Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/398122
OCTOBER 15-21, 2014 UCW 19 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM COSTUMES SO SEXY, IT'S SCARY! 3525 Lackey St, Lumberton • (910) 739-4488 NOW 25% OFF! All Halloween Costumes and Accessories. As the International Bluegrass Music Association's five-day World of Bluegrass Festival wound down in Raleigh a few days ago, some people were still asking where did bluegrass music come from, anyway? North Carolinians have a quick and certain answer: It came out of the hills and hollows of our Appalachian region. And where did that mountain music come from? We know that much of the music of the Appalachians is, like its residents, descended from the British Isles. We know that some of the tunes and words have survived almost intact, like the famous ballad "Barbara Allen." And we know that oth- ers, though modified, can be closely connected to similar ones from those isles. But we know little about how this music originally developed. Nor are we familiar with the details of the migra- tion of those peoples to America or how the musical traditions the immi- grants brought with them have been affected by time and interactions with other cultures. That story in all its richness and complexity is told beautifully in Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia, by Fiona Ritchie and Doug Orr and published by UNC Press last month. As Dolly Parton says in her intro- duction to the book, "I grew up in the Smoky Mountains listening to these ancient ballads that had crossed oceans and valleys to become an important basis for American folk, bluegrass, and country music." Ritchie lives in Scotland where she produces and hosts National Public Radio's popular program The Thistle & Shamrock, which features music with Celtic roots in Europe and North America. Orr, interim chancellor at UNC- Asheville, was the long-time president of Warren Wilson College where he organized the Swannanoa Gathering, a series of weeklong summer workshops that attract music lovers from all over the world. Ritchie and Orr began their musi- cal partnership when Ritchie was an exchange student at UNC-Charlotte and Orr was a vice chancellor with respon- sibility for WFAE, the university's radio station. The result in 1981 was an early version of The Thistle & Shamrock, which has become one of NPR's most popular programs. The authors warn you not to expect simple answers to questions about the sources of the music of Appalachia and the music it has inspired. They say that if you opened their book "with an old ballad or fiddle tune in mind and hoped to speed read through the book, arriving at the threshold of country music or rock 'n roll," you will have "misunderstood the process. There is no one stream and no one source; rather, there is a merg- ing of many tributaries trickling from springs through place and time and coursing together onward across fresh terrain." The story of the various streams of music and people is richly complex, full of heartbreak and hope, of longing for lost love and lost homelands, people and places never to be seen again, struggle, poverty and despair, of reli- gious oppression and redemption. Many of the songs Orr and Ritchie celebrate grew out of such painful times. One such tune, well known on both sides of the Atlantic, "Barbara Allen," is included with 19 other songs on a CD that accompanies the book. Dolly Parton sings that ballad in English, alternating with verses in Irish sung by Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh. Wayfaring Strangers follows the migration of people and their music from Scotland, to Northern Ireland, through the long ocean voyage to Philadelphia, down the Wagon Road, and into the mountain coves. The music survived these travels, but it was transformed at each stage by interac- tion with the music of other cultures. It is a transformation that Ritchie and Orr describe and celebrate, espe- cially as appreciation of the Scots-Irish music grows while it continues to adapt and change. Mountain music: Where It Came from, Where It's Going BY D.G. MARTIN D.G. MARTIN, Columnist, Host of UNC's Bookwatch, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upand- comingweekly.com. 910.484.6200.