Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. Traditional Appalachian music is derived from various influences, including the ballads, hymns and fiddle music of the British Isles (particularly Scotland), and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.
First recorded in the 1920s, Appalachian musicians were a key influence on the early development of old-time music, country music, bluegrass, and rock n' roll, and were an important part of the American folk music revival of the 1960s. Instruments typically used to perform Appalachian music include the banjo, American fiddle, fretted dulcimer, and later the guitar.Ted Olson, "Music ," Encyclopedia of Appalachia, 2006. Retrieved: 28 January 2015.Ron Pen, "Ballads ," Encyclopedia of Appalachia, 28 February 2011. Retrieved: 28 January 2015.Steve Hooks, "Blues ," Encyclopedia of Appalachia, 28 February 2011. Retrieved: 28 January 2015.Cecilia Conway, "Celtic Influences ," Encyclopedia of Appalachia, 28 February 2011. Retrieved: 28 January 2015.Charles Faber, "Country Music ," Encyclopedia of Appalachia, 28 February 2011. Retrieved: 28 January 2015.Richard Blaustein, "Folk Music Revivals ," Encyclopedia of Appalachia, 1 March 2011. Retrieved: 28 January 2015.
Early recorded Appalachian musicians include Fiddlin' John Carson, G. B. Grayson & Henry Whitter, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, the Carter Family, Clarence Ashley, and Dock Boggs, all of whom were initially recorded in the 1920s and 1930s. Several Appalachian musicians obtained renown during the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, including Jean Ritchie, Roscoe Holcomb, Ola Belle Reed, Lily May Ledford, Hedy West and Doc Watson. Country and bluegrass artists such as Loretta Lynn, Roy Acuff, Dolly Parton, Earl Scruggs, Chet Atkins, The Stanley Brothers and Don Reno were heavily influenced by traditional Appalachian music.
History
Anglo-Celtic Immigrants Immigrants from Northern England, the Scottish lowlands, and Ulster arrived in Appalachia in the 17th and 18th centuries (with many from Ulster being "Ulster Scots", whose ancestors originated from parts of Southern Scotland and Northern England,David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed (Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 605–782 including Cumberland), and brought with them the musical traditions of these regions, consisting primarily of English and Scottish balladswhich were essentially unaccompanied narrativesand dance music, such as reels, which were accompanied by a fiddle.
Ballads Many Appalachian ballads, such as "Pretty Saro", "The Cuckoo", "Pretty Polly", and "Matty Groves", descend from the English ballad tradition and have known antecedents there. Other songs popular in Appalachia, such as "Young Hunting", "Lord Randal", and "Barbara Allen", have Scottish Lowlands roots.Cecelia Conway, "Celtic Influences". Encyclopedia of Appalachia (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee, 2006), p. 1132. Many of these are versions of the famous Child Ballads, collected by Francis James Child in the nineteenth century. The dance tune "Cumberland Gap" may be derived from the tune that accompanies the Scottish ballad "Bonnie George Campbell".Song notes in Bascom Lamar Lunsford: Ballads, Banjo Tunes, and Sacred Songs of Western North Carolina [CD liner notes]. Smithsonian Folkways, 1996. According to the musicologist Cecil Sharp the ballads of Appalachia, including their melodies, were generally most similar to those of "the North of England, or to the Lowlands, rather than the Highlands, of Scotland, as the country from which they [the people] originally migrated. For the Appalachian tunes...have far more affinity with the normal English folk-tune than with that of the Gaelic-speaking Highlander."Olive Dame Campbell & Cecil J. Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, Comprising 122 Songs and Ballads, and 323 Tunes, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1917, p. xviii.
Fiddle tunes Several Appalachian fiddle tunes have origins in Gaelic-speaking regions of Ireland and Scotland, for example "Leather Britches", based on "Lord MacDonald's Reel". These may have come to Appalachia via printed versions which were very popular throughout the British Empire in the eighteenth century, rather than directly from Gaelic areas. The style of the 18th century Scottish fiddler Niel Gow, which involved a powerful and rhythmic short bow sawstroke technique, is said to have become the foundation of Appalachian fiddling.
Church music The early British immigrants also brought a form of church singing called lining out or calling out, in which one person sings a line of a psalm or hymn and the rest of the congregation responds. This type of congregational singing, once very common all over colonial America, is now largely restricted to Old Regular Baptist churches in the hills of southwest Virginia, southern West Virginia, and eastern Kentucky.
Continental Europeans There were German, Polish and Czech cultural pockets in Appalachia as well as many Dutch and French Huguenot immigrants. These cultures largely assimilated, but some songs and melodies, for example the German "Fischer's Hornpipe", remained in the repertoires of their Americanized ancestors. A recording of the fiddler Tommy Jarrell playing "Fisher's Hornpipe" can be heard online.
The "Appalachian" or "mountain" dulcimer, thought to have been a modification of a Germanic instrument such as the scheitholt, (or possibly the Norwegian langeleik or the French épinette des Vosges) emerged in Southwest Pennsylvania and Northwest Virginia in the 19th century. In the early 20th century, settlement schools in Kentucky taught the fretted dulcimer to students, helping spread its popularity in the region. Jean Ritchie was largely responsible for popularizing the instrument among folk music enthusiasts in the 1950s.Lucy Long, "Fretted Dulcimer". Encyclopedia of Appalachia (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), pp. 1144–1145.
Appalachian yodeling is thought to have entered the Appalachian mountains in the 18th century, brought by immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia and Switzerland, where it was generally used to communicate over longs distances in mountainous terrain similar to the Appalachians. Vocal feathering, practiced by singers including Doug Wallin and described as a "half-yodel", (or more accurately, according to Judith McCulloh, as 'A sudden or forceful raising of the soft palate against the back wall of the throat and/or a sudden closing of the glottis at the very end of a given note, generally accompanied by a rise in pitch'), may also be Germanic in origin.
Affrilachians
Affrilachians have had a profound impact on regional Appalachian music culture, partially owning to the fact that Affrilachians have been in the region for as long as the earliest Europeans. African musical traditional have influenced all Appalachian music styles; moreover, the blues is foundational to bluegrass and country music. Affrilachians also have distinct musical styles formed within their community, including Affrilachian styles of jazz and the blues.
The banjo has its origins in Africa and the African American community; the banjo now has many derivative forms, including the banjolin, among others. The washboard, which is played by using one's hands or thimble to stroke the riffs on the instrument, also has its origins in the African diaspora in the Americas. Washboards are used in place of drums to produce percussion sounds. The washtub bass, another instrument commonly found in Appalachian music, also originated in Affrilachian communities before being adopted by White string bands. Also known as the gutbucket, (or in other countries the "gas-tank bass" or "laundrophone"), it is usually made from a metal wash tub, a staff or stick, and sometimes four or more strings (though the vast majority of washtub basses use only one string). The bass may also have tuning pegs. Many Affrilachian and Black Southern instruments have used to stereotype African Americans, for example during minstrel shows. While much of the literature relating to the bones has assumed it to be an African instrument because of ethnocentric ideas about their "primitiveness", historical and musicological evidence supports a European origin for the bones in North America. See Beth Lenz' thesis, The Bones in the United States: History and Performance Practice. M. A. Thesis, University of Michigan, 1989, and articles in The Rhythm Bones Player, the official publication of the Rhythm Bones Society.
Later developments The "New World" ballad tradition, consisting of ballads written in North America, was as influential as the Old World tradition to the development of Appalachian music. New World ballads were typically written to reflect news events of the day, and were often published as broadsides. New World ballads popular among Appalachian musicians included "Omie Wise", "Wreck of the Old 97", "Man of Constant Sorrow", and "John Hardy". Later, coal mining and its associated labor issues led to the development of protest songs, such as "Which Side Are You On?" and "Coal Creek March".Stephen Mooney, "Coal-Mining and Protest Music". Encyclopedia of Appalachia (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), pp. 1136–1137.
Many ballad singers, such as Texas Gladden, acquired what is referred to as the "High Lonesome Sound", a strident, nasalized vocal timbre, often with an unmetered rhythm and the use of gapped (i.e. pentatonic) scales. It is unknown exactly when and how this style developed.
Instruments such as the guitar, mandolin, and autoharp became popular in Appalachia in the late 19th century as a result of mail order catalogs. These instruments were added to the banjo-and-fiddle outfits to form early string bands.
Other instruments include the spoons which are played by hitting two spoons together, making a 'click' sound which creates tempo.
Collecting and recording Fieldwork
Around the turn of the 20th century, a broad movement developed to record the rich musical heritage, particularly of folksong, that had been preserved and developed by the people of the Appalachians. This music was unwritten; songs were handed down, often within families, from generation to generation by oral transmission. Fieldwork to record Appalachian music (first in musical notation, later on with recording equipment) was undertaken by a variety of scholars.
One of the earliest collectors of Appalachian ballads was Kentucky native John Jacob Niles (1892–1980), who began noting ballads as early as 1907 as he learned them in the course of family, social life, and work. Due to fears of plagiarism and imitation of other collectors active in the region at the time, Niles waited until 1960 to publish his first 110 in The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles. The area covered by Niles in his collecting days, according to the map in the Ballad Book, was bounded roughly by Tazewell, Virginia; south to Boone and Saluda, North Carolina and Greenville, South Carolina; west to Chickamauga, Georgia; north through Chattanooga and Dayton, Tennessee to Somerset, Kentucky; northwest to Bardstown, Frankfort, and Lexington, Kentucky; east to the West Virginia border, and back down to Tazewell, thus covering areas of the Smokies, the Cumberland Plateau, Upper Tennessee Valley, and the Lookout Mountain region.John Jacob Niles, The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960. Reprinted by Dover, 1970.
In May 1916, the soprano Loraine Wyman and her pianist colleague Howard Brockway visited the Appalachians in eastern Kentucky, in a 300-mile walking trek to gather folk songs. They took their harvest back to New York, where they continued, with great success, their ongoing efforts in performing traditional folk songs to urban audiences.