Ted Olson

Partial Transcript: Ted Olson. O-L-S-O-N is the spelling. I’m a professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee. I also work out of East Tennessee State University’s Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Country Music Studies program.

Partial Transcript: Well, I grew up in our nation’s capital. And in Washington, there was a revival in place when I was a kid, a folk revival, a revival of folk music and other rural traditions that had been brought to the big city by migrants, people leaving rural Appalachia and other places to find work in the big city. But with them, they brought their culture. And this culture was very influential upon a lot of the younger people growing up in the city. So there’s a transfer of information. There was a sharing of cultural values. There was a sense of getting to know one another. And so after learning from folk practitioners, great musicians and other crafts folk, from rural Appalachia and elsewhere—rural South—people who were much older than I was, of course.

I took some of the lessons, some of the stories, a little bit of maybe—I hope some of that inspiration—took it with me growing up. And I realized that traditional culture has a great deal of wisdom, has a great deal of content. It’s very, of course, deeply rooted, but quite beyond that, it’s extremely important for helping us deal with the kinds of issues that we deal with in everyday life. I developed certain mechanisms, certain approaches toward daily living that I learned from some of these elders, and I took this with me through life. And at some point along the way, I realized this wisdom, this knowledge was in danger of disappearing, because, of course, people eventually pass on, and the next generation has to carry that torch forward, so to speak. And so at some point I realized, if I was going to help preserve some of these traditions, that I’d have to play some sort of role in that.

And so along the way, I learned to play some of the traditional music. I learned something about traditional crafts, traditional speech. I learned other traditions and learned to teach them to others, and to analyze them, so to speak, which was, I think, something that I brought to the role. Because in some sense, I was an outsider to the traditions. I imported them into my consciousness, but in the process, I did a whole lot of thinking about them—what they meant, how they worked, and that sort of thing. So along the way, I kind of became a folklorist, which is really what a folklorist does, is study traditional culture.

And so in various roles over the years, I helped other people better appreciate traditions and pass them along to people that they came in contact with. So it’s been—I suspect something I’ll continue doing throughout my life. But it’s something I started when I was very young. And it’s immeasurably enriched my life. I would say that. It’s also been a challenge because on one level, people aren’t always sure why somebody from the big city has such a strong commitment to some of these rural traditions that I study and am fascinated in.

At another level, I’m well aware that I’m coming to them from the outside. And that means that there are, in some ways, limits to the kinds of relationships I can have with traditions. I’m not one of the practitioners who was born within a tradition, for example. I think that helps me as a teacher, but I think it limits me as a practitioner, as a sense. And so I’ve long ago come to terms with that. I see myself as a scholar of culture and as a teacher of culture, predominantly, with maybe as a—somewhere down the line, I also feel that I can serve in some ways as a practitioner, although I recognize that that’s better suited in other people’s daily roles. Some people are probably called to do that more.

Partial Transcript: It’s a really important question. As one who’s committed to studying and to teaching about traditional cultures, it’s really important to understand where I’m coming from. I mean, it’s very important to be honest about it. If I’m trying to in some way capitalize from this knowledge, I feel as if I’m bringing to this endeavor of being a folklorist something that seems to me somewhat disingenuous. I feel that the best folklorist is the folklorist who’s kind of invisible, who’s kind of almost shamanistic in the role of channeling culture from one generation to others.

So I think the main pitfall of being in the folkloristic field is if one has some—maybe in the back of one’s mind—interest in commodifying that folklore for oneself. And there have been many examples of people who have profited from marketing other people’s folklore. There are many well-known names in the field of folkloristics who have been accused over the years of doing exactly that, commodifying from other people’s traditions. I’ve always been aware of that, so—of course, David 0:08:55.0 (???) (inaudible) wrote very eloquently about that, and others as well have written about that whole process and some of these pitfalls. They’re teaching opportunities for young folklorists.

And my initial entry into the role of teaching about tradition happened with the National Park Service, where I was a ranger on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and later in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. And I was very aware of my own role in relation to the many visitors who came by looking to me as an authority figure to teach them something about traditional Appalachian culture. I was always very clear about who I was, why I was wearing this uniform, why I was in this role at this time. I was always very clear where I was in fact from—the big city—that my role was in some ways an interpreter of tradition. I in no way, shape, or manner own tradition, and in fact, no one does. So I was trying to be very clear about my relationship with the traditions. At best, I’m a channeler of some traditions to other people. But even that sounds pretentious. I think that the best thing I could say is that I value traditions so much that I’ve dedicated my life to the process of understanding them.

And of course, I do say the word traditions as a plural. I don’t want to spend my life studying just one tradition and only see one tip of the iceberg of the wealth of traditional culture that enriches the lives of the people of Appalachia. So I’ve tried to maintain a holistic approach to my study of traditional culture. And that of course means studying music, but also other traditions—crafts, folk beliefs, storytelling, material culture, and others. In fact, I wrote a book a number of years ago called Blue Ridge Folklife. And in this book, basically I take a holistic view, and I look at all the many attributes of the traditional culture, the traditional life of the Blue Ridge. And frankly, there are probably several dozen traditions that are covered in that book.

And so in my role as a park ranger, I took it upon myself to be—shall we say conversant in these many stories of tradition, and to have some comfort zone of talking about them to people who were in many cases unfamiliar with them; convey the meaning of these traditions, the content and the meaning, with some passion and some enthusiasm, but also with a kind of perhaps detachment, which gave me a kind of scholarly objectivity, which I hope put the ultimate role of interpreting and valuing tradition on the recipient of the information. So I guess, instead of being purely a performer, I see myself in a different role—I guess you could say as a translator or interpreter.

Partial Transcript: Well, of course, the original Appalachians were native peoples, indigenous peoples. Sometimes I think we forget that when we talk about the Appalachian people. So they’re always in the backdrop. And frankly, they’re in the present day, in parts of Appalachia. They’re very much still part of Appalachia, and they help to define Appalachia in some areas. They are ongoing, everyday residents of the region.

That said, of course, the public myth of the Anglo-Saxon heritage of Appalachia is—it’s partly true, but only partly. There are many other aspects to the story. Oftentimes, myths—and even, dare we say, stereotypes—are embedded on some accurate, factual basis. Certainly, a lot of people from the Anglo-Saxon part of the British Isles, people of British or English background, northern English, and elsewhere in England, settled in Appalachia. And after all, English is spoken in Appalachia. So some aspects of English culture have been extremely influential upon Appalachian culture.

That said, of course, some years ago, people started to recognize that other groups had been overlooked throughout the generations. Cecil Sharp, for example, was an English folklorist who came to Appalachia looking for what he was looking for, which happened to be English ballads. He was kind of, in some senses of the word, an English nationalist. We don’t necessarily mean anything derogatory by that at all. He was who he was. But what he did do—and it was in some ways a little bit damaging to knowledge about Appalachia—is he wrote this beautiful, wonderful book about southern Appalachian balladry which made the theoretical case that ballads were an English tradition in Appalachia.

Frankly, the truth of the matter was that many other settlers had staked out home sites and basically established Appalachia as their New World domiciles. And of course, that would include people from Scotland, people from Northern Ireland, from other parts of the British Isles, as well as Germans and people from France, 0:15:10.9 (???) (inaudible), small groups of Scandinavians and Swiss settlers, and then of course, African-American settlers, into the nineteenth century, when we have to point out Mediterranean Europeans, Italians and the Spanish folk, as well as Eastern Europeans, into the early part of the twentieth century. So frankly, the mix of cultures in Appalachia is far more diverse than some people like Cecil Sharp was aware or bothered to look at.

And looking back to the ballad traditions, a very fine scholar of Appalachian balladry named, Thomas Burton, did a research project where he looked at all the many ballad books that were compiled by different folklorists throughout the twentieth century, including Sharp’s, and he came to the conclusion that several of the absolutely most influential ballads in Appalachia were in fact derived from Scottish settlements rather than English settlements; so basically, just in a very kind of factual way, disproved the notion of Cecil Sharp that the ballad tradition was predominantly English.

Well, not to quibble on these things beyond that point, because I think that scholars have already established that Scots and Northern Irish people were here, and that that’s an extremely important part of the story, but there are other aspects of the story of Appalachian music that Sharp missed, of course, too. I mean, after all, Sharp was looking for English ballads. He missed Scottish ballads. He missed music from Northern Ireland. He missed instrumental music. He missed songs of African-American origin. Frankly, he missed songs of English origin. He was predominantly interested in ballads. He missed fiddle music from Northern Ireland or Scotland.

And so Sharp’s approach was, at one level, brilliant. His book is invaluable. Nobody could ever take the importance of his book from him. But people like David 0:17:33.8 (???) (inaudible) were absolutely correct to take him to task for the limited nature of his vision of the possibilities of Appalachian music and its relevance for the world. I mean, frankly, it’s as if Cecil Sharp felt that the guitar playing, the fiddle playing, the play party songs, the lyric folk songs that were going on all around those same homes that he visited, were not important. He didn’t ask to document them.

So truly Appalachian music is a very diverse palate of sounds and stories. And frankly, the entire landscape of Appalachian music has never been fully appreciated, I think, by the American public. I think increasingly, people in Appalachia are well aware of the diversity. But as we, as teachers, and of course, performers too, are faced with the same situation, as you bring Appalachian music to the broader American public—or frankly, even internationally, you take it to audiences around the world—you encounter—many people have almost stereotyped understandings of what Appalachian music is.

And so I think one important thing to do is to correct some of those notions, to pop some of those stereotypes, as gently but as firmly as possible, so that the image that we portray and that we bring to people of Appalachia, the music and lives of the people who made the music, are as well-rounded and as truly, fully representative of the full diversity of culture that has always been here.

Partial Transcript: Music has always had kind of a social function in Appalachia. I mean, even today, when records and radio and of course, online transmission of music is so prolific, there’s still so much music-making in other contexts and other environments. People still make music around the kitchen table or on the front porch or—music has a very important role as a mollifier of social issues. It brings people together. It helps people learn from one another. It brings the generations together, which is a very important role too; teaches younger generations how to feel about the world, how to think about things that have happened. So it’s a great teaching tool.

What’s so interesting to see today, in the twenty-first century, is that people throughout Appalachia are reclaiming that kind of social function of music, wherein young people are learning to play the older songs, ballads, and tunes, and learning to play them from the elders, from the older masters and neighbors and this sort of thing, that are just teaching them to one another in informal situations, often termed jams or jam sessions. And there’s a whole resurgence of the more folk environment of music-making throughout Appalachia. And some of these have a more structured nature, are organized by communities. Some of them just happen. People on a Friday night or a Saturday are looking for something to do and people to gather with. They gather together to make music, make conversation. There’s a highly social function to it.

It is, of course, one of the great inventions of our recent era, sound reproduction. And I’m a huge fan of recording. So as a folklorist, I study the recordings. But I also study the organic music-making traditions. And of course, they’re very different processes. When you sing something into a microphone, it’s preserved forever, according to that performance made on that one occasion. It can be, of course, editorially manipulated, but nonetheless, it’s a preserved event; whereas when music is made in a more informal situation, it’s unstructured. It’s kind of organic, in a way. It’s spontaneous. And it reveals the nature of the people making the music. It reveals their comfort level with one another, their sense of the importance of music to draw people together, to celebrate commonly-shared values, to give people a sense of positive identity in who they are and where they come from, connects people to their elders, to their traditions. So recorded music is important.

But it is so important, too, to preserve the true folklorist environments in which music was historically made, the organic creation of music, which means that music is constantly growing and constantly changing. It’s not fixed in any which way, according to the way somebody recorded it way back when. It gives music a sense of possibility and development I find very exciting. And I think that the future is bright in that part and that the younger people are taking it up and allowing the music to continue to change and to grow.

Partial Transcript: There was a time when Americans had a view of Appalachian people that they were living in a situation of isolation, both geographical and social. There was this idea across America that Appalachian people had traditions that had been unchanged through the generations, that linked them back to the past. People often talked about Appalachian language as being kind of Shakespearean, kind of trapped in the past, sort of thing. Not that Shakespearean language isn’t incredibly rich and beautiful. But the problem was, it wasn’t true. Appalachian speech was always influenced by different ethnicities. English, Scottish, Scots-Irish, and other ethnicities contributed words to the vocabulary. So that was clearly made up by the outsiders as a way to understand who these people were who lived, in some ways, a different way of life from lowland urban America.

0:26:49.3 So we’re not here to say that there weren’t differences—cultural differences, attitudinal differences, value differences—but there were a lot of misconceptions that people from outside projected upon Appalachian people. There’s an adage that says, “What they say about us really says more about them,” and I think that applies here. What the outside world said about Appalachian people really said more about them and some of their hopes and dreams and fears. And so at times when America was feeling very good about itself, Appalachia was often characterized as backwards, isolated, out of touch.

And at times when America, lowland America or mainstream America, has felt maybe disenfranchised, uncertain about its own path, then suddenly Appalachia suddenly gets romanticized and put on a pedestal. I think historians have traced these situations over time. So that’s a general pattern. And we like to say that in the nineteenth century, even into the eighteenth century, Appalachia was a highly networked area. There were lots of roads coming in. There was a lot of trade taking place, interaction between lowlanders and highlanders of Appalachia. I think that’s important to point out, that isolation in some ways has been a fabricated notion in regards to Appalachian people.

Relatively speaking, of course, there is more geographical isolation, perhaps, in some parts of Appalachia, at least historically, than certain urban parts of America or the colonies before that time. And so relatively speaking, there have been different values based on where people lived and what they valued. If you live, shall we say, in a geographically distant place from a city or town, you take on a different attitude about your everyday life. You’re more aware that you have to do more things in order to survive. You have to maybe make more things on your own. So maybe there’s a sense of independence that comes through living detached, somewhat, from stores and other, shall we say products that the networked world offers.

That said, music has always exchanged hands or been shared from person to person over time. And so the notion that music, for a long period of time, was unchanged from Old World form just doesn’t hold up when one looks at the pattern of cultural exchange. Who was it who helped Daniel Boone cross over the Blue Ridge? An African-American explorer. So I think right there suggests that into the time of the colonialists, when the colonies were the dominant political force here, already Appalachia was made up of many, many different ethnicities who were working together to make a life on the frontier; and of course, a lot of interaction with Native American peoples.

And so music has always reflected a kind of cultural sharing that went on in Appalachia, from, really, the time of the first settlement into the present day. And folklorists actually explore these things, look into how certain ballad songs or tunes—where they come from and how they might have—some of them change more than others. But we have many examples today of songs that emerged out of ballads. And this is a sign of the cultural change, and the folk process of people sharing traditions and changing them as they go. Much of this folkloristic material lives in the public domain. People can’t necessarily control what happens to it. It’s freely owned. It’s like the air that we breathe. We share it in common with other people.

Partial Transcript: Well, there was always a lot of cultural exchange, because Appalachia was always a place that people wanted to go to. Of course, early settlers wanted to come to Appalachia to settle, to escape the kinds of indignities that they had been experiencing in the Old World. For a variety of reasons, the very place that people were forbidden from going into, the territory that was condemned by the King of England in the Proclamation Act of 1763, west of the Blue Ridge, was the very place that many people wanted to go to because it meant freedom from various kinds of control and oppression that people had experienced in the Old World. And so Appalachia became a much sought-after place of settlement.

Granted, it was a difficult existence in early years to eke out a living. But people were resourceful, and they learned from native peoples. They learned from each other, from different ethnicities on the frontier. And people made a go of it. And the proof is that Appalachia has been now successfully settled for many, many, many years. And of course, before the first European was here, there was a very advanced way of life already here, among the Native American peoples.

In addition to the fact that people wanted to live here, this area always had—it was plain to the eye—wealth of resources, natural resources, other kinds of resources that couldn’t be found elsewhere. But the natural resources in specific was one of the driving factors that brought outsiders in. And those outsiders quickly became insiders. Within a matter of a few years, people could make that transformation. Many, many people started elsewhere, came to the mountains to work during the rise of industrialization, or frankly, before that point, when places like Asheville and Hot Springs were much sought-after areas for health tourism purposes.

But then the industrialization brought in a need for workers. And many, many workers came in from various parts of the world—not just the United States, but from Europe, and African-Americans who came here from various places to work in harvesting these resources. They were brought here, of course, by industrialists who were investing great amounts of capital in acquiring the resources here. And in the process, there was this great cultural exchange.
Timber camps, where people worked logging the extensive forests of Appalachia. You had many, many people from many, many walks of life living near one another, and they shared songs, stories. They shared attitudes. They learned from one another. It’s not that they got along, necessarily, always perfectly. It was always a learning situation in play. But there was also a mutual respect for the hard work that was necessary for resource extraction.

0:35:03.4 Coal mining was even, in some ways, more reinforcing cultural exchange, because people would stay in coal mines—coal towns, I should say, near the coal mines—for many, many years. There would be more permanent kinds of makeshift settlement areas there than in the timber camps.

Railroads were another situation where many, many people came in to work as laborers. But I would suggest that the labor involved with building the railroads was similar, perhaps, in some ways, to the logging camps. They were a little bit makeshift. They moved quickly through the mountains. Nonetheless, there was a lot of cultural exchange in all these different environments.
So that’s—anytime people met other people and they had a common goal or mission, which was resource extraction, they would have a lot of cultural exchange. And the interesting thing is, granted some of the social attitudes of the nineteenth century, early twentieth century—which was anyone knows was imperfectly balanced in terms of who was deemed a second-class citizen and that sort of thing—these attitudes were ingrained in the broader society. There was a sense of mutual respect for people who were sharing in common the burden of hard work and needing to work together with one another to make that work easier and fair.

And so one of the great goals—for example, in the coal mines and coal towns—was to unify the different groups who were working in the coal mines, different socioeconomic groups that were kind of cordoned off the companies. The companies were kind of trying to keep people separate. But mining brought people together, and there was a sense of cohesion where the people in the mining camps, the mining towns, would actually work together to fight for unionization and a better situation for themselves, mutually. So there was a certainly a sense that hard work helped people to appreciate differences among other people who—folks were working together to make life easier for one another. And certainly, there was a lot of oppression to fight against, mutually

Partial Transcript: Well, African Americans have, for many, many generations, been an important player in the creation of Appalachian culture, the blended culture of Appalachia, if you will—because I think it’s pretty important to realize that Appalachian culture is truly, from an ethnic perspective, a blended culture of many, many different influences. I think it’s a little risky to say Appalachian culture is any one ethnic influence stronger than others. In other words, they blended together in both obvious and less obvious ways.

0:39:05.4 African-Americans have been in Appalachia since the eighteenth century, and have shared aspects of culture all that time. If one goes into the nineteenth century, into the antebellum period, African-Americans lived in virtually every county in Appalachia, I think, except for one. And so they were very much part of the Appalachian social network, and a very important part of the economy, of course, of Appalachia. So to leave them out of any discussion of pre-Civil War Appalachia is completely unfair and unrealistic because they were an important part of the social environment, social scene here.

And then after the Civil War, after emancipation, as African-Americans had more freedom to move, as jobs opened up, with the railroad and coal mines and the timber camps, African-Americans were often the ones who took those jobs. They were absolutely appreciative to have work. And admittedly, it was difficult work, and sometimes very dangerous, and not necessarily safe work. But they took it. It was an opportunity.

And African-American culture is manifold throughout those musics of those employments, such as coal mining music. African-American influences are strong in coal mines. Railroads—I mean, what is the most famous ballad, perhaps, of the post-Civil War period but “John Henry,” which was an African-American blues ballad that was traced either to West Virginia or Alabama, and some would say southwest Virginia. There’s a little bit of debate. But that is clearly a result of African-American influence there.

African-American style was highly influential upon white Appalachians who learned how to play the African-American banjo, for example, and learned to apply African-American techniques and intonation on songs and techniques on instruments. So there was a great deal of cultural sharing that wasn’t necessarily noticed or documented by people like Cecil Sharp, but most definitely occurred widely

And then into the twentieth century, as, shall we say, commercial producers of recording started to come into Appalachia, many of them documented the presence of black musicians in Appalachia and recorded. And so some of the projects that I’ve been working on in recent years in the Tennessee Valley include the location recording sessions that were conducted in the 1920s by major record companies. And while in some ways, that’s not necessarily traditional music—I mean, in some cases it was, and in some cases it was highly stylized, reworked, personal music, which showed the stamp of conscious crafting of an individual sound that kind of led to the creation of commercial recorded popular music.

The different location recording sessions I’m referring to included the Bristol sessions which happened in Bristol, Tennessee; the Johnson City sessions which happened in Johnson City, Tennessee; the Knoxville sessions that happened in Knoxville, Tennessee. I say this because it was in Knoxville, in fact, where 17% of the recordings made in one location recording session—which actually there were two of them: one in 1929, one in 1930, by the Brunswick Records label that were initiated by a producer from Chicago—17% of the music recorded there was of African-Americans living in Appalachia.

And so that’s a very important signpost or evidence of the diversity of African-American music throughout the Appalachian region. I mean, some of these African-American musicians came from urban settings. Some of them came from rural settings. They brought with them musical sounds that continue to influence people today. In fact, it was one of the groups that recorded in 1930 in Knoxville, the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, that influenced and gave the inspiration for the name of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

One of those musicians from the Knoxville sessions of 1930 was Howard Armstrong, who continued to be a popular Appalachian musician for many, many years until his death in the twenty-first century. He lived quite a long time. But he was seen as embodying, in some ways, the sheer creativity and, shall we say, the blended style of Appalachian musicians in general. I mean, he could blend jazz fiddling with hoedown fiddling. He could introduce really distinctive rhythmic approaches to his music that showed—evinced a kind of African-American sensibility that, frankly, we were able to document inspired and influenced white string bands of that era.

0:44:57.5 And somebody like a Jimmie Rodgers or somebody like that clearly—he was from Mississippi, but he came to the Bristol sessions to make his very first recordings and was based in Asheville for a time. Jimmie Rodgers was one more example of a white musician who was heavily influenced by black musicians.

So this kind of culture exchange has been happening a long, long time. And if people in recent years have been surprised by that, I think it’s a result of, perhaps, not enough people drawing attention to the long-term presence of other voices in Appalachia. I think that’s one great opportunity of the twenty-first century and digital technology, is the easy dissemination of lost recordings that we can now bring forward and easily share with other people. And of course, one thing I do is reinterpret those older recordings, try to explain their stories and put them into a context, and teach them in classrooms, and that sort of thing. So it’s always been there. Appalachian music has always been a blended music. We’re just kind of realizing that in the twenty-first century. But it’s frankly an old story, in a sense.

Partial Transcript: I think if African Americans are not given their full due in the story of Appalachian culture—and of course, I think the same thing could be said about American culture more generally—it’s because not enough focus upon these stories has happened in public discourse. Things are changing now, I think. But certainly throughout the twentieth century, there was a sense that maybe a lot of these old recordings, a lot of these old stories, were not really getting disseminated, were not really being taught to the next generation, were not necessarily impacting people in the same way.

I think that’s the main thing I could say, is that the world is a lot more complex than we know. And it is up to us to explore the complexity and not be overwhelmed by it, not be afraid of it, but make connections between the things that we don’t already understand. It’s why I think history is such a fascinating field. It’s because it’s an opportunity to rediscover and to create stories that have new implications that are grounded in old knowledge and old wisdom, old—things that are old but are not known, and therefore they become new again in the process of rediscovery.
And so that’s what I try to do in the classroom. I know that other performers and other teachers likewise are very much dedicated to telling the full story of Appalachian culture as a blended culture with many, many influences from many ethnicities, many different groups of people from different socioeconomic groups.

Appalachia is sometimes a place where outsiders think of Appalachian music as predominantly vernacular, or folk, or popular. But there’s a strong tradition of classical music, elite music, from within the region. There was a time, a hundred and twenty years ago or so, beginning of the twentieth century, when many Appalachian towns—the most popular building in the downtown area would be an opera house, to illustrate the fact that what is today considered high culture was very popular at one time. And so that’s another part of the story that I think is important to find out.

And also, of course, Appalachia is a very geographically broad area. I mean, it encompasses—depending on which map you look at—some would say parts of thirteen states, depending on the map that one consults. But there are many areas that are not generally considered as Appalachia which—according to the federal government, to the Appalachian Regional Commission—are ultimately defined as Appalachian. So that’s also why the process of discussing Appalachia is so fascinating, is because there have been entire states that are considered by the federal government—and by, maybe, the people who live there, very importantly—they might consider themselves as having some relation with people in more traditionally defined Appalachian areas, and so, there are commonalities and differences between all these roots, and they’re all, in a sense, equally invested in the region, and they partake of the identity of the region in their own way.

00:50:17:2 I always like to talk about Appalachia, maybe, in the plural—there are many Appalachias but they’re all part of the—kind of—larger regional area or unit, known as Appalachia—singular.

Partial Transcript: Well, the minstrel shows really were launched along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. I mean, it’s often said that Thomas Rice was one of the first minstrel show dancers and singers, and he was based in Louisville, Kentucky. And so, I—I would suggest that the minstrel show proper is kind of something that develops first outside of Appalachia, not that it, of course, didn’t move in to Appalachia, but of course, it moved everywhere across the eastern seaboard and across the ocean. It was popular in Europe, for example, and then Great Britain, but the minstrel show was, of course, deeply ironic, because it was comprised of White Americans emulating and imitating, and satirizing in a way—maybe not always consciously—African-American culture, through dance, through music—wearing blackface, as a way to kind of create a character type. Minstrel shows were highly stylized. There were certain formula that were followed throughout the minstrel show history. They involved, of course, the African instrument—the banjo, heavily, which was highly rhythmic—which combines the functions of percussion and string to instrument class, so it’s kind of a—it’s a very novel instrument in many ways and very complex instrument when in the right hands.

One of the great early banjo players was—he was—people that we would say first brought the banjo into the—should we say the world of White Appalachians?—would be the gentleman known as Joel Walker Sweeney. And Joel Walker Sweeney was from the foothills of the Blue Ridge in Virginia, and he learned to play the banjo before the minstrel show really took off. So in some way, he kind of then moved into that realm once minstrelsy became a popular tradition. But he was kind of working on learning to play the banjo before the minstrel show took off. Cece Conway can talk at some length about this, because that’s kind of one of her areas of expertise.

One thing that she talks about in her book is that in—about 1798, an American-African banjo player was documented as playing the banjo in the area near Knoxville, on the Tennessee River, and that would probably be the first documentation of the banjo in Appalachia, so that might be something you could talk to her about, but—the later years, the minstrel show was kind of more often to Vaudeville—in a sense. Minstrelsy was, in a lot of ways, seen as kind of inappropriate after the emancipation period, but nonetheless, certain aspects of the tradition continued in other altered forms, in medicine shows, and in Vaudeville. And so, you still saw some influence of minstrelsy in those traditions—the medicine show would be, of course, when somebody would take a wagon—horse-strung wagon through a town, or through the countryside, and sell some kind of medical product—and to draw attention to the product, they would have performers. And so, oftentimes, on the medicine shows, some of the performers would be in blackface, playing the banjo.

Vaudeville would be an established venue, and it would be a similar kind of situation of certain of the traditions from the minstrelsy period—would be kind of presented on stage. And that sort of thing continued into the—well into the twentieth century, in many communities. Many well-known performers played with blackface in the early years of their careers—people such as Clarence Tom Ashley—is a good example of that—the man that sang the Coo Coo Bird—actually worked in a medicine show, and donned blackface at one point in his career. I think today, it’s pretty obvious what it means and what it symbolizes.

African-Americans, occasionally, were involved with these shows. I mean, it was employment—it was a chance to perform, no doubt, feeling very ambivalent about it. So, it was—it was a highly—it was very much a nineteenth-century ideology that kind of gave birth to the minstrel show, and scholars have written magnificently about the complexities of that tradition. I would say the lasting impact of the minstrel show would be a repertoire of amazing songs that were creating during the minstrel show period—some absolute American classics were created during the minstrel show period, for the purpose of perform—performance by performers on banjo in black—people singing in blackface—that kind of thing. Blue-Tailed Fly, and Dixie—some of these other great songs—Cindy, staples of the old time repertoire—many of them started as minstrel songs.

And then, of course, the emphasis on the banjo would also be traceable back to the minstrel show period, in terms of the proliferation of the instrument, and how it became so endemic in the lives of White musicians. There was a time when African-American musicians backed away from the banjo. After emancipation, it suddenly became seen as somehow symbolically tainted by its former affiliation with the years of slavery. And eventually, in recent years—recent, perhaps, decades, African-American musicians have been embracing the instrument again, and kind of recognizing the historical ironies in it, but also not letting those ironies remove them from an instrument of great historical importance to the African-American—to the African-American history. So you hear today, people like Taj Mahal, and Don Flemons—and others playing the banjo, and they—they’ve kind of come to terms, I guess, to some degree, of those ironies, and they understand them, of course, but they don’t necessarily want to separate themselves from such a wonderfully rich instrument—such a rich history.

Partial Transcript: One of the amazing things about old-time music is that it is so, kind of, regionally—even, dare I say, locally created. I mean, the same song played in two different communities will sound very different depending on the people in those communities—depending on the way of life in those communities—the availability of instruments in those two communities—that sort of thing. Many, many different factors would play into the creation of a really rich and diverse repertoire of music.

And so, sometimes you’ll hear folklorists talk about such and such account—he has kind of such and such—a sort of old time sound and that sort of thing. They’ll talk about the Round Peak sound or something like that, and that just simply illustrates the fact that certain musicians in certain places learned from other musicians—were influenced by them. They, in turn, influence younger musicians, and certain sort of local styles emerged, local repertoires kind of got preserved in certain locales, and all of a sudden, you had very rich, localized collections. This further underscores the danger of talking about Appalachian music without qualifying it to say that it’s technically—Appalachian music is comprised of Appalachian ‘musics’—plural.

In recent years, shall we say, well, the last century, as recording has taken place—recording has had a tendency to kind of fix performance styles. Once they’re documented—once they’re recorded—sometimes as they become popular, people start to maybe emulate one specific performance style of one particular repertoire area, and they’ll kind of recreate that sound over and over again. It’s why, for example, there are so many musicians over the years, who kind of emulate the Carter Family style. Clearly, the Carter Family style is wondrous and exquisite, but the problem, of course, then comes as the kind of standardization, and the kind of repetition of approach that happens. And sometimes that happens across areas—because the thing about recordings, or radio is, that localized styles would then get transmitted outside their locality to—to places that were far flung.

And so, recordings had the—shall we say, made the contribution of documenting culture, which is a valuable role, of course, but it had the disadvantage of fixing styles, and creating more homogeneous approaches. Now, what’s happened in recent years is that more and more people are exploring this concept of locality of music performance, and seeking out localized styles—and that’s because ever so easy with the advent of the digital sound dissemination. I mean, people can just go to their computer and hear innumerable styles of music performance from people in different places—different historical periods, and then they can forge their own sound based on some kind of—shall we say, compromised version—an amalgam of those various styles, not compromised in bad sense, but people come into terms with what others do, so people can create their own style—their own sound, based on listening to a variety of people that were a generation earlier, unlikely to cross their path.

I mean, in the days when—seventy-eights and that sort of thing, sure, people bought seventy-eights. They didn’t necessarily—many seventy-eights weren’t widely produced or widely heard. You tended in the—that early period of the twenties, and thirties, and forties—you tended to have a handful of artists who were extremely popular, and it tended to kind of focus much of the attention from younger generations on those, kind of, main artists, and those individual styles kind of fixed the sounds thereafter. To my mind, that’s why the Carter Family and Jimmy Rogers, for example, both of whom were first recorded at the Bristol sessions in Bristol, Tennessee, are considered the first family of country music, and the father of country music. Their styles were so charismatic, and so many people kind of imitated them, that they kind of created a more standardized music genre—country music, that—not that country music hasn’t had a lot of other influences, but old-time music is not necessarily about standardization. It’s about individuality—it’s about each individual musician finding his or her own sound—his or her own relationship to tradition, and so that, I think—that’s where digital transmission has opened up possibilities for younger people to just be—have their—be awakened to the multiplicity of styles and sounds that are possible, and that have always been possible but just hadn’t really been heard by many people, until suddenly, the means of acquiring these—these recordings were made quite easy and straightforward, through—through the digital process, particularly, online distribution.

Partial Transcript: Yeah, this is—this is a challenging one. Well, let’s see. One has to be a little careful not to suggest that a handful of influential musicians define a regional sound. I mean, here in Upper East Tennessee, for example, we have the Bristol sessions. I think people have tended to want to characterize the sound here based on the two or three acts who were very, very popular, coming from the Bristol sessions. I think that’s probably a mistake. I think there truly is a multiplicity of sounds and styles that were found here.

That said, there are always going to be a handful of acts that, looking back historically, kind of galvanized in the most amount of attention, and came to be considered by many people as embodying certain localized traditions—Tommy Jarrell, for example, in Round Peak—here in Upper East Tennessee—maybe the Tennessee River Valley area—maybe the Carter Family are considered kind of embodying the sound here. The Carters, of course, were from Virginia, but right over the boundary near Kingsport, Tennessee—up there at Hiltons, Virginia.

So, I would suggest that—there are some broader patterns that one could say, that maybe should be mentioned as influencing localized music scenes in Appalachia. I think one thing that one could say is, there seems to have been a lot more balladry in the island—the higher elevations—Blue Ridge in North Carolina, and Virginia, for example, than perhaps in some of the—the low-lying valley areas. I think that’s borne out by the number of incredible ballads that Cecil Sharp documented in the Blue Ridge, versus—he really didn’t come into the valley areas that long. He didn’t find many ballads. Since that’s what he was looking for, he went to where the ballads were, which was in the higher-elevational areas.

So, that’s one—kind of—regional music genre, as it were. Appalachian balladry, not exclusive, but was—was kind of very clearly flourishing in the island areas of the Blue Ridge, in western North Carolina—in parts of the Blue Ridge in Virginia. In, say, the Round Peak area, it’s famous for its instrumental style, and in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, African-American influence are very strung upon, should we say, dance tunes, and instrumental tunes—Etta Baker, for example, from Morgan to North Carolina, was one example of an African-American musician who, in some ways, was halfway between African-American, Piedmont Blues sound, and kind of an Appalachian string band sound in her approach. Frankly, she played for White and Black audiences almost equally, and then—felt comfortable doing both. It was very much something that we, perhaps, associated with the lower-elevational areas in Appalachia.

Here in the Tennessee River Valley, for example, there were a lot of African-American artists who lived in this area, such as Lesley Riddle, and Brownie McGhee—and there were others as well—and of course, Howard Armstrong, a little further south toward Knoxville. That said, of course, the Tennessee River Valley had its own share of—of White Appalachian musicians who were extremely influential and talented. Should we say, Roane Country Ramblers, was a tremendous string band from near Knoxville, who recorded in Johnson City, at the Johnson City sessions, and are considered one of the great string bands of the 1920s, albeit they aren’t—they only made a handful of records, they were considered, stylistically, very innovative.

There were many others that hadn’t gotten their dues, that were extremely talented in what they did, and in a lot of cases, not many records exist off them. So, I think as a—as a cautionary note, is that—probably African-American influences could be found in virtually all parts of Appalachia, and Scotts-Irish influences could be found in all parts of Appalachia. It’s the blend—the blending that happened, maybe somewhat differently in different areas, depending on the dominant industry—the settlement patterns—the degree of contact between people of different ethnicities—those were the factors that I think, influenced what sounds and what styles dominated, locally.

Also, charismatic players—people always try to emulate the ones who are most charismatic, and so, that brings back my point that oftentimes, in certain local areas, certain musicians define the evolution of sounds for a generation or more, and so that has to be kept in mind.

Partial Transcript: It’s important to keep Appalachian music, or—dare I say—Appalachian musics, or the multiplicity of traditions, alive and in our daily lives because the music is so enriching, ennobling—enriching, not in the monetary sense, but in the sense of life-affirming. Ennobling, because you feel better when you perform it. You feel better about yourself, you feel better about your community because you’re making music that others are enjoying. The lyrics are filled with stories. They’re filled with lessons, some moral, some whimsical. There’s some—there’s a great deal of—of—should we say, insight in the lyrics of songs and ballads. There’s a great deal of movement and energy in the instrumental music that gets people excited about being alive and living in this—in the material world, so to speak. The music has such strong social impact—it really draws people together, otherwise it wouldn’t have, perhaps, as much reason to gather. So it has—it has almost that—almost spiritual value of community building.

So, I think music from all those standpoints, is valuable. I would argue not at the expense of other music, I mean, popular music, elite music, classical music—whatever it be—opera, jazz—whatever it might be, I think it’s also very important to—to value, in present day Appalachia. We said earlier that classical music was once extremely common and popular within Appalachia—in some areas, it might still be today. Jazz also has long had a role in Appalachia. When one considers that Pittsburgh is considered part of the Appalachian region and is one of the premier jazz cities in America, I mean, that just underscores the fact that urban Appalachia has kind of inspired its own jazz traditions for many, many—many generations now, that it’s important to keep Appalachian musics. Its different genres. It’s different ethnic sounds, it’s different styles from different people—some of whom we know about, some of whom kind of got in history but influenced younger people, and we know them.

It’s important to keep all these in mind because it tells us more about who we are as people in the here and now, but it also teaches us respect for the history of Appalachia. It makes us aware that Appalachia was always a diverse place with many, many different people from many, many different backgrounds, contributing important lessons about how to live in this environment—how to appreciate this environment—how to take care of this environment. So, I think if we are to be stewards of place, music has a lot to teach us about how to do that, and—and exactly what this place is—is made of, in terms of the people—the history—the environment etcetera. And the music is—is a receptacle. It’s a vehicle to carry these stories—carry these messages from the past to the here and now, and then to the future. We can’t imagine Appalachia without the music. It so enriches and ennobles everybody’s lives on a daily basis.

Partial Transcript: I think the danger of people, should we say, whitewashing Appalachian music history—not really understanding the true cultural diversity of the music-making throughout the history—the fact that the banjo comes from African origination—the fact that the Mandolin comes from Italian origination—that the guitar comes from Spanish origination—as some examples—the Dulcimer—the Appalachian Dulcimer comes from German origination, most likely.

People forget these matters, and if people think of Appalachian music as just embodying one ethnic contribution—the mistake that Cecil Sharp made, frankly, it grossly simplifies the story of Appalachian music, and in the process, it simplifies in a very unfair and, in some ways, very damaging way—the full story of Appalachian culture and history in its totality. I mean, Appalachia is above all else—it’s a successful commingling of people of different ethnicities and backgrounds, sometimes in conflict, sometimes working things out peaceably—nobody wants to ever suggest that it hasn’t been difficult to bring people together in this very challenging natural environment, which is also extremely beautiful and unique, on earth.

But music, in its diversity, reminds us that Appalachia, in its full diversity, has always been a rich template of different influences, and people from many backgrounds and many walks of life, that the true story of Appalachia is a story of diversity, and that diversity brings strength. The danger of seeing everything through a monolithic lens minimizes that story—reduces it. In some ways, sentimentalizes it, perhaps. Certainly, it stereotypes it, and should we say, renders it a lot less interesting, in a sense, because with diversity comes a sense of complexity, and Appalachia truly is a complex place, and everybody has his or her own connection to the region, and every last one of those stories is an Appalachian story in a sense, and so it’s very important just to be aware that the music also—there are many musics from many different people, from many different perspectives, and every last one of those musical stories—musical traditions—music styles—musical repertoires, is in and of itself, interesting, and valuable.

And while we’ve had some major musicians who’ve gone down in history from Appalachia, even there, many of those musicians that are most associated with Appalachia, come from many different backgrounds, so it would be truly ignoring the realities of the world that we’ve been so appreciate—this world that we’ve been handed—that we’ve been gives, has been such an amazing world, and I don’t understand why anyone would want not to embrace the totality of that world, which is, in and of itself, wondrous.

Partial Transcript: I think is definitely—I’ll start by reframing the question. For years, it’s been an issue that people have, perhaps, focused heavily on recorded versions of music performance, and not really gone the next step and then made those performances their own. In other words, it seems to me that we tend to render fixed-in-form, a recorded version of something. We tend to think of it as definitive—as somehow frozen in time. In essence—I mean, at one level, it is frozen in time. Right? If you preserve that recording, it’s frozen in time. It will always be heard in that way—that choice of notes—that choice of lyrics. But I think that the next step comes to—it’s the responsibility of contemporary generations, whether they hear this music on old seventy-eights, or on LPs—or if they hear them on CDs, or digitally played on YouTube, or wherever they acquire these digital files.

It’s always struck me that the music doesn’t have to end there. To encounter the music through recorded versions is a wonderful opportunity for—particularly for those who wouldn’t have direct access to the music otherwise. And then, it strikes me as—the next step is the responsibility of the listener—for the listener to take on the message of the song—the tune—the ballad, to make that story—to animate that story in one’s own imagination—make that tune work in one’s own mind, and then, of course, replicate that music for one’s self, with no delusions that one is necessarily, automatically, a traditional performer by doing so. I mean, I think—I think we have to just be honest about that—is that—the people who have been recorded throughout history often are masters of their craft. By listening to those people and then imitating them, emulating them, respecting them—trying to make that music kind of your own, doesn’t necessarily immediately make one a master of the craft—that takes years of dedication and learning from elders, and from the tradition.

However, at least, the music is alive. It’s meaningful. It’s one’s own, in a sense—one is a participant in history, and so that’s where I think—I see hope—I see optimism. I see that as certain kinds of localized traditions are maybe fading away a little bit as people—maybe generations no longer live in close contact with one another—maybe some of the traditions died away because of, shall we say, competition with existing electronic media, which takes time and attention away from traditions—in some cases, be it radio, television—whatever it might be—not just to limit it to those two, but to suggest that there are many other things in life that distract people from tradition.

Encountering these digital versions of recordings, in some ways—it has its obvious advantages of disseminating music to new audiences. It has its disadvantages if people see that as the end of the line. If they don’t, then make those traditions live again in some meaningful way. But then again, to be positive, if people do make those musical traditions live again, then the music isn’t dying—it isn’t disappearing. It’s simply being—it’s being revived, and it’s being, shall we say, reenergized. And no telling what can happen as a result of that, but there’s plenty of evidence in Appalachia, per se, that younger people are making incredible reinterpretations of older music, with all the complexity that was in the original, but with a new—a new sensibility, too—a new generation bringing its own spin on tradition. It remains vital and alive. And I suppose that can also happen well outside of Appalachia.

I mean, certain countries have been embracing Appalachian music for generations now, and it’s—it’s all about cultural transmission—back and forth—the British music influence to American music. And then, in the folk revival of the 1950s and the 1960s, the British musicians borrowed back American folk musics that were based on British folk musics, so it’s always a two-way street of cultural exchange, and I—I think, to be optimistic, is that—it’s inevitable that music’s going to disseminate through the latest technologies. If teachers, and if inspiring musicians can encourage people to take the music seriously and to have a sense of close relationship with the musical traditions, then—then there’s a potential they can kind of rise up again from the ashes, so to speak.