It was good to get out to a festival. True, last fall we enjoyed Bethania’s Walnut Festival, held in an historical Moravian village next to our neighborhood. Also, we rejoiced in a traditional, low-tech fall carnival up in King, North Carolina, filled with old-fashioned rides, tossing games, inexpensive food, and a single entrance price of $10 for all the rides you wanted. If that sounds like kid-paradise, it was!
But so many classic events have been off the calendar, as you well know. All the more sweet, then, was our trip up to Galax, Virginia for the world-famous Old Fiddlers Convention, a festival that was founded by Galax’s Moose Club in 1935. We picked Wednesday’s events—individual fiddle and dulcimer players—partly due to our schedule and partly because I love those sounds.
The ride through the mountain passes (back roads, by choice) was gorgeous, but it got too interesting when we met an 18-wheeler stuck in our hairpin turn. The road was blocked with little hope of a solution. The lone tow truck on the scene wasn’t strong enough to solve the problem, so we joined the trickle of locals who travel this road and turned around. Why, you ask, was such huge vehicle navigating this kind of roadway? Aha, the trucker had followed his GPS! We all know where that gets you.
Cruising back to the highway was easy, although highway is a misnomer. Let’s just say we found a road where 18-wheelers can make the turns. Up we climbed before dropping into Galax. Galax is an old mountain town, so businesses and churches wind around a few main roads, while farms and houses shoot up and down the hilly tendrils of those roads. It is not a place for sissies.
We got our hands stamped (rather than encased in non-removable plastic bracelets) and paid just 8 dollars to get in, with kids being free. That benefit leaves more cash for the shaved ice—a requirement in the August heat. Still, we are in the mountains, so anyone without a sweatshirt or sweater is going to regret it when darkness creeps in.
Competitions begin nightly at 6 p.m. Music, though, is always around. You just have to amble down the rows of campers and tents to find people grouped under canopies or circled around a cooler that doubles as a tune-book holder. Some of musicians who pick tunes are friends, while others are strangers, dropping in and out of the groups.
It is a beautiful form of art to watch such an ensemble at work: someone will mumble the name of a tune, others will nod heads, a note or two will sound, each player picks up the key, tries a few chords, and off it goes. Once the nightly competitions conclude formally, the real playing starts back in these same spots, when afternoon ensembles become dynamic forces that can play until 4 a.m.
But that’s okay. People sleep late in the quiet of such a fairground. And how colorful is this campground! Some folks set up elaborate structures, filled with sparkle lights, batik-cloth walls, and goofy yard art. I doubt the Old-Timers who brought this music as settlers to the Appalachians or kept it alive across the generations would know what to say.
Still, a festival is about fun, in this case a focused fun that luxuriates in the earthy tradition of mountain music, relishing its subtleties, virtuosity, and color. The ballads, hornpipes, jigs, reels, and hymn tunes have greater variety than anyone new to the tradition could guess.
And, unlike traditions that are but a generation away from disappearing, this one evidences certain promise in the form of little kids who pick up these tunes, usually grabbing the fiddle first, and when their hands grow a bit, the banjo or guitar. In fact, the first evening of this Galax event is devoted entirely to kids whose musical prowess can be astonishing. Along those lines, I was thrilled to find a college rep from East Tennessee State University, recruiting for its major in Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Roots Music. Can you imagine how grand that program must be?
The term “Classical Music” can mean many things. Yes, I adore Bach, stand in awe of Beethoven and Mahler, thrill to Liszt, and weep at the beauty of Chopin and Rachmaninov. Yet, the ballad “Barbara Allen” brings just as many tears to my eyes, whether sung by a top opera singer or a granny on the back porch. In fact, the granny’s voice probably will hit the heart harder.
The case for treasuring the full measure of America’s music is clear in the programs we’ve created (America’s Artistic Legacy, Exploring America’s Musical Heritage). The greatest composers of the world have cherished folk music, using it as a principal ingredient in their orchestral and vocal works. In some cases, composers have ingested folk music to the point that it changes their own musical language.
We were beginning to get a better sense of folk-music’s value here in America when the repertoire slammed into the wall of Political Correctness and the Woke Culture. Chapters of this precious music have been axed out of existence, simply because of when and where the tunes appeared, what they described, or who happened to arrange or sing them. Do not underestimate what an artistic setback this has been.
Meanwhile, in the Virginia mountains, the fiddle music is soaring up the hills. The paths between the campers may be crusted with mud from afternoon showers, but the picking is sharp. And if all goes as planned, we’ll be back up there this weekend for the grand finale.
