Participation Type
Music
Presentation #1 Title
The Ruination of Hillbilly Music
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
A recent Facebook post celebrating Asheville’s Shindig on the Green declared the event’s objective “is to preserve the continuation of traditional music of the Southern Appalachian Mountains.” The post linked to a video of the Shindig’s finale, a talented young fiddler playing “Lover’s Waltz,” a song that is neither southern nor Appalachian.
Anyone who knows anything about traditional Appalachian music knows it may have died out if not for young people from outside the region making pilgrimages to learn from Tommy Jarrell, Henry Reed and others steeped in the traditoin. Yet there’s a sense among some of today’s old timers that outsiders (and some people inside the region) aren’t preserving the music, they’re amalgamating and muddling it. (Renowned fiddler Richard Bowman complained, “What they play ain’t old time. It ain’t bluegrass. I don’t know what it is they’re playing.”) Others might say the music is simply evolving.
My purpose is to get as clear a picture as possible of which judgment is closer to truth – or at least collect enough informed voices to advance the discussion.
My research will draw on some printed material, but it will be built primarily on interviews with people such as Bowman; multi-instrumentalist Jim Lloyd, program director for the Junior Appalachian Musicians program; fiddler and guitar player Jack Hinshelwood, executive director of The Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail; musician, luthier and author Stephen Wischnevsky, who was one of those 1960s pilgrims; and fiddler Clay Shelor, whose grandparents recorded at the famous Bristol Sessions.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Tim Thornton teaches at Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke, Virginia. A musician who collects ribbons at fiddlers’ conventions and a writer whose work has earned the Phillip D. Reed Memorial Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment and awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists, his chapbook of essays, The Walking Man’s Best Friend, was published in October 2018.
The Ruination of Hillbilly Music
A recent Facebook post celebrating Asheville’s Shindig on the Green declared the event’s objective “is to preserve the continuation of traditional music of the Southern Appalachian Mountains.” The post linked to a video of the Shindig’s finale, a talented young fiddler playing “Lover’s Waltz,” a song that is neither southern nor Appalachian.
Anyone who knows anything about traditional Appalachian music knows it may have died out if not for young people from outside the region making pilgrimages to learn from Tommy Jarrell, Henry Reed and others steeped in the traditoin. Yet there’s a sense among some of today’s old timers that outsiders (and some people inside the region) aren’t preserving the music, they’re amalgamating and muddling it. (Renowned fiddler Richard Bowman complained, “What they play ain’t old time. It ain’t bluegrass. I don’t know what it is they’re playing.”) Others might say the music is simply evolving.
My purpose is to get as clear a picture as possible of which judgment is closer to truth – or at least collect enough informed voices to advance the discussion.
My research will draw on some printed material, but it will be built primarily on interviews with people such as Bowman; multi-instrumentalist Jim Lloyd, program director for the Junior Appalachian Musicians program; fiddler and guitar player Jack Hinshelwood, executive director of The Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail; musician, luthier and author Stephen Wischnevsky, who was one of those 1960s pilgrims; and fiddler Clay Shelor, whose grandparents recorded at the famous Bristol Sessions.
