Appalachia has always been a place apart from the settling to the rugged
mountain frontier to establishing society and culture amongst diverse
backgrounds and rural settings unique amongst the mountains where the melting
together of musical styles and influences from all over the world creating
Appalachian mountain music music exclusive to the culture and communities
of Appalachia from the earliest sources of national media Appalachians and
mountain music have been stereotyped as an intelligent lazy feuding hillbillies
what was once a distinguishable element of Appalachia the music has slowly and
silently faded away replaced with the long-running stereotypes placed upon
it
today modern Appalachian archivist university scholars Appalachian
historians and musicians have preserved the music of the past and allowed a new
generation to experience a rich part of its history and artistic innovations of
a proud mountain people
I've been in my, you know, I make my living primary as an artist and a lot of people,
they want Appalachia to be just like everybody else.
So my art, I feel like, comes in and says, we're not.
Yeah, it used to make me ashamed a little bit too, where you almost wouldn't want to admit
where you're from sometimes if you went somewhere, especially a big city.
Is there something horribly wrong with that?
No acceptance, or very low acceptance of anything that had to do with hillbilly, or country, or anything like that.
But can you make a holler in noise too, if you was to lay egg like that?
I ain't no man.
Part of getting away from that traditional music is people being afraid of that negative sort of hillbilly stereotype.
That music represents that to a lot of people.
A lot of times even you'll go back home and you'll play the banjo, and you get the same little comments that you do anywhere else these days.
Like they want to hear you play a theme song from Deliverance, or they want to hear something that's just completely, that you don't care anything about.
I think that was a big reason I didn't perceive this kind of music when I was younger.
Anytime I'd have an even mandolin, everybody would call it a banjo, and it was just that stereotype of imagery that you get from those instruments.
It's funny because I think the older we get in this culture the more people start to relate to their heritage.
And I see a lot of the students, college age students, be attracted to that idea that they're kind of embracing their past.
And whether you still do, you get a lot of people that age who don't want anything to do with it except to make fun of it.
One of the reasons why Bluegrass was successful is that the first generation of bluegrassers made a very focused attempt to not present that way.
Whenever Bill Monroe would come out on the Grand Ole Opry, he came out with a band that was decked out.
They were dressed to the heel.
They really did that on purpose to steer people away from this stereotype of heel billy.
Pictures of my family, my grandfather and his brothers playing, they always were dressed nice in the 30s, in the 20s and 30s.
They always dressed nice.
They had every other stereotype. A lot of them were heavy drinkers and they weren't very well educated.
I've heard stories about people busting instruments over each other's heads and that kind of thing.
But they were dressed nice. They tried to appear as something different than this stereotype.
Yes, sir, an awful fool. What a boy you bought me.
When my father, after he started preaching, he didn't let anyone on the outside know that he did because he wasn't supposed to.
But he would still get the old banjo out. He was the old-time banjo picker and play and sing to make us kids laugh.
Arkansas Travel and all those songs like that that he knew.
The funny thing about it was there was always conflicts within those people.
There was a terrible conflict within him.
I think he would have liked to have been like another Uncle Dave Macon or somebody like that.
I think he could very well have been.
There's a little rosewood casket
laying on a marble shelf
and a package of old letters
readin' by my true love's hand
Go and get them for me, sister
Leave them all where it holds to me
I have often tried to read them
but for tears I could not see
These collectors, John Herrod and Mark Wilson and Gus Mead and all these guys who did the bulk of the field work in the 70s and 80s
they've been very gracious in donating their materials and letting universities such as Moorhead and Berea and UofL have access to these and digitize them.
A number of musicians were getting up in years, traditional musicians were getting up in years
and these were the folks who, the term oftentimes is thrown around a bit, who were tradition bearers
who had learned their music, fiddle tunes for instance, early 1900s from elderly or up in years individuals
of pressure at that time of not just the endangered musical abilities of these individuals in the 1960s and 70s
but these individuals might have taken to the grave tunes that were being played much, much earlier.
The only thing that has saved us from that stuff just being gone has been the same technology of recording
having recordings, having guys like John Herrod and Gus Mead and Mark Wilson and Nancy McClellan and Jamie Wells
and all these guys that went around with tape recorders and recorded people.
What happened with those guys I'm sure John told you is that he caught the last of these people that learned pre-radio
and pre-recordings in old age and recorded them and really just that last slice of common people,
not these big figures around like, and not even this tiny slice really like that Alan Lomax got in the 30s.
You know, it was a pretty tiny slice of extremely isolated pockets.
I'd already been recording everybody I could on a little cassette recorder again just because it was there
and nobody else was paying attention to it and I didn't really think it was going to disappear
but I thought it was pretty important that somebody be getting it.
I mean those people were going to die because they were all old but I didn't think it was going to disappear
and I knew it was important for somebody there that knew about it to make sure it was all kept.
I was born in Kentucky, I've lived here all my life except for two years and my motive was to learn to play the fiddle the way they did
and I've, you know, whatever money I made doing that has been negligible. I mean I've spent far more of my time and my money
to sort of help these things along than I've ever made money off of it.
When some of the collectors began getting out and doing field work, they did find that there were people sitting around on their back porch
still playing and there were lots and lots of people when people started collecting, you know, like Sharp and the different ones
they were surprised to find how many songs that these people still knew and of course you don't, unless you're singing that
you could not probably remember all those words.
It's never going to be a commercially successful music. It's not going to sell millions of albums naturally but it's a music that can hopefully pass on our past.
A lot of people don't even know what you mean by old time. They don't know really what you mean if you say you're playing folk music.
It's real crazy how that music is not, you know, general public doesn't really know what it even was.
We have missed several opportunities to have our culture accepted.
You ain't going to stop out no fire like that, are you?
I don't like for all things to be the same and I think as a country we're kind of, we're heading towards that.
Everything's getting to be the same. Everybody listens to the same music. Everybody shops at the same stores no matter where you go.
I like the Hillbilly stereotype to be honest with you. It makes me proud to be from a place like that.
When all the world, America, whatever seems to be going in this one direction, it's nice to think that there's still a place where people still do certain things.
They raise gardens and they have a rural sort of community. People wave at you, you know, kind of thing.
It's definitely a revival time for old-time music right now.
Maybe that's even why I got into it. Maybe somehow I caught onto this revival. I don't know.
I don't foresee it ever going away. I got into old-time music because it's very much the kind of music I can foresee myself playing when I'm 60 years old.
There's probably more access to these old recordings now than there ever has been.
There's really a great love, especially on the West Coast now for Appalachian traditional music, which is kind of funny.
But there are a lot of people from this region who've transplanted out there and I think they search for that identity that they may have felt like they lost.
And the music's one great way to make a connection to the past.
What we're finding more and more is that there's been some kind of a turnaround and that there's a lot of young people who are coming back to the music.
So there's that whole element of people. I played to some of them in New York when I was afraid to go on stage, but the place was packed and it was just an amazing audience.
And these were all young people. I said, how old do you think that these people are?
And one of the producers said, they're old, about 28.
I think there's definitely a revival because I've sold a lot of artwork to a lot of my old time music inspired artwork to a lot of people from California, from people from New England.
The last 10 to 15 years there have been these almost super groups that play old time music.
With the digital age as it is, I feel like it may be stronger in a lot of ways.
Some of the traditions will change though, I think. Learning tunes is a lot different today than it was even five years ago with the media as accessible as it is.
A tradition that was almost silenced has now been resurrected with universities throughout Appalachia now offering degree programs and credit opportunities to study and research Appalachian mountain music and culture.
The beautiful sounds and styles from the Appalachian mountains can now be heard from a new generation bridging the gap to the old, allowing the world to see the unique qualities and timeless beauty of the land known as Appalachia.
Music
