection.

When was Cairdeas founded, and what was its purpose initially?

It was founded in the 1970s. I don't think there was an official kind of a date when it started. It was basically a working group of people of a same inclination and a same age, people like myself, Rab Cherry, Máiréad Ní Mhaonaigh, Paul O'Shaughnessy, Dermot

McLaughlin, people like that. We were all mad keen on Donegal fiddle music when it had no attraction, nobody wanted to hear it, and outside of Donegal nobody wanted to play it. There were a lot of giants around still, but even in Donegal, a lot of people of our generation were going to folk music, or rock music, or something else was interesting them and it wasn't traditional fiddle playing. The handful of us who were making big contact with the old players realized that a lot of them were kind of getting disappointed at the way that the music had changed and was deteriorating in terms of its social meaning. So, the idea of Cairdeas was to put on events which would encourage the old players to play, to give them a bit of dignity back. We started running concerts with nationally known players who would be attractive in terms of crowd numbers, but we would actually put the old Donegal boys on the top of the bill. And you would have players of national and international significance come up on stage and play a set and say how honoured they were to be sharing a stage with somebody like, say, Francie Byrne. Then at the end, they would come out and play duets or trios with him. It was genuine, and it was deserved-and you could see that. The old boys-you know, people like Con Cassidy and Francie Byrne and John Gallagher from Ardara-their hearts were just rising that all of a sudden there was meaning again. Their enthusiasm started to rise, their playing started to rise, they thought more about the music, and a lot of times they were digging out tunes they hadn't played for forty or fifty years.

So we started at that-that was the only aim, to put the dignity back and the opportunities of playing back for the older generation of players. That was a huge, long-term goal which we thought would take to the end of the older players' lives. We were badly caught off guard because within three years we had achieved that aim. And we were lost. I mean, the thing just snowballed, incredibly, and brilliantly, and all of a sudden it was: Well, we don't have to do that job anymore. What should we be doing? Very quickly the realization was that the old generation was secure. We were okay, the middle generation, the young adult generation. So the obvious answer was: Well, hang on, what are we doing for the younger generation? Because we're just delaying the end, if we're satisfied that we're okay, and not doing something for the next generation. So very, very quickly, we turned the total focus of Cairdeas into one word: education. Everything we did had a massive educational content to it. We had started the Glenties weekend in 1983, and in 1986 we had the first summer school. And that has been an incredible success. We've consciously kept that running in such a way that it's not a tourist event or a commercial event, it's an educational event. The only question we ask is: What is the quality of learning that the pupils get here? It's quieter, more quality of human contact, more listening and understanding and exchanging ideas, and playing, and coming to grips with what's the beauty of this thing.

We also run master classes throughout the year, which, again, have small numbers of pupils who are totally committed to learning and playing. We run it with the likes of Jimmy and Vincent Campbell, who are giants in the music. We make the important connection between playing tunes not only as session tunes but as music for dancing. To get a full understanding of how it all works together, players are also taught the old dances by Connie McKelvey, a local postman, and Anne Connaghan, whose daughter, Tara , is a brilliant fiddler herself. Master classes put young players-and middle-aged players (I mean, I go to these things!)-in close contact with fiddlers who have been absolutely born, bred, and buttered in the tradition. They're incredible learning opportunities for anybody. And the good thing about it is, I would say that the young kids who are playing in Donegal today actually understand that point. They see that difference, and to my best knowledge, they're very, very grateful to get that experience.

Has teaching fiddle changed your understanding of Donegal music?

Teaching has changed, from the generation before me to my generation, and it's changed out of need. If you look at the generation before mine, they learned the same way that fiddle players were learning 200 years ago. You would go out ten nights in a row, mostly to the houses, and you were hearing the same repertoire over and over again. Well, if the tunes are in your mind, and you're in any way musical at all, it's not a big effort to get it down into your hand. And everybody here learned by ear. As you became a really good player, if there was a particular difficult tune or intricate tune that you wanted, well then you could go to a player and ask him to play it slowly and go over it and get it that way. But I mean, you would never go for lessons.

Whereas now, our social, working lives have changed. They've become a lot more busy and regimented, with the result that we have to kind of schedule things. If you're going to have learning that's scheduled, that really leads to classes. And Cairdeas was huge in providing regular classes. Again, virtually everybody teaches here. And in fairness to all of the Donegal players, virtually everybody is doing it for effectively no economic gain. Everybody's doing it because it's the right thing to do. The tradition is a bank. We've been drawing for decades on the account, and you know, it's time to put some of the money back. We do it in classes, which is the social and musical need that's there now-still basically passing on the tradition, but in a slightly different way.

I would argue that there is a Donegal style of teaching, what I call poetic learning. In "linear learning," you teach a tune along a straight melodic line. Say each of the two parts of a tune has eight bars, eight notes in a bar, sixty-four notes. So combining both parts, a tune is a 128-note sequence, if you're learning it by linear learning. And that's very difficult, to learn a code that length-in particular with something like a reel, where you have additional notes of ornamentation or triplets thrown in, and it's played at speed.

Now look at poetic learning. That is to say: each musical phrase is like a line of poetry, and just like poetry has repetition within its internal structure, so do the phrases of traditional music. For example, the first phrase is typically the fifth phrase, and very often it's the third phrase. If you look at Scottish music, and a good bit of Donegal music, the second phrase is usually the first phrase moved up one note or down one note. So you have the A phrase, the B phrase, the A phrase repeats, and you have a semi-resolution as the fourth phrase. The A phrase repeats again, the B phrase repeats again, the A phrase repeats again, and then you have a complete resolution-something very close to the fourth phrase, the semi-resolution-on the last phrase. You get that structure reflected again in the second part, and a lot of times, the second part will borrow the resolving phrase from the first part. So if you learn it by phrase, a lot of times you only need to learn something like four or five phrases to learn the tune. Now, the demand to learn four or five phrases, in poetic learning, versus the demand to learn a code of 128 changes-you can do it the hard way, or you can do it the simple way.

When I say there's a Donegal style of teaching, all of the teachers that I know teach it that way. And if you like, all of the young players are getting that handed on. I mean, I have taught this to kids seven or eight years of age, and in two weeks they have it picked up, and they can analyse the music. Now, it doesn't mean they're going to learn it like rockets, but it means that their learning is going to be a lot easier. And that's exactly how the old boys learned it. They did not sit down and analyse the music, but they did it instinctively-they knew exactly what poetic learning is, but they didn't have a name for it, and they didn't have a concept about it. But they did it.

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[For the full text of this interview, subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]

[Ben Nelson is a clawhammer banjo player and aspiring fiddler from a musical family in southwest Virginia . He has spent this past year pursuing a Thomas J. Watson fellowship to study the ancestry of old time fiddle and banjo music in Donegal and Senegambia .]

 

photo by Jim Maguire

James O'Neill: The Scribe

By Caoimhin Mac Aoidh

It is the aim of every author to be published. Few published authors, however, have the pleasure of knowing that, somewhere in the world, their work is consulted every single day. Such a status was achieved by James O'Neill, yet astonishingly most musicians using his work are either totally unaware of him or simply recognise his name and know nothing else of him.

James' parents, John O'Neill and Mary Mulholland, were more than likely born not long before The Great Famine (1845-1850) with their families eventually living in the labourers' cottages associated with the F. W. Hayes linen mill in the village of Seapatrick , County Down , Ireland . Both were musical, with John a noted fiddler and Mary a singer with a considerable store of songs. They were married in nearby St. Patrick's Church in Banbridge on May 27th, 1860. Their eldest child, James, was born at home in Seapatrick in late February, 1862 and baptised in St. Patrick's on February 28th. At about six years of age his family moved to 66 Brookfield Street in the Ardoyne area of Belfast .

He began learning the fiddle from his father at a very early age and by the time he was living in Belfast his father had arranged for him to take lessons from Bill Ellis, an Englishman living in the city. As was the custom of the time, James probably spent half of his day working beside his father in a linen mill and the other half in school getting a rudimentary education. His passion for music, however, must have been astounding. Under the influence of his father and Ellis, James had become a fiddle player of great note and, uncommon for fiddlers at the time, learned to read and transcribe music with speed and accuracy.

James emigrated to Chicago around 1881, settling in the large Irish community of Bridgeport where he worked at grinding physical labour. He married Annie Brennan, an immigrant from County Donegal and they began to have a family. At this time, James also took on the responsibility of looking after all of his brothers and sisters upon their arrival in America following the death of their parents. While he did play in these early years, he was unknown as a fiddler until he was discovered playing Scottish strathspeys -- a typical part of the repertoire of a fiddler from the northern counties of Ireland -- by Joe Cant, a highland piper at a Scottish music rally.

Cant introduced James to his friend Francis O'Neill in 1884. It is not an overstatement to say that this meeting would change the course of Irish music. Francis, then on a path to becoming the Chief of Police in the second-largest city in America , was a gifted traditional flute player. He was not a relation of James and came from Tralibane, near Bantry in west County Cork , Ireland . Francis had a strong desire to preserve the tunes he learned at home as a youth in Ireland . His problem was that he could not read or write staff notation. He was astonished at James' ability to transcribe tunes on the spot. Francis had discovered the "scribe" -- a label he applied to James with great praise throughout his writings -- he had so badly needed to achieve his aims.

Almost immediately the pair embarked on a project to document Francis' repertoire. The work was arduous and a number of natural obstacles arose. Francis was transferred to a work base away from James' home while James was still labouring a twelve-hour day, seven days a week. Transcribing meetings were difficult to arrange. The two kept at it, however, and after the first few years it became apparent that the original aim of the project had been superseded by one with a greater vision. Francis' tunes were piling up and as he and James worked closely together and explored repertoire, James' tunes were also being noted.

On the social side, both James and Francis circulated amongst the immigrant Irish community in Chicago and routinely played in house sessions. There they became lifelong friends with a number of tremendously skilled musicians such as fiddlers John McFadden from County Mayo and Edward Cronin of County Tipperary , as well as uilleann pipers Barney Delaney of County Offaly and Patsy Touhey of County Galway . More and more, James and Francis actively learned tunes from musicians at these sessions for the purpose of having them committed to manuscript. Their project had now changed to one that sought to document the greatest number of tunes in the Irish tradition as possible.

The project gathered momentum and coordination. Other fac tors also contributed to better results. Though James surprisingly continued at hard labouring jobs for seven years, he eventually joined the Chicago Police Force, almost certainly with the help and encouragement of Francis O'Neill, in March of 1891. He was fully commissioned as an officer in September of the same year. This change allowed more concentrated periods of transcribing and also presented him the opportunity of sourcing musicians during the course of his routine policing.

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James O'Neill took every opportunity he could to source tunes both in his private time as well as on the job. An article in the March 2nd, 1902 edition of The Chicago Tribune which dealt with the overall collection project noted that James had transcribed on the spot a number of tunes from the whistling of a tram car driver during a journey. Another instance described how James had been on duty supervising an election polling booth at 32nd and Halstead Streets. Late in the evening the temperature had dropped significantly and as there was little activity he sheltered in the front room of an adjacent barber shop. The barber, an Irish immigrant, emerged from the back kitchen trying to calm his crying baby. Though not conversing with James, he lilted the child a reel. James immediately took out his notebook and pencil and began transcribing the tune. Every time the barber got near the finish of the tune the baby stopped crying and he stopped lilting. After several bouts of crying and lilting with the same outcome, the barber returned to the kitchen. In frustration, James eventually knocked on the door and requested him to lilt the finish of the tune. The reel was captured and originally christened "The Whistling Barber." It was eventually identified as a version of "The Mills are Grinding" and appears as Number 1378 in Music of Ireland .

The first public result of almost two decades of collecting was the publication of Music of Ireland in 1903. The publication was totally funded by Francis O'Neill and, while never making a profit for him, became one of the largest and most significant publications of ethnic music.

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[For the rest of this article, subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]

[ The Scribe, The Life and Works of James O'Neill by Caoimhin Mac Aoidh will be published by Drumlin Publications, Manorhamilton , Ireland in June 2006.]

 

 

photo by Susanne Even

Alan Jabbour: Fiddler, Scholar, and Preserver of Tradition

By Steve Goldfield

Alan Jabbour has long been an integral part of the preservation of old time fiddling in America . Beginning his professional life as a professor of English Literature and Folklore, Alan soon moved into the musical arena, eventually becoming head of the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress, director of the Folk Arts program at the National Endowment for the Arts, and then director of the American Folklife Center. As a member of the Hollow Rock String Band, Alan brought old tunes to new audiences, and his documention of tunes from Henry Reed, the Hammons Family, and many others gave them a new life. Alan's acclaimed recent album of fiddle and banjo duets with Ken Perlman is proof of a musical career still going strong.

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Alan's First Encounters with Traditional Music

. One of [Alan's] first classes at Duke was a seminar on the ballad taught by Holger Nygard, who was a folklorist and a medievalist.Alan had been exposed to the folk music revival in Miami ; Nygard's seminar immersed him in ballads and collecting folklore. Alan wrote his master's thesis on the collection and analysis of folk songs in the British Isles and America . Holger Nygard also played Library of Congress records. Alan recalls, "I was smitten. There was something culturally powerful in that music. I wrote off and got some for myself and listened to them over and over again. I had the idea that because of my special knowledge of the violin, I should collect folk fiddling."

Alan bought a cheap tape recorder and started in north Durham County in 1965. He stopped at a gas station/country store and asked if there were any fiddlers around. Within a few minutes, he met Edsel Terry, who played fiddle and banjo. Terry was fairly young at the time and is the only one of Alan's early mentors who is still alive. Terry encouraged Alan to try playing the music himself and turned Alan's visits toward apprenticeship.

At the time, Alan had not played his violin for about a year. He began learning tunes from his new mentors. He had to relearn both his instrument and a new way to learn -- by ear. Classical musicians use their ears, but they also rely on printed music. Now Alan had only his ears. The tape recordings helped, too. Alan's recorder was reel to reel with different speeds. He played the recordings back at half speed, which gave him time to hear what was happening, especially bowing patterns. At the same time, his transcriptions helped him see what underlay this style of music. At first, his learning went slowly but then it came faster.

...

Two of the fiddlers Alan recorded were Joseph Aiken and his brother Romy. The Durham Morning Herald ran a feature article on Alan's collecting with a picture of Alan with Joseph Aiken. Benjamin Franklin Jarrell, known as B. F., was working just north of Durham in Roxboro as a DJ. He saw the picture in the paper and then recognized Alan at Galax. He introduced himself and said, "You ought to see my daddy." Tommy Jarrell came to Galax the next day but did not have his fiddle. So Alan and Karen stopped to visit him in Toast, North Carolina , near Mount Airy , on their way home.

Alan was the first person outside Tommy Jarrell's community to visit him. He recalls that Tommy was no longer working for the state highway department but had his last check from that job on his wall. He refused to cash the check even though they begged him to do so to clear their books. Tommy was then in the transition from mourning his wife into bachelorhood. Tommy came to find a new function in life by teaching his music to a new generation of young people. He was very influential both because of his musical talent and because he was a warm and available teacher. Alan did learn some of Tommy's tunes, but he also played other versions, such as Taylor Kimble's "Breaking up Christmas," rather than Tommy's.

Henry Reed

Whereas many fiddlers had versions of Tommy Jarrell's tunes, Alan had to learn Henry Reed's tunes from scratch because nobody else played most of his tunes. Alan met Oscar Wright at Galax. Oscar was playing great tunes. Alan asked to visit him in Princeton , West Virginia . Eugene Wright lived there, too. Oscar played "Kitchen Girl," "Ducks on the Pond," and other unique and wonderful tunes. Alan asked, "Where did you learn those?" "From old man Henry Reed," the Wrights explained. Alan assumed that Reed was long gone but was told that he was still alive and fiddling. Oscar Wright gave Alan directions to Glen Lyn, Virginia , where he found Henry Reed on the same trip. The Jabbours arrived around suppertime and were invited to eat when the Reeds heard that Oscar had sent them. They did not even know why Alan had come.

The Reed family had roots in Ireland and in Floyd County along the Blue Ridge near Floyd , Virginia , but they had been in Monroe County , West Virginia , since the mid-19th century. Quince Dillion, Henry Reed's principal mentor, was also from " East Virginia ." The Dillions had moved to Monroe County from Franklin County , Virginia , in the early 19th century.

The Reed home in Glen Lyn had the reputation in the community as a house where people came to play music. Sometimes Henry Reed played music all night and went to work the next day. He grew up in a farming area close to the New River .

...

Alan recorded about forty tunes on his first visit with Henry Reed. He says, "I knew that I had found my mentor for the future. He had a tremor in his hands, but a fiddler can hear through that." Mostly Reed played his old repertoire, though his son James would comment about a few little changes. "Henry Reed was a huge influence on me for repertoire and style," Alan asserts. "And through the wider circle in Durham , the tunes spread; they were the fuel for our music revival. Henry Reed was, for us, a dominant figure. He played great and unique tunes. He was the only one that remembered them. He was an amazing resource. He was not out of touch with the world; it was important to him to keep the music, so he did. He learned bluegrass and country western tunes, too. He learned what he liked."

Alan visited Henry Reed seven or eight times and recorded during six of those visits. He recorded 184 items of which 144 were different tunes. During Alan's last visit, Reed added more than twenty tunes, so he probably knew more.

Alan visited Taylor Kimble two or three times. He had also just lost his wife, and music cheered him up. Alan remembers that Taylor "met Stella Holladay through us young people. They courted, married, and learned each other's repertoires and played together in their seventies."

Alan wishes he could have visited Gray Craig, who learned from Posey Rorer, more than once. He also visited Doc White and Lee Triplett in West Virginia only once. He says, "It was important in that era to visit fiddlers because only those in their seventies and eighties still retained music from before outside influences seeped in after World War I. The new directions cut off a lot of local repertoire which fell gradually into disuse."

Alan recalls, "I was more pessimistic then about the future of the fiddle in the South than I am now. I've seen a revolution in interest in old time fiddlng. First, people like me and then later other people and now young generations in those communities. People from Gray Craig's area ask what he was like. I'm humbled that I became willy nilly part of the chemistry of that. In the long run, these things have cultural impacts, when you look back, enriching and beneficial impacts."...

The Hammons Family

Alan first heard about the Hammons Family from Bertram Levy, who was living in Port Townsend, Washington . Bertram went to Galax, where Dwight Diller talked about the Hammons family in Pocahontas County , West Virginia -- his home. He persuaded Bertram to go back with him to Marlinton, and Bertram recorded Burl Hammons playing some fiddle tunes on a tape recorder. Then he went to Washington , D.C. and played some of it for Alan.

Alan was excited about visiting Burl and went down there one weekend. He found Burl, Maggie, Sherman , and Ruie -- a whole musical family. Alan remembers that first visit: "I met Carl Fleischhauer from West Virginia University , whom I didn't previously know. Carl had been dragged down there as a filmmaker by Pat Gainer, a senior folklorist who had heard from Dwight, who was a student at WVU, about a ballad singer, Maggie Hammons Parker. Carl was frustrated by the senior folklorist approach and came back when I was there. Dwight was also there: both pleased and anxious that the music be recorded properly. We smoothed things out eventually."

Alan remembers, "We used our recordings and some of Dwight's. Carl took still photos. The project emerged gradually. At first I wanted to document the Hammonses for the Library." Then Carl and Alan conceived of a large LP package with a booklet, music, and stories that gave a broader picture of the family tradition at large. Alan continues, "Carl researched census records and county courthouse records. Piecing that together with the oral history, we were able to present a compelling picture of this family, how they emerged on the frontier in the late 18th century and kept working their way along the frontier. They had a hunting and gathering way of life. They needed woods readily available. They were known as woods people who knew the woods better than everyone else. They were the woods guides for hunters."

Alan did not know about the recordings of Edden Hammons, the uncle of those he visited, at that time in the early seventies. In the early eighties, the Louis Chappell recordings became known. Chappell was anxious about who would have his recordings. He wanted them to go to WVU and not to the Library of Congress.Alan observes, "That was my last big fiddling project that led to a publication. Administrative tasks occupied my full attention. I was doing less fiddling as well. Months would go by where I wouldn't touch it. I was keeping the American Folklife Center afloat and occupied raising a family."

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Alan's Active Retirement

Alan also says he is now playing music at least half time. Right now he is on the road with Ken Perlman. The two met at Rocky Mountain Fiddle Camp and started doing programs together, then touring and then a CD. Alan says it has been a lot of fun. Earlier Alan recorded a CD with Bertram Levy and James Reed -- Henry Reed Reunion -- and he also managed to reissue all the earlier recordings. Alan also plays occasionally with Jim Watson, who was the third musician on the second Hollow Rock album. Alan played four cuts on Jim's recent solo recording.

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[For the full text of this article, as well as the tune "Ducks in the Pond" (transcribed by Alan Jabbour as played by Henry Reed), subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]

www.alanjabbour.com

Henry Reed website: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/hrhtml/hrhome.html

[Steve Goldfield plays old time banjo and fiddle. He is a staff reviewer for Bluegrass Unlimited and a frequent contributor to Fiddler Magazine.]

 

Folk Routes: Hungarian Gypsy Music along the Danube

By Peter Anick

Growing up, my favorite pieces of classical music were Brahms' Hungarian Dances. Full of fiery passages, with slow sections leading abruptly into fast ones, they were the perfect accompaniment for kids scurrying madly around the house. I credit them with my current love of Gypsy music, maybe even my eventual interest in the fiddle. And like most people, I assumed that those romantic melodies played with such aplomb by the "primás" and his orchestra in Hungarian restaurants, were Gypsy music. My preconceptions were shaken, however, when the touring Hungarian group Ökrös Ensemble brought their brand of "Hungarian Gypsy music" to Massachusetts in 1999. The instrumentation was similar to the restaurant orchestras' but the rhythm had a very different pulse and the wild, highly-ornamented melodies were exotic to my western ears.

Naturally enough, when I found myself in Budapest a few years later, I was determined to learn more about these two musical styles that each called themselves Hungarian Gypsy music. I was fortunate enough to have an ally -- a local Gypsy jazz aficionado had agreed to help me out as a translator for interviews with local violinists. He had done some research and suggested several concerts and people to contact. Indeed, I quickly discovered that it is difficult not to run into violin music in Budapest . On any day of the week throughout the summer, either the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble, Danube Folk Ensemble, or Rajkó Ensemble is likely to be performing somewhere. The Hungarian Folk Ensemble presents choreographed folk dances from both urban and rural traditions, accompanied by two small bands. The Danube Folk Ensemble offers dance-theatre productions of Hungarian folk dances. The Rajkó Ensemble is a classic Gypsy band featuring strings and cimbalom.

Of the three, the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble is perhaps the best introduction to the breadth of Hungarian music and dance, as the choreographed selections cover peasant dances, recruiting dances, and aristocratic balls. The dances are full of athleticism and showmanship, with much jumping, squatting, and slapping of boots, reflecting their military roots. The earliest descriptions of Hungarian dances, dating from the 1500s, portray them as re-enactments of the heroic actions of soldiers. To the accompaniment of bagpipe, táragató (a double reed, oboe-like instrument), and drum, soldiers returning from battle would dance fully armed and improvise songs to praise the chiefs. It was around that same time that Gypsy musicians, perhaps originally in the employ of the Turkish army, spread around Europe . Many settled in Hungarian villages, learned the local tunes and became indispensable at weddings and festivals.

In the 18th century, the traditional dances were replaced among the nobility by popular new social dances from France , Germany , and Italy . Gypsy musicians, noted for their dexterity on the now fashionable string instruments, were invited to the courts of the aristocracy, where a two-way exchange of musical ideas flowed between them and classical court musicians such as Joseph Haydn. With the introduction of a standing army, the recruiting of soldiers became a priority and drinking and dancing were employed once again to raise the morale of prospective soldiers. A verbunkos style, which fused elements of western European popular music with the older village folk music, was developed to accompany the recruiting dances. Celebrated Gypsy virtuosos such as János Bihari roamed the Pest-Buda area, stirring up nationalistic emotions with new compositions featuring alternating slow and fast sections designed to inspire improvised dances. However, in rural areas far from the nobles' courts, peasants and shepherds continued to preserve the old musical forms and used the military-like dance moves as tests of dexterity. Around the 1830s, a csárdás style of couple dancing based on the traditional peasant dances became popular among all social classes.

The Hungarian State Folk Ensemble's two bands alternate on stage, one playing authentic peasant music and the other playing composed pieces from Hungary's romantic era. Among the violinists playing in the village band was István Pál, a recipient of the Young Master of Folk Arts award from the Cultural Ministry. He recommended that we experience this music as played in a dance house, a small club where musicians and dancers interact without the restrictions of a fixed program or choreography. Several nights later we did just that, navigating our way by metro and foot to hear Pál's band at Fonó, one of the best known folk music clubs in Budapest . No fancy costumes here. People wandered in, chatted at the bar, listened to the music and when the spirit moved them, took to the dance floor. If a couple stepped out to do a csárdás or a young man rose to do one of those boot-slapping peasant dances, István would stand up and play directly to the dancers, leading the orchestra though a series of melodies assembled on the spot to match the dancers' styles and preferences (and stamina).

To hear the more familiar Gypsy melodies that most of us associate with Hungarian music, one can either seek out a restaurant featuring a Gypsy orchestra or attend a performance of the Rajkó Ensemble at the metro-accessible Duna Palata, an elegant old palace with a small ornate theater. The ten piece band, composed of graduates of the Rajkó music school for Gypsies, recreates the lush sound of the Gypsy band in the heyday of the romantic era. The primás violinist leads the group, serving simultaneously as conductor and soloist, nodding to the clarinet or cimbalom player to take a break and guiding the group through the many changes of tempo and mood with body English and bow movements. Their program includes arrangements of the perennial favorites -- Brahms' Hungarian Dance #5, Monti's Csárdás, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2, and Dinicu's showpiece, The Lark, in which a trio of violinists create a virtual forest of chirping birds. Interspersed between these classics are regional dances performed by costumed folk dancers, including one "Gypsy dance" performed using yet another configuration of traditional Hungarian Gypsy folk instruments -- milk cans and wooden spoons.

Budapest is a bustling city with a lot of charm and a great public transportation system. It's easy to get around and very pedestrian-friendly. One can often stumble upon fiddlers in the course of strolling around the streets of Budapest . I caught the eye of one street musician alongside the Danube and he followed me around fiddling bits and pieces of various tunes like a musical chameleon until he got a positive reaction -- and a tip. On another occasion, I chanced upon a group of children folk dancing in the square by the Tourist Information Center . When they finished their demonstration, I struck up a conversation with the band and soon found myself playing bluegrass tunes to the accompaniment of Hungarian village style viola and bass.

I also made contact with a local collector and performer of village music, Tamás Gombai. Just back from a field trip to Transylvania , he invited me along to a gig and arrived at my hotel with his band and a bass all crammed into a tiny car. After introductions, I squeezed in alongside the neck of the bass and we headed out of Budapest toward the Balaton Region, an area known for its beautiful countryside, a lake, and its wine. Only en route did I learn that the gig was to be at a vineyard where the trio was to entertain a small group of German tourists as they sampled the local wine and cuisine. After a week in the city, it was an unexpected pleasure to listen to village music in the tranquility of a hillside arbor, surrounded by grapevines sparkling in the sun. The genial host, István Spiegelberg, kept the wine flowing throughout the unhurried dinner and when the sun sank to the horizon, he invited the entourage into the wine cellar to sample sweet chardonnay and riesling right out of the barrel, along with an overflowing plate of fruits and cheese. The viola player demonstrated the Carpathian bagpipes that predated the arrival of violins in the area and even I, as a wine-primed American, responded to a request for "Devil Went Down to Georgia ." István was contemplating setting up a B&B business there in Somló and I would heartily recommend anyone traveling that way to look him up and inquire about a soirée of traditional food and music.

As an old Guinness ad once read, "Familiarity breeds content," and with all the exposure to Hungarian village music, I was beginning to enjoy it as much as the urban Gypsy music I had been familiar with most of my life. It is conjectured that the Hungarian language may have its roots in central Asia and one can only wonder whether the Hungarian peasant music, so different from that of its neighbors, is carrying vestiges of a long distant Asian past.

If you visit Budapest and would like to learn more about Hungarian village music, your first stop should be the Hungarian Heritage House at Corvin tér 8. (tel.: +36-1-2015017; fax: +36-1-2256077; www.heritagehouse.hu). The tourist information centers have flyers containing the schedules for the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble, Danube Folk Ensemble, and Rajkó Ensemble. The Fonó club at Sztregova utca 3 (tel: 206-5300, www.fono.hu) has music most nights, with many táncház (dance house) evenings. For a B&B or musical wine tasting in beautiful Somló, contact István Spiegelberg at mobile phone: 06-20/311-45-34 or email: spiegelberg.wein@freenet.de. For the serious student, there are many folk music camps offered throughout the summer in Hungary and Transylvania .

[For lots more on Hungarian Gypsy fiddling, including interviews with Tamás Gombai and Sándor Fodor "Neti" and two transcriptions ("Szapora" and "Sallai Verbunk"), subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]

[Peter Anick, co-author of Mel Bay's Old Time Fiddling Across America, plays American urban and village music with the Massachusetts-based "Wide Open Spaces" (www.wideospaces.com).]