About Blue Ridge Music
Approximately one hundred years after the founding of Jamestown, colonists began to immigrate en masse to the mountains of western North Carolina, and they took their music with them. German immigrants were followed by English Quakers, Scotch-Irish, French Huguenots, Irish, Welsh, and even more English settlers. Some brought African American slaves. The musical exchange among these groups proved particularly potent. Fresh ideas, including ways of thinking about and playing music, flourished in this environment.
African Americans playing the African banjo and the European fiddle formed the first uniquely American ensemble—the beginnings of a sound that would eventually shape blues, bluegrass, and Country and Western music, among other genres. Generations of travelers reported that black fiddle and banjo players, often performing with players of rhythm instruments, provided music for dancing in many areas of the Southeast.
After 1800 the banjo was used by white comics who impersonated black banjoists, creating racial caricatures by wearing ragged clothing and blackening their faces with burnt cork. These artists initiated the first international pop music fad, the so-called minstrel era, which lasted until the end of the century. During the heyday of minstrelsy, the banjo, a traditional instrument once used solely by country people, was adopted by urban players who could afford fine instruments.
Music in the region was shaped by other national events and trends. A wave of religious revivals that swept the South at the beginning of the nineteenth century reached deeply into the Southern Appalachians, and the songs associated with this "Great Awakening" became a permanent part of the repertory of many church congregations in western North Carolina and Virginia.
Despite its divisiveness, the Civil War seemed to have expanded the repertories of Blue Ridge musicians. Soldiers from the mountains traded tunes with fiddlers and banjo players from other parts of the South and learned pieces played by regimental bands.
In the late 1800s logging and mining companies expanded operations in the mountains, and camps created to house and feed the workers became fertile ground for swapping tunes. The employment of African American work crews to lay railroad track and drill tunnels introduced work songs and ballads like "John Henry" to mountain musicians and audiences.
By the turn of the 20th century, mountain residents could buy guitars, mandolins, autoharps, and cellos made available to the national market by large mail-order companies. The invention of sound recordings and the birth of the recording industry in the 1920s and 30s brought Blue Ridge music to a national audience.
About the same time that commercial labels were recording Blue Ridge musicians for profit, collectors interested in cultural preservation were scouting the region to document traditional music. British scholar and folksong collector Cecil Sharp journeyed to the Blue Ridge at the time of World War I to take down the words and music of ballads. His and other collector’s field recordings, along with those made by record companies, constitute a treasure trove of ballads and love songs, dance tunes, children's songs, hymns, spirituals, and gospel songs.
In 1957 a performing group named The Kingston Trio drew upon an obscure ballad collected from singer Frank Profitt of western North Carolina for their hit recording, “Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley.” The success of this song helped launch the folksong revival of the 1950s and 60s and with it, an interest in the source of the songs. During the late 1960s fiddler's conventions held in Union Grove, North Carolina, and Galax, Virginia, attracted crowds of young people motivated by the desire to hear music, learn tunes, or be part of a huge party. Aspiring musicians from across the nation and from Europe and Japan continued to visit Blue Ridge music venues during the last quarter of the 20th century.
In the Blue Ridge today, you can experience almost any type of classical, contemporary, pop and alternative music. Recent immigrants from Mexico, Central America, and Asia have brought their musical tastes and preferences to the region. The established musical traditions of the Blue Ridge continue to thrive and evolve in this mix. Old-time bands perform a largely older dance music repertoire. Bluegrass bands play music intended more for listening than dancing. Singers of the older Anglo-Irish ballad repertoire still live and perform in the region. Some historic forms of religious music survive.
Many young people growing up in mountain communities are learning to play the music passed down in their families and communities. They learn through informal apprenticeships with relatives and friends, by attending community musical events, or by taking more formal lessons offered in after-school programs in some of the public schools. Several area colleges that offer traditional music camps and workshops often provide scholarships to promising young musicians in the region.
For listeners and pickers of all ages, the music of the Blue Ridge continues to inspire.