Appalachian Folk Music

Appalachian Geography and Culture 

The Appalachian Mountains are a huge range that span across 13 different states and over 200,000 miles in the Eastern United States. The region has a rich history of culture and identity. 

Appalachia was first inhabited by Native Americans, later being settled by Europeans. The region has since been characterized by its diversity of races and cultures. In the late 19th century, urban Americans started to characterize it as a region and culture distinctly separate from their own. They saw people living there as isolated, primitive, and even dangerous. Many saw the lack of modernization as a problem, and missionaries traveled there with the hopes of bringing their ideas of technology and American culture. They spread stereotypes of Appalachians being violent, misdemeaning drunks to the rest of society. People viewed the pushback to industrialization as a hatred of progress and desire for chaos. Certain aspects of Appalachian culture such as their music and crafts are viewed as archaic, while in reality they require rigorous training and dedicated work. These ideas and the attempts to group all of these people into a single category diminish the amount of variation and diversity in culture among the groups throughout the region. This blog is going to be taking a look into the the music of the mountaineers: where it came from, who plays it, and how it influenced other genres. 

Musical Origins

Appalachian folk music comes from the contributions of musical traditions from several different places around the world. Immigrants from Ireland, England, and France, as well as forced migrants from Africa would find themselves living together in the Appalachian mountains. Musical elements from these immigrants and the Indigenous Americans are present in the traditional Appalachian style. 

Instrumentation 

The more nasal style of singing found in traditional Appalachian music is a tradition brought from the Celtic people in Europe. 

The fiddle was introduced to the area by Anglo-Celtic Europeans when immigrants wanted to take their music with them, but many were not rich enough to afford pianos. The fiddle was easily transportable and lends itself well to the style of their music and folksong. Fiddler Neil Gow introduced the sawstroke technique, a type of bowing in which the fiddle is held nearly perpendicular and bowed in short, percussive strokes. 

From Germany came instruments such as the harmonica and autoharp. 

Another instrument developed in the region, supposed to be a descendant of the German scheitholt: the Appalachian dulcimer. It is a plucked chordophone categorized as a zither, an instrument in which strings are stretched across a wooden soundbox with no neck. The instrument is fretted and sounds like this: 

Another instrument crucial to the sounds of Appalachian music is the banjo. The instrument has Arabic origins, and spread to western Africa with Islam. It was then brought to the Appalachian mountains by Africans. 

Syncretism

Many European immigrants chose to live in the mountains because they were too poor to afford living in urban cities, and it was easier to make their living in the small mountain settlements. After emancipation, newly freed slaves faced the same issue of not being able to afford living in large settlements, leaving both groups to make Appalachia their home. Through living in the same place, their musical and cultural traditions combined. Unique aspects of religion, community, and dialect can be found throughout traditional Appalachian music. 

The Ballad 

Perhaps the most well-known song tradition of the Appalachian region is the ballad. A ballad is a style of song in which a story is set to music in stanzas. Many ballad melodies were brought by European immigrants, and their style of song and storytelling combined with the traditions of the Native Americans and African Americans in the mountains to form the most studied style of song found in them. These songs were then passed down orally from generation to generation. Because the music was not written down, some variance in the composition, tunes, and performance of them can be found throughout generations. Despite this, the content of the songs largely remained the same. The ballad was also a way to record history as it was not written down, a tradition also held by griots in western Africa. Songs depicting real-life themes of love, loss, and struggle replaced European ones telling of magic and fantasy. 

Singers of ballads would also make changes to songs to fit their own personal lives and stories. This, along with the oral tradition of passing down songs, is the reason many ballads have so many different variants. Many have been written about the trial of Tom Dula, a man convicted for the murder of his wife. There is mystery and contention surrounding who had actually killed her, making for an alluring storytelling subject. Here is one take on it performed by the Kingston Trio: 

Spread and Influence 

In the late 19th and early 20th century, scholars became interested in collecting Appalachian variants of ballads with English origins. The most notable of these collectors was Cecil Sharp, making his trip to the mountains in the early 1900's. This was the first time an attempt had been made to thoroughly study the songs of Appalachia, but he ignored several key aspects of it such as religious and instrumental music. 

John C. Campbell and wife Olive Dame Campbell researched Appalachian folksong more extensively and were among the first to acknowledge the richness in diversity and culture of the region. After John's death, Olive established the John C. Campbell Folk School, contributing the to folk school tradition that was beginning to be found throughout the United States. All of these scholars did work that advanced the old views many Americans held about people living in the mountains, helping them view Appalachia as a complex cultural region rather than small, primitive societies. 

With the collection of songs, advancement in recording technology, and emergence of large-scale music festivals, Appalachian folk music became widespread and influenced musicians of other genres. In 1927, Victor Records held recording sessions in Bristol, a small city on the Tennessee-Virginia line. These sessions would go on to be called the Bristol Sessions. Appalachian folk music combined with the African American blues tradition to heavily influence the country genre. Its influence can also be found in genres such as jazz, bluegrass, gospel, and pop, just to name a few. 

Perhaps one of the strongest examples of musical syncretism we have, the Appalachian folk genre is a culmination of many different traditions, a unique lifestyle, and storytelling elements that all contribute to the depth of the music and heart of the culture itself. The spread of Appalachia's music forever changed the way its people were seen, and much of its influence can be found in the music we listen to today. The tradition lives on in its people and will continue to for generations to come. 

Sources 

"Appalachian Music", Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200152683/#:~:text=Its%20influence%20has%20appeared%20in,and%20rural%20areas%20outside%20Appalachia.

"A History of the Appalachian Dulcimer", Appalachian Strings, https://www.appalachianstrings.net/a-history-of-the-appalachian-dulcimer

Patricia Keppel Anderson, "But Did You Know...Appalachian Music & Virginia's Mountain Towns", Virginia is for Lovers, https://www.virginia.org/blog/post/appalachian-music-history/

"Ballad Traditions of Appalachia", App State, https://dsi.appstate.edu/projects/mountain-music/topics/dooley/balladtraditions

Paul Gartner, "Folk Music", the West Virginia Encyclopedia, November 21, 2023, https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/2000

Henry D. Shapiro, "Appalachia as a Region, and its Culture", Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, 2001, https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6MjY4NTk1NQ==?q=appalachian%20culture

"Subregions in Appalachia", Appalachian Regional Commission, 2021, https://www.arc.gov/map/subregions-in-appalachia/