I was just puzzling over this one and thought maybe some of you would have a few thoughts on the matter: (Working in generalizations here):
Irish and Scottish immigrants to America head to the Appalachian mountains and continue playing traditional tunes from their homelands. Over time, this music evolves into "old timey music," which is led by the fiddle and almost exclusively features stringed instruments. What happened to all the other trad instruments? Presumably there were just as many Irish and Scottish flute and pipes (and eventually whistle, accordion, concertina, etc) players roaming around the Appalachian mountains. Why weren't those instruments incorporated into "old timey music?"
Alan Jabbour says that few highland Scots made it all the way to the Appalachians, and settled mostly in the coastal areas of North Carolina. That would party explain the lack of highland pipes.
I would guess that the greatest part of the settlement occurred before the accordian was really available and it may have been expensive, as well, and people would not have been able to afford it. Just a guess, though. No guesses about flutes, Irish pipes, or whistles. Interesting question.
It is worth bearing in mind that a lot of the tunes that make up the Old Time repertoire are also English, Scandinavian and C. European in origin, not only Scots and Irish. Furthermore, many (perhaps most) of the tunes would have arrived as songs, and were subsequently taken up by musicians, of whatever origin, in America. No doubt, the tunes were played on whatever instruments were to hand, or whatever instruments people could play. But I'm guessing, at the time of the first wave of immigration to America, in the 17th and 18th Centuries, there weren't nearly as many pipers in Ireland as tere are today - in fact, the uilleann pipes (pastoral or union pipes, as they would have been called at the time) were a relatively new instrument in Ireland then.
I do not profess to be particularly knowledgeable about American traditional music but, if I am not mistaken, the New England (as opposed to S. Apallachian) tradition draws much more directly on Scots and Irish dance music. There is there, also, the fifing tradition, which is not so far removed from the flute and drum bands of Ulster.
The second wave of Immigration, in the 19th Century, gave rise to the definitively Irish communties in cities such as New York and Chicago, which have maintained strong Irish identities and where Irish music continues to be played as *Irish* music, and has evolved in parallel with music in Ireland itself.
Strictly from an aural standpoint, American Old Timey doesn't need those instruments, because they sounds they can make are not considered part of the tradition.
Or could it be that those sounds not part of the tradition because the instrumentation wasn't there?
From memory, most of the Irish immigrants were Ulster Protestants. Scottish in origin, who came into Ulster upon the invitation of James VI/I in the early 17th century. They would never have picked up any native Irsh culture and, as Lowlanders would never have played the Highland pipes, but used mainly fiddle as their melody instrument. I believe this source of immigration ended before squeze-boxes were invented, ie around the turn of the 18th C, if not before the (successful) American Rebellion against the Elector of Hanover.
Good points, CreadurMawnOrganig, especially the part about the tunes developing from songs. Another issue is tunings. Many Appalachian tunes developed in non-standard tunings which might have presented some problems for pipers? Just another guess.
"Another issue is tunings. Many Appalachian tunes developed in non-standard tunings which might have presented some problems for pipers?"
Not really. There are a number of alternative tunings used, but the range is still more or less the same, I think. One tuning ('sawmill tuning'?) has th G string tuned right down to D and used as a drone, so it would complement th pipes nicely - and was perhaps even meant to imitate the pipes. Had the pipes been prevalent in American music, no doubt fiddlers would have used appropriate tunings - standard or non-standard - to play with them.
I was thinking more of AEAC# or DDAD, but you're probably right. Even then, I'm sure fiddle players were courteous and sensitive souls and would have tried to accommodate any other instruments.
Shortage of repairers and repair materials probably thinned out the range of instruments among early-ish settlers in the Appalachians, I'd have thought.
Meanwhile the banjo came up from the South, the guitar westward from New York, and people were making their own dulcimers after the Scandinavian instruments brought over by those settlers.
Where did the mandolin come from, or is that only in Bluegrass ?
PS I've heard there is an Old-Timey session somewhere in London where they only admit a guitar if it's small enough to pass through a certain-sized hole - true or false ? ( ie no Jumbos or Dreadnoughts ).
i can only speak to the free-reed part of the question, but accordion is a relative latecomer to the music, and the scots-irish seems to have brought traditional music that predated the box.
where you get the accordion in american irish music is in the east-coast city centers where it entertained dancers and partiers blowing off steam from their factory, plasterer, builder, and other urban labor trade jobs. new york, boston, chicago. like london. the music of john kimmel earlier, joe cooley somewhat later.
the appalachian scots-irish thing that became old-timey and later bluegrass, descended from an earlier immigrant-labor group who brought a different strain of traditional music.
I think that originally the fiddle was the main instrument in old-time, along with the (often solo) voice. Banjos, guitars, and basses came along later, from various influences.
So why was the fiddle the main instrument originally? Probably for the same reasons that the fiddle has been popular in folk music world-wide, though I guess that still begs the question.
Ebor_fiddler brings up a good point, these people were not generally Irish, they were mainly lowland Scots, Scots-Irish, English, and various assorted Europeans, as with my father's family which has roots in Appalachia 200+ years ago. So most of these people wouldn't have been from the same musical tradition as Irish trad and there's no reason to expect them to have used the same instrumentation.
Old-time has some roots in Irish music, but it's not a direct transplant of Irish/Scottish music to America. It has many influences from lots of different musical traditions, such as African music, English music, French music, Native American music, etc.
SWFL, Not entirely true about the tooters. The fife was the favorite instrument in New England in the early colonial days (and easy and cheap instrument to build), and used for dance accompaniment as well as marching (or at least so I have been told, I am no scholar of that period). When fifers gather, I am told that in addition to their marches, they play jigs, reels, hornpipes and other dance tunes. Of course there are a few fifers that have appeared on the board over the years, so perhaps they might want to chime in.
I think these traditions evolved around the same time period(18th-19th cen) independently of each other(Scots/Scottish,American,Irish,English). There was some cross polination but not enough to impact each cultures core tradition. I used to think one could have derived from the other but I don't think that anymore.
Pipes didn't make it here because Lowlanders didn't play them . Fifes weren't used by the Scots Irish-- they played their 'devilish music' on fiddles according to a contempoary Quaker in Penns Woods circa 1750. The early Scots Immigrants settled mainly in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
Pipes were played and manufactured here in the states during the 19th century by the Gaelic Irish immigrants comming to old Columbia during the famine years.
And don't discount the influence of African Americans on Old Timey music. They played jigs reals hornpipes etc and mixed them with African Rhythyms to create new dances. They were playing 'tunes' as far back as the early 17th century.
The Pastoral pipes and early Union Pipes were very expensive gentleman's instruments, which is why they never made the early journey across the Atlantic with the Ulster protestants - they simply didn't have access to them. The widespread adoption of the wooden concert flute didn't happen in Irish trad music until the 1860s, after Boehm's innovations made large numbers of them available to working class musicians all over Britain and Ireland. And the mass produced tin whistle was not avaiable until the 1840s.
So - going by that -
The ulster protestants who came to the American colonies in the 16th and 17th centuries would have been exposed to the fiddle and the fife and drum, and possibly simple wooden or handrolled versions of the penny whistle. They might also have had acquaintance with highland pipes or even the so-called New Bagpipes but they didn't play them. Appalachian music absorbed other influencs as noted above, and the banjo, dulcimer, dobro, and mandolin all came in later, ie with succesive waves of immigration in the second half of the 19th century.
Actually the dobro was an early 20th century innovation inspired by Hawaiian guitar music and the need for increased volume prior to amplification and pickups
This may be totally off the wall, but I always think of old-time as more rhythmic than melodic. And what I call Appalachian music is not necessarily the same as old-time. Appalachian is more modal (?), and melodic to my ears.
When I learned some Scottish, tunes, the Appalachian tunes made more sense. I totally do not know what I'm talking about here, but I've always been interested in how this music made the trip over the pond.
It's been interesting reading everyone's ideas about this.
Hey wintersdoor - an interesting thread you've created here! A nice refreshing change from the usual re-hashing of already much-debated topics.
It's also interesting to reflect how we all get fixations on what we regard as "traditional" - often forgetting that what we regard as traditional today simply didn't exist a couple of hundred years ago.
As has already been indicated, portable free-reed instruments weren't available to the early settlers.
Melodeon - invented 1821
English concertina - invented 1829
Anglo concertina - invented 1834
Piano accordian - invented 1852
The absence of pipes seems to have been well-explained in the posts above. It would be interesting to read some more theories regarding the absence of flutes and whistles though.
The dominance of fiddles is easy to understand, as even in the early days fiddles could be made and repaired by skilled immigrant craftsmen - with all materials needed being sourced locally (assuming gut strings).
There are stories of pipers in Cape Breton building their own instruments in the old days, so environment can probably be ruled out as a factor in why bagpipes aren't played in the Old Time traditions. It just doesn't seem to have been in their kit, even though Lowland Scotland had piping traditions of its own.
The lack of fife/flute/whistle playing is more odd; the fife is a much simpler instrument to build, indeed you can hardly get much simpler, viz the cane instruments Otha Turner and other Mississippi fifers made. Years ago I asked Kerry Blech (pronounced "Blesh"), an authority on this music, if there was much fifing in OT; he sent me a couple of tracks of an old player, George Marion Reece; there's also a few cuts of an interview with James Pilson at the Digital Library of Appalachia website. Not much in evidence here. In modern times fiddler Bruce Greene cut a very nice album (cassette issue only) of duets with fifer Bob Butler.
Now, this is strictly as relates to music south of the Mason/Dixon line. Samuel Bayard's collection of OT music from Pennsylvania, Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife, is chock full of tunes marked "F" for fife. But these traditions have largely died out, with few recordings - Bayard's tapes still exist but are in legal limbo, awaiting someone with enough initiative to make them into commercial recordings. I was also told that "fife" with these old timers could mean anything, from the simple six holed cylindrical bore band instrument up to fully keyed concert flutes.
As others say the flute is still heard in contra music. The northern music styles are full of tunes that work on woodwinds; the southern music is more purely fiddle stuff. I play a good few of Pennsylvania fiddler Jehile Kirkhuff's tunes on the flute or pipes; you can hear hours of his stuff at jehile.com.
Thanks for everyone's contributions; I've really enjoyed reading through this thread.
As has just been pointed out, it's the lack of fife/whistle/flute that really threw me. I mean, even if the tin whistle wasn't mass produced until the 1840s you'd still think that'd be plenty of time for it to be incorporated into what we call "old timey music" by the time anyone paid attention to that sort of thing. There's hardly a cheaper or more durable instrument in the world and you'd think it'd become quite popular in impoverished Appalachia. And the fife and flute wouldn't be so different.
I guess it just surprises me that old time incorporated the banjo, mandolin, and guitar by about the mid 19th century, but this is exactly the same time that portable reed instruments are invented, and mass produced whistles and flutes come on the market. It's interesting that old timey so readily embraced the other stringed instruments but ignored the woodwinds, etc.
hold on, I just had to get my old time coke bottle glasses there, mix to see that sort of detail, these days now. Hmm, no, I think that was Salvation Jane that photo. Remember her well.
Maybe whistles/flutes/fifes fell out of favor amongst the 'Scots' Irish during the mid 19th century as they wanted their music to further differentiate it from the Irish (the old-we're 'Scots' Irish not Irish thing...) bigotry being as large a motivation then as it is now....
ITM is the best stuff to play at sessions. But If (as I do) you play in a ceilidh band that is based in *England*, things may not always turn out as you expect ....
You arrive at the gig, and there's a poster on the door advertising the event with the headline:
"Hoedown at Sundown!"
... That's the danger sign!
.. And when the punters arrive, they're all wearing chequered shirts and cowboy hats, and some of 'em are even toting six-guns ....
So, there's nothing for it but "take-yer-pardners-here-we-go-forward-and-back-with-a-do-si-do!"
Yee-ha!
I don't suppose this ever happens in Ireland .... Does it?
To cater for this eventuality, we keep a stock of suitable tunes within our much wider repertoire. Here's list of some of them:
Old Joe Clark
Boil 'em Cabbage Down
June Apple
Solider's Joy
Liza Jane
Nelly Bly
Chinese Breakdown
Silver and Gold
Arkansas Traveller
Going to Boston
Dixie
Golden Slippers
Oh, Suzanna
Hopeful Lover (We call it: "The Hopeless Lover" )
Rose of Alabama
Coal Black Rose
Dixie
Yankee Doodle
Log Cabin in the West
Marching Through Georgia
Coming Round the Mountain
Buffalo Gals
Skip to my Lou
Red River Valley
Yellow Rose of Texas
Marmaduke's Hornpipe
Yes, yes, and yes again, and praise the lord while I'm at it. There are many graphic representations of just such a variety, including the bones too, boxes, winds, you name it, it was there if it could make a tune or keep a beat. Then there's the damned old-timey purists who would like to think everything is just 'string-band', and who like to ignore the evidence, as is true for some folks wrapped up in things Irish. What a hoot eh, going to Whistler like it were Mecca, the pomp, the costumes, the carry on, the affectations, including accent, but let 'em have their fun, eh? We all suffer our various delusions... At least the Cajuns are not so blinkered and are also, in general, a hell of a lot more fun, don't take themselves quite so serious, even down to feigning their not 'serious'. But the costumes and the carry on are a clear proof their obsessed, something not necessarily healthy in my sense of it all. And the Canadian Maritimes too, including Cape Breton, with the box still doing well on the island of Newfoundland. And the box, well, I've seen what happens to it over time under the influence of damp and large swings in temperature, having come across several rotting in attics on Cape Breton Island. Whistles and flutes there too...
What old-time really needs is a good revival, not with the twee stuff, but down to earth, including jigs and other things besides the endless run of breakdowns some think is the only thing going that qualifies. Hell, what about all the wide variety of things they used to enjoy ~ to accompany couple and group dancing and for sheer lilstening pleasure...
Hey Al! You are correct. I was speaking more formally, as in of the development of American Old Time music. I thought it odd that even though both groups may play those tunes separately, they don't play them together...
...unless they're playing sessions of 'this music'.
I also play with fifers down here who pick up whistles and flutes for sessions. Herself is a long time fifer, from New England as well.
Anyway, interesting that while a fifer and old timey fiddler can go play the same tunes in one of our sessions together, if a fifer brought a flute to an old timey circle to play the same tunes in different ways, it wouldn't go over so hot.
Well, and vice versa too, though it was be funny to see some old timey fiddler marching around a historical re-enactment battlefield playing The Girl I Left Behind Me with a pack of fifers and drummers.
Forty to fifty years ago, I used to hear a lot more harmonicas and autoharps in old-time bands. And banjo styles that have all but disappeared. My granddad certainly knew how to make a whistle from a willow branch, but it’s not something you’d want in a band because of the tuning problems.
The conventions of the artificial category that we call Appalachian old-time music have been changing for centuries. Since the early 1970’s, we’ve been having a revival of the music, but it’s been focused largely on the string band tradition as defined by commercial recordings from the 1920’s and 1930’s and further narrowed by the festivals and summer camps, where people from far and wide learn from a relatively small number of modern masters. I suppose it happens all around the world. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but one result has been the neglect and loss of a lot of interesting music.
I’ll reiterate something I’ve said for years. It doesn’t make sense to imagine Appalachian old-time music (particularly Southern) as a descendent of what we know as Irish or Scottish trad. The living traditions have common ancestors, but the main split was centuries ago and the American branch has taken on serious influences from diverse cultures for a long time.
The Sears’ catalog had an important role in shaping American music. Ready access to inexpensive instruments sparked critical developments in rural music, contributing to the birth of the blues, the growth of the hillbilly string band, and the emergence of the singing cowboy icon. Mail order catalogs were only one source of instruments for the rural musician – aggressive wholesalers taking advantage of a rapidly expanding transportation network reached deep into rural America – but they were convenient and the instruments were generally good values.
There is a book by Bayard, "Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife" that describes the fifing tradition in Pennsylvania. It seems to have always been a bit separate from the the fiddle music, even when the same players played both. When tunes were common to both they were generally song airs (if I remember right, it's a few years since I read Bayard's book).
As seosamh said here, quite a lot of Irish immigrants were already settled in North America before the flute caught on in Ireland. The immigrants who came over after that would mostly have gone to cities like New York and Chicago, and any musical tradition they contributed to would have been an urban one, not the world of "old-time" music.
I am a little sceptical of this "Scotch-Irish" construct. It seems to be a categorization of very recent times, not something anybody would have identified with before WW2.
"most of the Irish immigrants were Ulster Protestants. Scottish in origin, who came into Ulster upon the invitation of James VI/I in the early 17th century. They would never have picked up any native Irsh culture"
Listen to an Orange flute band - a large proportion of the tunes they play are Irish. (Conversely, listen to a Republican band and most of their tunes are Scottish and English).
"The 651 tunes presented in this book represent an important segment of the musical heritage of North America and comprise what may well be the largest collection of Anglo-Celtic -American instrumental folk music. Tunes brought over by the first settlers from England, Germany, Scotland, and Ireland remained essentially unchanged -despite many variations- in the less accessible parts of Pennsylvania, thus preserving a musical tradition that stretches from colonial times to the recent past. The advent of electronic media and automotive transport brought an end to the isolation that sustained that tradition, and today its music is being diluted and homogenized through outside influences.Professor Bayard began collecting tunes in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1928 by listening to local fiddlers and fifers and transcribing what they played into standard musical notation by ear..."
Semi-relevant tangent: I have acquired several copies of rare, out-of-print books, including some from the folk music world, by working with print-on-demand distributors. In one case, I had to contact the publisher and talk them into permitting POD, but it’s been worth a little bother. The rare-book market value of one of the volumes was 600 bucks; POD version, as I recall, was about 40 bucks.
A year or two ago I broke down and paid through the nose for a copy of Bayard's book. It is a nifty little tome. You could acquire it through an interlibrary loan in the States to satisfy your curiosity; also while you have it you could copy the thing by hand, although that would take a while, and it's a bound book, thus not easy to lay onto a scanner.
Bayard's big theme is the British Isles origin of any and all of this music, yes. He sort of runs this into the ground, like it's ridiculous to consider the idea that anything in the States could have been composed over here.
I read here often but don't think I have ever responded to anything I have read. Someone asked for websites about Old Time Music, so here goes
www.oldtimemusic.com
www.nativeground.com
www.loc.gov (The Library of Congress)
Someone told me once that Bill Monroe really wanted an accordion in his original bluegrass band, but couldn't find an accordionist in his local area who could keep up. They said that the string band lineup was more a product of the people who fit together well in that original band, rather than driven by an urge toward specific instrumentation. Imagine how the musical world might have been different if he had succeeded! It might have kept accordions cool, and prevented the great die-off and near extinction of the species in America after the 1960's.
Bill Monroe DID have an accordion in an early lineup.
Bayard was slightly insane. His idea of "tune families" (derived from Hungarian ethnomusicology) ended up with a classification of *all* tunes from the English-speaking world into something like 56 basic types. It was rather like those Russian linguists who write poetry in Nostratic.
Back in the 1930's such groups as Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies, the Light Crust Doughboys,Clayton McMichen and his Georgia Wildcats and I believe Bob Wills used Accordions and Tenor Banjo's. Older country records from the 20's had string bands with bowed basses and cellos. I think the rule that old time music must only be played on certain instruments is a much more recent phenomena.
Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
I was just puzzling over this one and thought maybe some of you would have a few thoughts on the matter: (Working in generalizations here):
Irish and Scottish immigrants to America head to the Appalachian mountains and continue playing traditional tunes from their homelands. Over time, this music evolves into "old timey music," which is led by the fiddle and almost exclusively features stringed instruments. What happened to all the other trad instruments? Presumably there were just as many Irish and Scottish flute and pipes (and eventually whistle, accordion, concertina, etc) players roaming around the Appalachian mountains. Why weren't those instruments incorporated into "old timey music?"
# Posted on July 15th 2010 by natepedersen
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Here's a link to some interesting articles on the subject:
http://www.causewaymusic.co.uk/usotm.html
Alan Jabbour says that few highland Scots made it all the way to the Appalachians, and settled mostly in the coastal areas of North Carolina. That would party explain the lack of highland pipes.
I would guess that the greatest part of the settlement occurred before the accordian was really available and it may have been expensive, as well, and people would not have been able to afford it. Just a guess, though. No guesses about flutes, Irish pipes, or whistles. Interesting question.
# Posted on July 15th 2010 by John Culhane
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Climate plays havoc on reeds/bellows? No repair parts? Just idle speculation. That is a good question.
# Posted on July 15th 2010 by Michele Sims
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
It is worth bearing in mind that a lot of the tunes that make up the Old Time repertoire are also English, Scandinavian and C. European in origin, not only Scots and Irish. Furthermore, many (perhaps most) of the tunes would have arrived as songs, and were subsequently taken up by musicians, of whatever origin, in America. No doubt, the tunes were played on whatever instruments were to hand, or whatever instruments people could play. But I'm guessing, at the time of the first wave of immigration to America, in the 17th and 18th Centuries, there weren't nearly as many pipers in Ireland as tere are today - in fact, the uilleann pipes (pastoral or union pipes, as they would have been called at the time) were a relatively new instrument in Ireland then.
I do not profess to be particularly knowledgeable about American traditional music but, if I am not mistaken, the New England (as opposed to S. Apallachian) tradition draws much more directly on Scots and Irish dance music. There is there, also, the fifing tradition, which is not so far removed from the flute and drum bands of Ulster.
The second wave of Immigration, in the 19th Century, gave rise to the definitively Irish communties in cities such as New York and Chicago, which have maintained strong Irish identities and where Irish music continues to be played as *Irish* music, and has evolved in parallel with music in Ireland itself.
# Posted on July 15th 2010 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Strictly from an aural standpoint, American Old Timey doesn't need those instruments, because they sounds they can make are not considered part of the tradition.
Or could it be that those sounds not part of the tradition because the instrumentation wasn't there?
# Posted on July 15th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
From memory, most of the Irish immigrants were Ulster Protestants. Scottish in origin, who came into Ulster upon the invitation of James VI/I in the early 17th century. They would never have picked up any native Irsh culture and, as Lowlanders would never have played the Highland pipes, but used mainly fiddle as their melody instrument. I believe this source of immigration ended before squeze-boxes were invented, ie around the turn of the 18th C, if not before the (successful) American Rebellion against the Elector of Hanover.
# Posted on July 15th 2010 by Ebor_fiddler
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Good points, CreadurMawnOrganig, especially the part about the tunes developing from songs. Another issue is tunings. Many Appalachian tunes developed in non-standard tunings which might have presented some problems for pipers? Just another guess.
# Posted on July 15th 2010 by John Culhane
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
In America, it seems there developed a dichotomy, almost a segregation.
OK, the string players can go over there and play Red Haired Boy all twangy and plunky.
However, the tooters have to go march around with drummers and play Red Haired Boy all militantly.
...and never the twain shall meet.
# Posted on July 15th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
"Another issue is tunings. Many Appalachian tunes developed in non-standard tunings which might have presented some problems for pipers?"
Not really. There are a number of alternative tunings used, but the range is still more or less the same, I think. One tuning ('sawmill tuning'?) has th G string tuned right down to D and used as a drone, so it would complement th pipes nicely - and was perhaps even meant to imitate the pipes. Had the pipes been prevalent in American music, no doubt fiddlers would have used appropriate tunings - standard or non-standard - to play with them.
# Posted on July 15th 2010 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
I was thinking more of AEAC# or DDAD, but you're probably right. Even then, I'm sure fiddle players were courteous and sensitive souls and would have tried to accommodate any other instruments.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by John Culhane
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Shortage of repairers and repair materials probably thinned out the range of instruments among early-ish settlers in the Appalachians, I'd have thought.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by nicholas
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Meanwhile the banjo came up from the South, the guitar westward from New York, and people were making their own dulcimers after the Scandinavian instruments brought over by those settlers.
Where did the mandolin come from, or is that only in Bluegrass ?
PS I've heard there is an Old-Timey session somewhere in London where they only admit a guitar if it's small enough to pass through a certain-sized hole - true or false ? ( ie no Jumbos or Dreadnoughts ).
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
i can only speak to the free-reed part of the question, but accordion is a relative latecomer to the music, and the scots-irish seems to have brought traditional music that predated the box.
where you get the accordion in american irish music is in the east-coast city centers where it entertained dancers and partiers blowing off steam from their factory, plasterer, builder, and other urban labor trade jobs. new york, boston, chicago. like london. the music of john kimmel earlier, joe cooley somewhat later.
the appalachian scots-irish thing that became old-timey and later bluegrass, descended from an earlier immigrant-labor group who brought a different strain of traditional music.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by ceemonster
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
I think that originally the fiddle was the main instrument in old-time, along with the (often solo) voice. Banjos, guitars, and basses came along later, from various influences.
So why was the fiddle the main instrument originally? Probably for the same reasons that the fiddle has been popular in folk music world-wide, though I guess that still begs the question.
Ebor_fiddler brings up a good point, these people were not generally Irish, they were mainly lowland Scots, Scots-Irish, English, and various assorted Europeans, as with my father's family which has roots in Appalachia 200+ years ago. So most of these people wouldn't have been from the same musical tradition as Irish trad and there's no reason to expect them to have used the same instrumentation.
Old-time has some roots in Irish music, but it's not a direct transplant of Irish/Scottish music to America. It has many influences from lots of different musical traditions, such as African music, English music, French music, Native American music, etc.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Marklar
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
SWFL, Not entirely true about the tooters. The fife was the favorite instrument in New England in the early colonial days (and easy and cheap instrument to build), and used for dance accompaniment as well as marching (or at least so I have been told, I am no scholar of that period). When fifers gather, I am told that in addition to their marches, they play jigs, reels, hornpipes and other dance tunes. Of course there are a few fifers that have appeared on the board over the years, so perhaps they might want to chime in.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by AlBrown
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Maybe it's because stringed instruments are easier to repair and maintain than pipes or accordions.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by dfost
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
I think these traditions evolved around the same time period(18th-19th cen) independently of each other(Scots/Scottish,American,Irish,English). There was some cross polination but not enough to impact each cultures core tradition. I used to think one could have derived from the other but I don't think that anymore.
Pipes didn't make it here because Lowlanders didn't play them . Fifes weren't used by the Scots Irish-- they played their 'devilish music' on fiddles according to a contempoary Quaker in Penns Woods circa 1750. The early Scots Immigrants settled mainly in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
Pipes were played and manufactured here in the states during the 19th century by the Gaelic Irish immigrants comming to old Columbia during the famine years.
And don't discount the influence of African Americans on Old Timey music. They played jigs reals hornpipes etc and mixed them with African Rhythyms to create new dances. They were playing 'tunes' as far back as the early 17th century.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by shanty
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
I'm sorry They were playing 'tunes' as far back as the early ------------------18th---- century.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by shanty
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
They wern't playing Tam Lin
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by shanty
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
The Pastoral pipes and early Union Pipes were very expensive gentleman's instruments, which is why they never made the early journey across the Atlantic with the Ulster protestants - they simply didn't have access to them. The widespread adoption of the wooden concert flute didn't happen in Irish trad music until the 1860s, after Boehm's innovations made large numbers of them available to working class musicians all over Britain and Ireland. And the mass produced tin whistle was not avaiable until the 1840s.
So - going by that -
The ulster protestants who came to the American colonies in the 16th and 17th centuries would have been exposed to the fiddle and the fife and drum, and possibly simple wooden or handrolled versions of the penny whistle. They might also have had acquaintance with highland pipes or even the so-called New Bagpipes but they didn't play them. Appalachian music absorbed other influencs as noted above, and the banjo, dulcimer, dobro, and mandolin all came in later, ie with succesive waves of immigration in the second half of the 19th century.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Seosamh Ui Sinan
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Sorry, that should be "The Ulster Protestants who came to the American Colonies in the 17th and 18th Centuries"
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Seosamh Ui Sinan
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Actually the dobro was an early 20th century innovation inspired by Hawaiian guitar music and the need for increased volume prior to amplification and pickups
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Seosamh Ui Sinan
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
This may be totally off the wall, but I always think of old-time as more rhythmic than melodic. And what I call Appalachian music is not necessarily the same as old-time. Appalachian is more modal (?), and melodic to my ears.
When I learned some Scottish, tunes, the Appalachian tunes made more sense. I totally do not know what I'm talking about here, but I've always been interested in how this music made the trip over the pond.
It's been interesting reading everyone's ideas about this.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Michele Sims
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Hey wintersdoor - an interesting thread you've created here! A nice refreshing change from the usual re-hashing of already much-debated topics.
It's also interesting to reflect how we all get fixations on what we regard as "traditional" - often forgetting that what we regard as traditional today simply didn't exist a couple of hundred years ago.
As has already been indicated, portable free-reed instruments weren't available to the early settlers.
Melodeon - invented 1821
English concertina - invented 1829
Anglo concertina - invented 1834
Piano accordian - invented 1852
The absence of pipes seems to have been well-explained in the posts above. It would be interesting to read some more theories regarding the absence of flutes and whistles though.
The dominance of fiddles is easy to understand, as even in the early days fiddles could be made and repaired by skilled immigrant craftsmen - with all materials needed being sourced locally (assuming gut strings).
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
(xposted with seosamh)
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
is there a site for old timey music, anything like this one where you can get the tunes, sound files, etc?
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
There are stories of pipers in Cape Breton building their own instruments in the old days, so environment can probably be ruled out as a factor in why bagpipes aren't played in the Old Time traditions. It just doesn't seem to have been in their kit, even though Lowland Scotland had piping traditions of its own.
The lack of fife/flute/whistle playing is more odd; the fife is a much simpler instrument to build, indeed you can hardly get much simpler, viz the cane instruments Otha Turner and other Mississippi fifers made. Years ago I asked Kerry Blech (pronounced "Blesh"), an authority on this music, if there was much fifing in OT; he sent me a couple of tracks of an old player, George Marion Reece; there's also a few cuts of an interview with James Pilson at the Digital Library of Appalachia website. Not much in evidence here. In modern times fiddler Bruce Greene cut a very nice album (cassette issue only) of duets with fifer Bob Butler.
Now, this is strictly as relates to music south of the Mason/Dixon line. Samuel Bayard's collection of OT music from Pennsylvania, Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife, is chock full of tunes marked "F" for fife. But these traditions have largely died out, with few recordings - Bayard's tapes still exist but are in legal limbo, awaiting someone with enough initiative to make them into commercial recordings. I was also told that "fife" with these old timers could mean anything, from the simple six holed cylindrical bore band instrument up to fully keyed concert flutes.
As others say the flute is still heard in contra music. The northern music styles are full of tunes that work on woodwinds; the southern music is more purely fiddle stuff. I play a good few of Pennsylvania fiddler Jehile Kirkhuff's tunes on the flute or pipes; you can hear hours of his stuff at jehile.com.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by KLR
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Thanks for everyone's contributions; I've really enjoyed reading through this thread.
As has just been pointed out, it's the lack of fife/whistle/flute that really threw me. I mean, even if the tin whistle wasn't mass produced until the 1840s you'd still think that'd be plenty of time for it to be incorporated into what we call "old timey music" by the time anyone paid attention to that sort of thing. There's hardly a cheaper or more durable instrument in the world and you'd think it'd become quite popular in impoverished Appalachia. And the fife and flute wouldn't be so different.
I guess it just surprises me that old time incorporated the banjo, mandolin, and guitar by about the mid 19th century, but this is exactly the same time that portable reed instruments are invented, and mass produced whistles and flutes come on the market. It's interesting that old timey so readily embraced the other stringed instruments but ignored the woodwinds, etc.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by natepedersen
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Old timey website, Enlyke?
well, there' s this one:
http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Time/early.html
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
But seriously, I don't believe that there is really an equivalent.
There are however some sites specialising in old timey tunes, like this one:
http://hetzler.homestead.com/music_2.html
And quite a few online abc collections include old timey tunes.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
droll; very droll, mix; Thanks.
(What is this? Comedy Relief Central?!)
No, I was thinking more along these lines:
http://londoncitadelband.on.ca/images/OLD_TIMERS_REVISITED.JPG
Thanks for the link.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Hmm ... regarding your link, do you suppose that all the ladies are called "Sally" and that the gent is in the army?
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Some old timey tunes have found their way into this website, for example:
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/7398
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/2473
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/7237
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
hold on, I just had to get my old time coke bottle glasses there, mix to see that sort of detail, these days now. Hmm, no, I think that was Salvation Jane that photo. Remember her well.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Maybe whistles/flutes/fifes fell out of favor amongst the 'Scots' Irish during the mid 19th century as they wanted their music to further differentiate it from the Irish (the old-we're 'Scots' Irish not Irish thing...) bigotry being as large a motivation then as it is now....
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by shanty
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Thinks ... Do they still play fifes in Fife? .....
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
On bonny maids o' Fife play them.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
only them.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Great site Mix. I have bookmarked the 'Celtic MIDI' page for later use
.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by David50
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
ITM is the best stuff to play at sessions. But If (as I do) you play in a ceilidh band that is based in *England*, things may not always turn out as you expect ....
)
You arrive at the gig, and there's a poster on the door advertising the event with the headline:
"Hoedown at Sundown!"
... That's the danger sign!
.. And when the punters arrive, they're all wearing chequered shirts and cowboy hats, and some of 'em are even toting six-guns ....
So, there's nothing for it but "take-yer-pardners-here-we-go-forward-and-back-with-a-do-si-do!"
Yee-ha!
I don't suppose this ever happens in Ireland .... Does it?
To cater for this eventuality, we keep a stock of suitable tunes within our much wider repertoire. Here's list of some of them:
Old Joe Clark
Boil 'em Cabbage Down
June Apple
Solider's Joy
Liza Jane
Nelly Bly
Chinese Breakdown
Silver and Gold
Arkansas Traveller
Going to Boston
Dixie
Golden Slippers
Oh, Suzanna
Hopeful Lover (We call it: "The Hopeless Lover"
Rose of Alabama
Coal Black Rose
Dixie
Yankee Doodle
Log Cabin in the West
Marching Through Georgia
Coming Round the Mountain
Buffalo Gals
Skip to my Lou
Red River Valley
Yellow Rose of Texas
Marmaduke's Hornpipe
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Mix O'Lydian
YEE HA!!! Gimme that ol' time religion ~
Yes, yes, and yes again, and praise the lord while I'm at it. There are many graphic representations of just such a variety, including the bones too, boxes, winds, you name it, it was there if it could make a tune or keep a beat. Then there's the damned old-timey purists who would like to think everything is just 'string-band', and who like to ignore the evidence, as is true for some folks wrapped up in things Irish. What a hoot eh, going to Whistler like it were Mecca, the pomp, the costumes, the carry on, the affectations, including accent, but let 'em have their fun, eh? We all suffer our various delusions... At least the Cajuns are not so blinkered and are also, in general, a hell of a lot more fun, don't take themselves quite so serious, even down to feigning their not 'serious'. But the costumes and the carry on are a clear proof their obsessed, something not necessarily healthy in my sense of it all. And the Canadian Maritimes too, including Cape Breton, with the box still doing well on the island of Newfoundland. And the box, well, I've seen what happens to it over time under the influence of damp and large swings in temperature, having come across several rotting in attics on Cape Breton Island. Whistles and flutes there too...
What old-time really needs is a good revival, not with the twee stuff, but down to earth, including jigs and other things besides the endless run of breakdowns some think is the only thing going that qualifies. Hell, what about all the wide variety of things they used to enjoy ~ to accompany couple and group dancing and for sheer lilstening pleasure...
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by ceolachan
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Yes Mix, old time and bluegrass is also happening, and has been, in Ireland too... And line dancing too...
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by ceolachan
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Sure, ceol - I love all that double-stopping and shuffle-bowing on the fiddles which you just don't get in Irish music - it makes a nice change.
As long as those six-guns aren't loaded ....
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Hey Al! You are correct. I was speaking more formally, as in of the development of American Old Time music. I thought it odd that even though both groups may play those tunes separately, they don't play them together...
...unless they're playing sessions of 'this music'.
I also play with fifers down here who pick up whistles and flutes for sessions. Herself is a long time fifer, from New England as well.
Anyway, interesting that while a fifer and old timey fiddler can go play the same tunes in one of our sessions together, if a fifer brought a flute to an old timey circle to play the same tunes in different ways, it wouldn't go over so hot.
Well, and vice versa too, though it was be funny to see some old timey fiddler marching around a historical re-enactment battlefield playing The Girl I Left Behind Me with a pack of fifers and drummers.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Forty to fifty years ago, I used to hear a lot more harmonicas and autoharps in old-time bands. And banjo styles that have all but disappeared. My granddad certainly knew how to make a whistle from a willow branch, but it’s not something you’d want in a band because of the tuning problems.
The conventions of the artificial category that we call Appalachian old-time music have been changing for centuries. Since the early 1970’s, we’ve been having a revival of the music, but it’s been focused largely on the string band tradition as defined by commercial recordings from the 1920’s and 1930’s and further narrowed by the festivals and summer camps, where people from far and wide learn from a relatively small number of modern masters. I suppose it happens all around the world. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but one result has been the neglect and loss of a lot of interesting music.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Bob himself
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
I’ll reiterate something I’ve said for years. It doesn’t make sense to imagine Appalachian old-time music (particularly Southern) as a descendent of what we know as Irish or Scottish trad. The living traditions have common ancestors, but the main split was centuries ago and the American branch has taken on serious influences from diverse cultures for a long time.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Bob himself
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Hear hear. It is a mistake to think of it as a direct ancestor. Many other European and African elements exist in it's genealogy!
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Where'd that apostrophe come from?
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
The Sears’ catalog had an important role in shaping American music. Ready access to inexpensive instruments sparked critical developments in rural music, contributing to the birth of the blues, the growth of the hillbilly string band, and the emergence of the singing cowboy icon. Mail order catalogs were only one source of instruments for the rural musician – aggressive wholesalers taking advantage of a rapidly expanding transportation network reached deep into rural America – but they were convenient and the instruments were generally good values.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Dzia Dzia
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
There is a book by Bayard, "Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife" that describes the fifing tradition in Pennsylvania. It seems to have always been a bit separate from the the fiddle music, even when the same players played both. When tunes were common to both they were generally song airs (if I remember right, it's a few years since I read Bayard's book).
As seosamh said here, quite a lot of Irish immigrants were already settled in North America before the flute caught on in Ireland. The immigrants who came over after that would mostly have gone to cities like New York and Chicago, and any musical tradition they contributed to would have been an urban one, not the world of "old-time" music.
I am a little sceptical of this "Scotch-Irish" construct. It seems to be a categorization of very recent times, not something anybody would have identified with before WW2.
"most of the Irish immigrants were Ulster Protestants. Scottish in origin, who came into Ulster upon the invitation of James VI/I in the early 17th century. They would never have picked up any native Irsh culture"
Listen to an Orange flute band - a large proportion of the tunes they play are Irish. (Conversely, listen to a Republican band and most of their tunes are Scottish and English).
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Jack Campin
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
I have to check out that book, thanks for the tip Jack.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Six used on Amazon for $180. Ha ha.
http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Fiddle-March-Fife-Instrumental-Pennsylvania/dp/0271002999
"The 651 tunes presented in this book represent an important segment of the musical heritage of North America and comprise what may well be the largest collection of Anglo-Celtic -American instrumental folk music. Tunes brought over by the first settlers from England, Germany, Scotland, and Ireland remained essentially unchanged -despite many variations- in the less accessible parts of Pennsylvania, thus preserving a musical tradition that stretches from colonial times to the recent past. The advent of electronic media and automotive transport brought an end to the isolation that sustained that tradition, and today its music is being diluted and homogenized through outside influences.Professor Bayard began collecting tunes in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1928 by listening to local fiddlers and fifers and transcribing what they played into standard musical notation by ear..."
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Semi-relevant tangent: I have acquired several copies of rare, out-of-print books, including some from the folk music world, by working with print-on-demand distributors. In one case, I had to contact the publisher and talk them into permitting POD, but it’s been worth a little bother. The rare-book market value of one of the volumes was 600 bucks; POD version, as I recall, was about 40 bucks.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Bob himself
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Samuel Bayard's book Hill Country Tunes is posted here for free.
http://www.mne.psu.edu/lamancusa/tunes/hct/
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by Boots MacAllen
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
A year or two ago I broke down and paid through the nose for a copy of Bayard's book. It is a nifty little tome. You could acquire it through an interlibrary loan in the States to satisfy your curiosity; also while you have it you could copy the thing by hand, although that would take a while, and it's a bound book, thus not easy to lay onto a scanner.
Bayard's big theme is the British Isles origin of any and all of this music, yes. He sort of runs this into the ground, like it's ridiculous to consider the idea that anything in the States could have been composed over here.
# Posted on July 16th 2010 by KLR
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
I read here often but don't think I have ever responded to anything I have read. Someone asked for websites about Old Time Music, so here goes
www.oldtimemusic.com
www.nativeground.com
www.loc.gov (The Library of Congress)
# Posted on July 17th 2010 by rodfrank
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Someone told me once that Bill Monroe really wanted an accordion in his original bluegrass band, but couldn't find an accordionist in his local area who could keep up. They said that the string band lineup was more a product of the people who fit together well in that original band, rather than driven by an urge toward specific instrumentation. Imagine how the musical world might have been different if he had succeeded! It might have kept accordions cool, and prevented the great die-off and near extinction of the species in America after the 1960's.
# Posted on July 17th 2010 by AlBrown
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
rodfrank, by including http:// in your address this site makes them linkable;
http://www.oldtimemusic.com/
http://www.nativeground.com/
http://www.loc.gov/folklife/onlinecollections.html
# Posted on July 17th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Bill Monroe DID have an accordion in an early lineup.
Bayard was slightly insane. His idea of "tune families" (derived from Hungarian ethnomusicology) ended up with a classification of *all* tunes from the English-speaking world into something like 56 basic types. It was rather like those Russian linguists who write poetry in Nostratic.
# Posted on July 17th 2010 by Jack Campin
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Q: Why is it that there is no flute in old time music?
A: You need teeth to play the flute.
# Posted on July 18th 2010 by leoj
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Back in the 1930's such groups as Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies, the Light Crust Doughboys,Clayton McMichen and his Georgia Wildcats and I believe Bob Wills used Accordions and Tenor Banjo's. Older country records from the 20's had string bands with bowed basses and cellos. I think the rule that old time music must only be played on certain instruments is a much more recent phenomena.
# Posted on July 19th 2010 by Boots MacAllen
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Bob Wills also made recordings with mandolins, before the Texas Playboys and a good 20 years before bluegrass.
This genre "Old Timey" is a bit of a hindsight construction, isn't it?
It must have been "New Timey" or just "Timey once
# Posted on July 19th 2010 by Bren
Re: Historic Instrumentation in Old Timey Music
Light Crust Dough Boys
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/LL/xgl1.html
# Posted on July 19th 2010 by Ben Steen