Festival of American Fiddle Tunes/Paul Conklin

 

Summer 2003

ARTICLES

COLUMNS

  • The Practicing Fiddler: Projecting Your Personality and Sound, by Hollis Taylor
  • Cross-Tuning Workshop, Part 21: ADAE, by Jody Stecher
  • On Improvisation: A Detour: The Shortest Distance Between Two Points, Part One, by Paul Anastasio
  • Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour: Saskatchewan's John Arcand, by Gordon Stobbe
  • Fiddle Tune History: The Great Eastern, by Andrew Kuntz
  • Reviews of Recordings & Video
  • In Memoriam: Melvin Wine, Ralph "Joe" Meadows

TUNES

  • Bobby Hicks bluegrass examples; transcribed by Stacy Phillips
  • Gusty's Frolics, traditional; transcribed by Brendan Taaffe as played by Paddy Glackin
  • New York in November, by Dorado Schmitt; transcribed by Peter Anick
  • Brilliancy, arranged by Chris Daring
  • Duck River; transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by John Salyer (Cross-Tuning Workshop)
  • Big Bear, by John Arcand (Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour)
  • La Grondeuse, traditional (Fiddle Tune History)
  • Silver Spire, traditional (Fiddle Tune History)
  • Bennett's Reel, traditional, as played by Cyril Stinnet; transcribed by Bill Shull (Fiddle Tune History)
  • The Great Eastern, Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1886) (Fiddle Tune History)

 

ARTICLE EXCERPTS

Dan Gellert: Grounded in Tradition, Playing from the Heart

By Adam Tanner

Dan Gellert is a legend in the field of old time American music. As a result of the folk music revival of the 1960s and records he heard growing up in New Jersey, he began to master the banjo, guitar, and fiddle, and sing. At an early age he discovered the importance of taking the time to understand the music in a complete and detailed way, as if it were a language. Dan has given a lot of thought to what it takes to make the music sound and feel like the field recordings and old 78 rpm records he has listened to. While Dan is playing, one gets the sense he has entered another world which combines all his influences, yet it is his playfulness and improvisational sensibilities which make his style powerful and instantly recognizable. Dan's fiddling is bluesy and rhythmic and without regard for modern standards of pitch and tone. In other words, he follows his muse, which makes his music stand alone in a world of timid imitators. Not for the faint of heart, Dan Gellert is a commanding and uncompromising talent.

After raising a family and playing out mainly in his community (Elkhart, Indiana), Dan is hoping to retire and get out more and share his music. His recordings are few but excellent. Check out A Moment in Time with Brad Leftwich (Marimac cassette). He has cuts on a couple of compilations: A tribute to the Appalachian String Band Music Festival (Chubby Dragon), and The Young Fogies Vol. I (Rounder). He has a segment on the Fiddler Magazine video Carrying on the Traditions: Appalachian Fiddling Today (now out of print), as well as various cuts on the old County Records claw-hammer banjo compilations.

Give us your first experience hearing old time fiddling.

Wow. I don't know what my first experience hearing old time fiddling was. It was hearing stuff on records. What, I don't know in particular, although we had records of the folkies around. You know -- Pete Seeger, Woodie Guthrie, Leadbelly, Cisco Houston, those people. I don't know if there was any fiddle on any of that but I know I heard some of that. I grew up with all kinds of stuff. We had classical music, too, and Gypsy music.

Was it the Anthology of American Folk Music?

Yeah, that was there. Some of it was. I remember there was one store in New York where you could pick up unjacketed Folkways discs. I think the price was three for ten dollars, if I recall right, and I used to go there every once in awhile and get a few. But I think my mother got this one long before I started going in there. It was just that first disc I remember. We started going in the early '60s to these "hootenannies." There was a Friends meeting house in Ridgewood. And I met up with some people over there who included Larry McBride, Eric Schoenberg (the guitar player and maker), Eric's brother Mark who played mandolin, and Bob Bell, who still lives in Ridgewood and still plays banjo, and some other people who were around there, too, who were at that time into listening to old records and real into New Lost City Ramblers. I remember noticing, okay, the fiddle's real big in this stuff. And none of these guys played the fiddle. And we had this violin around that my sister had tried to start on and gave up real quick because she tried to take lessons from my grandfather who was really not a teacher. He was a violinist but he frustrated her pretty well. She gave that up and so we had this violin sitting around that he had lent her to play on. So I thought, how hard can this be? I learned to pick out melodies on the mandolin a little bit and, like I say, I was listening to some stuff and I thought, "Oh, there's something that sounds pretty simple." It was Uncle Bunt Stephens playing "Sail Away Ladies," first cut on the anthology. And luckily he was in standard tuning. Luckily he was in G, which is the most sensible key. And, you know, I could hear all the notes that were there and it fit real well on a mandolin where the notes were, and I thought, "I bet I could figure out how to do that." And so I got the violin out, I tuned it up and started messing around with it. And I remember approaching it as if, okay it's kind of like the bow is sort of using the flat pick in that you've got down and up. Except that instead of a point of contact you have a line of contact. And that was the trick. And I've heard a lot of fiddlers who just play chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop with the bow and never figure out how to move it a lot. But I made that leap right away because what it was that was in my head was the sound of that one thing. And I wanted to make that sound. I think of it as the bumblebee phenomenon. Although they say now that it's not true, it used to be that they would say that by the laws of aerodynamics it's impossible for a bumblebee to fly. But the bumblebee, knowing nothing about aerodynamics, goes ahead and flies anyway. So I listened to this thing and thought, "That sounds simple. There's only about four notes in the whole tune." And so I started playing it and trying to make it sound like that. Somehow I lucked into the idea of transferring from the flat pick to the bow, which made it real sensible. The strong stroke is on the down. And somewhere there I tripped over the fact that there was that rock on the up bow to get that sound. Once that happened I could play that tune pretty passably. But what's really neat is that I can go back today, some forty years later, and listen to that tune and there's still stuff for me to learn in it.

How long after you started to play a couple tunes did you hook up with people? You said you had friends who played old time music.

Yeah, I would go down there and I'd say, "Hey, look what I can do." You know, I was this little kid who was learning how to play this stuff and I was kind of like a phenomenon there 'cause these guys were all going to college. I guess a couple of them were going down to Chapel Hill. A lot of it was all just my own doing. I had learned to play some banjo. I got Pete Seeger's book and I was listening to all the stuff I could find.

...Was there somebody with a fiddle that you ran into who was helping you out?

Not really. That was always something I had to pretty much do by myself. 'Cause there really wasn't hardly any other people doing it. Rich Blustien was going to school there for awhile while I was but I never did really hook up much with him. He was older than I was and he was in the folklore department and I was a screwball kid.

...

If you hear a tune and you know the source musician played it as a cross A tune, will you try it in standard tuning first?

No, I usually will listen to something, and I've gotten extremely lazy about stuff, but I think that certainly for anybody that's trying to learn there's a lot to be said for slavish imitation because that's the way you learn how to play. You can't help but play like yourself. How I developed the way I play is that I tried to play like whoever I was learning from as much as I could, as close as I could. Sometimes I stuck to that a little more than I did with others. Most of the time now I hear somebody play and I think I can hear some ideas in there and some licks and some musical little feelings that I want to kind of latch onto. But I think the way I've arrived at that is I started trying like mad to sound just like, whoever -- Uncle Bunt Stephens. And I'm never going to sound just like Uncle Bunt Stephens, but trying and listening to the source and comparing what I'm doing to the model.

So are there fiddlers out there that you tried to learn from that you feel like, "Hey this person speaks a language that I can somehow understand more than this person"?

Oh, yeah. There's just some stuff that's more accessible than others.

But you might like something where you don't think you could play like that person but you like the tune.

Well, the longer I play, the more I know I can't really play like that, but I realize I can try to, and by trying to I'm going to get something from that. Some of it is the positive side of having an attention deficit. I can really focus very tightly on something for awhile. It's like, when I'm focused I'm completely focused. And when I'm not it's like I'm totally somewhere else. So I'll be really crazy about sounding "just like that." And I'll obsess with that until I'm tired of doing it. But that has already imbedded itself in my brain. All the effort that I put into doing that has done me some good and it'll come out in another place.

This is what I always say, every tune is a music lesson. And not the same music lesson for everybody.

A lot of times when it comes right down to it, as much as having a bunch of tunes in my head, what I have is a whole bunch of little riffs and phrases and snatches of stuff and that's all stuff that when I start playing a tune, there'll be a place where I can kind of slip off into something else. A little thing that came out of somewhere else. And all this stuff is sloshing around in there all the time and you never can tell what you're gonna get when you dip into it. It's a lot of fun.

...

Do you think [the accessibility of instructional materials, CDs, etc.] has changed old time fiddling?

I don't know. I suppose. I think just the fact that there's a lot more people now who are trying to get into it from having started in classical training is something. Generally, it's a further extension of what's been happening ever since guitars and pianos and pump organs started making their way into the traditional music somewhere in the 19th century. I think it tends to want to make things more square. There's always going to be somebody who figures out what it's about, but I think that's always been the case. Really, the majority of people will just kind of dabble in it and will learn what they can by rote and will probably enjoy it a whole lot. It's neat to be able to make that sound, but never get crazy obsessed with it and try to really dig the core out of it.

What do you think of people learning tunes from sheet music?

I think learning tunes from sheet music is completely ass backwards because to me American fiddle tunes -- Southern-style fiddle tunes, I should say -- are not a line of music. The American Southern style of fiddling is a real clear combination of influences from Europe and from Africa. Certainly the Celtic sort of influence in stuff is real wind instrument-based. And so therefore it has a certain kind of linear feel to it. It really is based on the pipes and the flute. If you understand the style, you can notate those tunes. If you understand the general sound you're aiming at and how to execute the ornaments, you can figure out a way to notate the ornaments and to actually do a fair approximation of how the tune ought to sound on a piece of paper. I defy anybody to transcribe just about any fiddle tune that Tommy Jarrell played as a simple readable line of music and have anybody go from that music to something that sounds anything like the tune actually sounds. I think when we listen we try to take something in all at once. This is how I see it. I try to kind of inhale all of a tune -- get it into my head all at once. And my previous experience fills in the details that I haven't really grasped yet. I have a whole idea of what the tune should be but my preconcieved notions then get put in to fill in the details. And as with most people who have your standard musical training in school and such, those notions have to do with standard scales and scale-wise movement up and down the scale. It doesn't have that banjoistic kind of African sense of skipping around within chords or patterns of notes. It's these rambling riffs that keep on. That's true of a lot of the fiddling, too. That it's not linear. And you can just really tell when somebody's reading that stuff out of a book because for some reason it always comes right out on the ending cadence of a phrase or a line that always seems to stick out like a sore thumb. There's just a scale-wise thing that sounds like it's trying to be too linear.

Do you pay attention much to what people are doing currently with old time music? Do you listen to that at all or are you aware of it?

I don't try to keep up with it, I'm afraid. I'll listen to what sort of comes across my sight just to see what's happening. And it's like, the more I hear the more I still think, "I like to listen to dead guys." I mean, not to say there isn't some real fun stuff going on out there but I have particular tastes and everybody seems to be wanting to rush too fast, or the big thing to me is that everybody wants to play that back beat and that totally blows it. Because to me, the difference between bluegrass and old time music in general is kind of like the difference between rock and roll and funk music, in general. That bluegrass and a lot of this "modern old-timey music" is just that real heavy chop back beat. And it just bounces up and down and it doesn't go anywhere. And rock and roll is like that, too. I take the James Brown approach -- you got to come down on the one. And it's funny because when you keep that feeling of that solid down on the one, then you really can get much more syncopated than on the two. The thing is instead of going one-TWO-three-FOUR, one-TWO-three-FOUR, if you just go ONE-two-three-four, ONE-two-three-four, then, man, you can go rambling all over the place right in between there. And when everybody comes back together on one, it's cooking then.

...

[Adam Tanner lives in North Carolina, where he plays old time southern fiddle and bluegrass mandolin.]

 

Rayna Gellert: A New Voice in Old Time Fiddling

By Adam Tanner

Rayna Gellert is a breath of fresh air. She can't remember a time when fiddle music was not the sound track to her life. Like her dad Dan, she follows her instincts completely and has developed a style that is distinctive and beautiful. She has been busy since she released her CD Ways of the World in 1999. She has played and collaborated with old time musician Frank Lee, eclectic fiddle master Darol Anger, taught at various folk music-related camps such as The Swannanoa Gathering and the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, and accompanied folk dance/foot percussion great Ira Bernstein. Rayna's old time fiddling is bouncy and heavily syncopated. Her left hand is nimble and precise, allowing her to ornament her tunes in very interesting ways. The fiddle tunes she chooses to play have helped to define her musical personality. She is currently working on some recording projects. I talked to her at her home in Asheville, North Carolina.

Describe your first contact with the violin. What got you most interested in playing? How old were you?

My first contact with the violin was just being around it when I was a little kid. My oldest brother Joe for awhile played fiddle. He had a smaller size fiddle and I remember at a really young age being fascinated by Dan's fiddle -- the smell of the fiddle case and he had a fiddle that had a rattlesnake rattle in it and I would pick up the fiddle and shake it around.

...[This was] in Elkhart, Indiana. And there's an orchestra and a band, and in fourth grade they come and show all the kids all the instruments and you would pick which one you wanted to play. It was a given that I was going to play something. I had a cousin who was playing clarinet and I thought that I was probably going to play clarinet but then I decided that I was going to play violin because I thought I was probably going to be playing fiddle some day. So it seemed to make sense for me to start playing violin.

Did your dad ask if you were interested in learning to play fiddle?

Yeah. I remember after I'd started playing we talked a lot about it. I went through these little phases where I would ask him to show me something or I would try to learn a fiddle tune or something, but I never latched on to it until I got away from home.

...

What was your impression of classical music? Did you have an opinion about it or was it something you felt you needed to do to play the instrument? Did you like the pieces of music and carry them in your head?

Oh, yeah. I got really into it. I remember the first time I ever got a musical buzz. It was when I was in middle school in the little school orchestra. It was the first time I played with a full orchestra with percussion and horns. And it was like, whew, I loved it. I totally got high off of it. But, you know it was just middle school orchestra -- it wasn't any big deal.

But all those instruments together.

Yeah, the bigness of the sound was just a real rush. I definitely got a buzz off of that. That was really memorable -- the first time I realized you could get a buzz off of playing music. I really loved playing in an orchestra. And sometimes we did quartets or smaller ensembles and stuff like that for regional contests. I like that stuff, too. I like chamber music. I hated playing solo. It was absolutely a nightmare for me. I was a wreck if I ever had to play by myself in front of just about anyone. It was major trauma. Even in chamber groups it was really hard for me. Playing in orchestra was fine, though. Any kind of solo performance was really stressful, but I liked playing and I didn't like the competition at all.

So you're a teenager now and you're taking private lessons. But you're going home and you're hearing Dad play old time music with friends and stuff.

Oh, yeah, when the Dan and Brad tape came out [A Moment In Time -- Dan Gellert and Brad Leftwich], I loved that -- I love it still, but at the time it came out it was all I was listening to. My violin lessons were in Michigan. It was about a forty-five-minute drive from my house and all the way there and all the way back I would listen to the Dan and Brad tape over and over and over again

Were you intimidated by old time music?

Oh, extremely, extremely. I just felt like it was so far over my head.

...

So let's move ahead to when you decided that you were going to play old time music. Was there a defining moment when you said, "I'm doing it my own way but I can do this"?

I don't know if there was a defining moment. Just somewhere along the way I just got more and more disenchanted with the classical [stuff]. I didn't want to be a part of that scene. It wasn't an appealing scene It was competitive. It was uptight.

Formal.

Yeah, it was like "Why can't those people be as cool as these old time musicians?" Not that there aren't really cool classical musicians, because there are, but just the scene in general was not appealing. I guess it was probably sometime during my senior year of high school that I realized I didn't want to play classical music anymore. And I was moving to North Carolina.

Did you ever think of quitting? Just blowing off the fiddle completely and just doing something else?

Yeah. But I knew I was moving here... So what happened was, I graduated, I played at my high school graduation with the orchestra. That was the last time. That was it. And I put the instrument down for the next few months until I moved here. And when I moved down, I think it was literally the first thing that I did when I got into my dorm room -- I put on a tape and started learning tunes I was like, "All right. It's time. Here we go." I was raring to go at that point.

Coming from this classical background, it seems like there are just so many things to change about your playing in order to get the sounds and the feel that you want from the music. Can you elaborate a little bit on what you felt you had to do differently?

Everything. I felt like I had to do everything differently. I mean, the last thing I wanted to do was sound like a classical musician trying to play old time music.

You knew that in your head, that you had to get rid of that sound.

Yeah, because I mean I've heard that sound so many times and I knew I had a really big leap to make. But I think that's a really lucky thing, just that I had that core understanding of how far I had to go. I just knew that and I set out knowing that. "I have a really long ways to go. Here we go." I changed my bow hold. I started choking up on the bow. I experimented with all these different bow holds because I wanted to find something that made sense for me as far as trying to reproduce the sounds I was trying to reproduce. Certain things felt more comfortable...

So let's talk about the different tuning. Is that something you got into right away? Tuning your fiddle differently?

[Laughter] Did I tell you this story before?

No. Did you try to learn tunes without tuning your fiddle?

Yes See, I made all these tapes at Clifftop that year. It was '94. Cause I knew that I was on a mission. I was going to start learning these tunes when I moved to school. So I was walking around Clifftop that year just taping all these sessions. So then I get to my dorm room and I start trying to learn tunes off these tapes. I would be playing all the right notes. I knew, because I could sing the tune in my head and I could play it on the fiddle. And it sounded so wrong. After a couple months of playing I sent Dan a coming-out letter saying [I was playing old time fiddle] So after we sort of broke the ice, then I could talk to him some about questions I had. And I can't remember whether I asked him directly, "Are there different tunings?" or what it was that I said. My memory of it is that I was just totally clueless and I was really excited about all these A tunes because it was a really cool sound. And I didn't understand that those were in a different tuning. And so he explained to me about cross A. And suddenly all the lights came on. You know, I'd been trying to play something like "Jeff Sturgeon" in standard tuning and thinking, "Why doesn't this sound right?"

So once you cranked up the low strings, things just fell into place.

Yeah, then everything got so much easier.

Did you stay in cross tunings for awhile once you discovered them or did you go back and forth learning tunes in different keys?

I did go back and forth. I decided I was only going to work on tunes that I was really excited about. So I would just pick out whatever tune I thought was really cool. A bunch of those were cross A tunes. Just 'cause that was a really compelling different sort of sound.

So let's talk about the bow again a little bit. When I was learning to play, I watched people bow and I didn't watch their bow -- I watched their wrist and that really helped me... When I watched people's wrists I saw different approaches -- sometimes a loose wrist approach, sometimes a more stiff wrist approach. Sometimes a rocking the bow, sometimes what people call little circles Were you picking up some of these things by watching people play? Was that something you were aware of?

I was aware to a certain extent. And to a certain extent I was blocking it out. I mean, I knew about the little circles because that's something that Dan always preaches and you know now that when I'm teaching that's something I preach, too. But, I mean, the way I present it to people is, "Just think little circles. Just keep that image in your head and don't think too hard about it. Just have that image with you." The whole bowing thing -- I need to be careful here -- I don't want to get in trouble. When I was first starting, I had a sense that there was a right way and a wrong way to bow. And it terrified me. Just all my insecurities about playing old time music -- that was a big one. "Oh, no, I'm going to bow wrong." And finally it stressed me out to the point that I got pissed off and I just said, "This is stupid." I grew up listening to this music. I'm sure all of these dead fiddlers who I love to listen to didn't worry about whether they were going to bow the wrong way. If they grew up with it, they knew the sound they wanted to make and they just made it. And so I got kind of defiant: "I'm going to bow however the hell I want to bow."

It seems that's a very old time music thing to do, to find your voice within the style of music. You can play a tune that a bunch of other people play but you can only play it your way no matter how hard you're trying to copy something else. Would you agree?

Yeah. I mean it's going to go through your filter. I can understand like when people talk about sort of a right way and a wrong way to bow because you can hear it when somebody's bowing in a way that is stiff or just doesn't sound old-timey. It just doesn't have an old-timey kind of drive.

...

When I listen to fiddle tunes, especially older players, I notice there's some elasticity in what you call the tempered scale. There are more possibilities in terms of whether a note might seem sharp or seem flat. I know when I listen to Tommy Jarrell, if you listen to one of the tunes he's playing the first time around, you'll hear a note that might sound a little sharp. And then you'll hear it the second time around and he plays it sharp consistently. Were you aware of stuff like that when you were trying to figure out tunes?

That's an interesting thing. I wasn't very conscious of that when I was first starting to play. But I do remember at one point playing with Dan and he said something encouraging to me, like, "Hey, yeah, I think you're starting to understand the micro-tones." And I didn't know. I was like, "Oh really? Cool." Because I hadn't been thinking about it at all But I have found that the thing that seems to tie together a lot of people whose playing strikes me as sounding really old and really compelling for that reason, I think it has a lot to do with how they play those notes. How they deal with, as Dan says, microtones... I think that's what I find compelling in people who are alive and playing. When I hear someone and think, "Wow, that sounds like a dead guy" -- in a good way -- I think it's often because of intonation.

...

www.raynagellert.com

[Adam Tanner lives in North Carolina, where he plays old time southern fiddle and bluegrass mandolin.]

 

Paddy Glackin: For the Fun of It

By Brendan Taaffe

Paddy Glackin has made a habit of approaching music on his own terms. As the Bothy Band's first fiddler, he had as good a start as one could hope towards a successful professional career but chose, instead, to keep Irish music as "a fascinating hobby." Though full-time performing musicians are more prominent in the public eye, Paddy's is an important model to keep in mind: for most of us, playing music is a component of life but not the only part, and even while holding down a job, Paddy has made important contributions to the world of Irish music. The Bothy Band, clearly, reshaped the musical landscape, and his recordings with Paddy Keenan (Doublin') and Jolyon Jackson have been very influential. We spoke during the 2002 session of Gaelic Roots, at Boston College.

How did you get started playing the fiddle?

I was born and raised in Dublin, but my father was from Donegal. I was exposed to the whole Donegal thing early on, not only music but language as well -- so that would have been a big influence on me. But I grew up in Dublin and therefore was exposed to a lot of other types of music, other styles of traditional music, shall we say, particularly of fiddle playing. There was no Donegal music in Dublin when I was growing up. None whatsoever.

Did your father play?

My father played, but that was the only exposure I had to it. We would go to Donegal on holidays and I would meet John Doherty and people like that. That was the main influence, but I was also influenced by other great players who lived in Dublin at the time. There was a man by the name of John Egan who was a flute player, and John was a source of great encouragement to me. John Kelly, James' father, was hugely encouraging.

Thinking about the regional styles, do you think there's a Dublin style?

No, absolutely not. Kerry, Clare, East Galway, Sligo and Donegal, they would be the main regional styles. And when you say Donegal, you have to think there's a broader Ulster style of playing that people tend to identify as being a Donegal style. People are sometimes a bit loose in their use of language. In terms of style, we tend to forget that people's definition of styles is usually based on the music of very, very strong individuals -- Doherty for Donegal, or Denis Murphy for Kerry, or Patrick Kelly in West Clare. People speak in very, very general terms about Donegal music and say that they don't do any finger ornamentation, and that's wrong. John Doherty used finger ornamentation, Neilidh Boyle used finger ornamentation. They favored bowing ornamentation a little bit more, but it doesn't mean they didn't use their fingers. You see it written in books -- ornamentation only with the bow --- but it doesn't hold up.

So what do you see as the hallmarks of a Donegal style?

What defines Donegal fiddling for me would be, number one, the bowing of it, would be the rhythm of it, would be the sense of tonality of it, and as well as the actual variations and settings of the tunes.

What do you mean by tonality?

If you compare it with the southern part of the country, it tends to be slightly sharper, the rhythm and tonality of it is a little bit harder, and there's a wildness in it that other traditions don't seem to have.

I've noticed that Donegal fiddlers will go up into third position more than others.

Well, the reason being is that that's the repertoire, the type of tunes that they play. And they liked virtuosity and embraced it more than fiddle players in the southern half of the country. That's the only explanation I can give you for it, really. Obviously playing Scott Skinner would have had an influence, and in particular I know John Doherty had a huge regard for Scott Skinner's playing. He would have heard Skinner's 78s. And the seasonal migration between Donegal and Scotland had a strong influence on the music. People would go away for nine months of the year and when they'd come back for the harvest they would have picked up songs and tunes.

Because there was more work in Scotland.

Well, there was no work at home. It was poverty, it was a very poor county. In Donegal they would regard Glasgow as their city much more than Dublin. There wasn't a house in Donegal that didn't have someone in Scotland. All my uncles worked in Scotland, my father worked in Scotland, that was the way it was. So they would have brought these tunes back and people like the Dohertys, being the traveling people that they were, would have picked up the tunes in one locality and brought them to another locality.

Thinking of Ulster and the different religious communities, was the music limited to one community or did both communities participate?

I can't give you an answer because I really don't know. I would imagine both communities were playing it because the divisions within our society only became so polarized in the last twenty-five years. I remember prior to the troubles, and indeed in the early part of the troubles, encountering people from the opposite tradition to our Gaelic tradition who had the same songs, the same tunes, who played fiddles, who played pipes, flutes, the same music -- it was just that one side of society was claiming it as theirs and it became kind of a badge. There were great players -- we'd meet them at various festivals and nobody ever asked a question as to which side of the fence you were on. But as the years went on it became claimed by one side over the other.

With your strong family connections to Donegal, I would place you as a tradition-bearer rather than someone who comes to the music from elsewhere. Do you think that gives you any different responsibility?

I don't feel any responsibility as such. What I do feel is very privileged. I feel a huge privilege that I was able to get this music directly from the likes of John Doherty, that I knew the man so well and that we were very, very good friends. To my dying day I'll always be grateful for the stuff I got from him. But I don't feel any particular responsibility -- the only responsibility I feel is just to play it. Society has changed so much. I live in a city; I don't live in a small place where people can come to me. Our way of life is different. People pick it up through hearing tapes and such, and that's the way it is -- the process has changed. The one downside is that they don't get to know musicians because they don't get a chance to talk to them. You can't divorce the two of them -- that's the big pity for me, because part of the mystique of John Doherty wasn't just the way he played the fiddle, it was talking to him. It was the man, it was having fun and having a bit of craic. Part of John Kelly's mystique was that he had an incredible sense of humor, so you would spend a lot of time in these people's company and you mightn't play a tune. You could be there for hours and never even think of playing, you'd just be having a bit of fun, and that's a very, very important part of the whole operation.

When you were growing up in Dublin, how much music was there around?

There was no traditional music really. It wasn't the thing for a young guy growing up in Dublin to play the fiddle, so I grew up with this dark secret. Nobody knew about it. I'd just be brought to these music clubs when I'd be on summer holidays and I'd meet people like John Egan and John Kelly and I got to know them on a Wednesday night in the Church Street club, or the Piper's club on a Saturday night. I was mixing with people who were a good bit older than me. I did play football and everything else that boys do, but there was this dark secret lurking there that I played the fiddle. This was in the sixties, and one of the problems for me was that it was very hard to identify with the music -- there were no people my own age doing it. My brothers are younger than me, so they weren't in the picture. There was nobody of the same age, so I was learning this thing in isolation.

So what was the incentive to keep going with it?

Well, part of the incentive to keep going was my father's perseverance, to be quite frank with you. I probably would have given it up because I had no sense of its relevance. You'd sit there dutifully and you'd listen to other players, and you just listened to them. It paid off in the end I suppose, but I had nobody of my own age to see where this thing stood in the scheme of things, where you might talk about a tune or talk about a player and get a bit of perspective on it. As well as to find out that you weren't some kind of a freak.

When did that change?

That changed, I'd say, in the seventies. I got to know some guys of my own age. It was starting to become a little bit popular and it was great to have people of the same age where you could sit down and play a tune and you didn't feel you were on your own. I went to fleadh cheoils and met fellows from other parts of the country who were the same age as me and we played in competitions together. It was good to feel that there were other people doing it.

...

[Brendan Taaffe is a farmer and teacher in central Vermont. He plays fiddle, guitar, and penny-whistle.]

 

 

Photo: Craig Ferré Photography

Daniel Slosberg: Making History Come Alive

By Beverley Conrad

Hark back to high school. Do you ever remember sitting through a history lesson with a big smile on your face, feet tapping to a rhythm and sitting on the edge of your seat wondering what happens next? I sure didn't ­­ not back then. Then I saw Daniel Slosberg of Los Angeles, California, perform as Pierre Cruzatte, the fiddler of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. His story had me spellbound.

Dressed in brain-tanned buckskins, headscarf, moccasins, and eye patch, Dan fiddled and tapped his way through a piece of history that is celebrating its two hundred year anniversary this year. In 1997, when he first discovered that there was a fiddler who accompanied Lewis and Clark, he had not realized that he would be touring the country as part of that celebration. Pierre Cruzatte is remembered in more formal histories as having the dubious distinction of mistaking Merewether Lewis for an elk and shooting him in the behind. That incident may have colored Lewis' memory of Cruzatte, but Cruzatte himself remembered many other things about the expedition. He remembered the encounters with the Indians as they crossed the country, the songs he played for them on his fiddle and the songs that the explorers sang and danced to as they crossed the continent. The stories come alive as Dan uses his bow as a rifle and his feet as the drums, sometimes tapping out a rhythm with bones or blasting away on a tin horn.

Like Cruzatte, Dan has crossed the continent in his life: born in Michigan, raised in Massachusetts, he finally settled in California with his wife and four children. He started playing the violin when he was five years old, taking lessons until the age of twelve, when he set it aside for a few years. In his early twenties, he took it up again, but no more as a violin. It became a fiddle in his hands. He is not bound to any particular style, however, and says, "I believe that all fiddle players come to the instrument for their own unique and personal reasons, some because they're moved by hearing a particular fiddler or a particular style, some because, like me, they just love the sound of the instrument."

...

In recreating the sound of Cruzatte, Dan uses an old handmade fiddle outfitted with gut strings, which he gets from Curtis Daily at Aquila USA in Portland, Oregon. Played held to his chest instead of chin, the fiddle lacks a chin rest because "Pierre wouldn't have had one." This also helps Dan sing as he fiddles. He uses a specially made baroque-style bow handcrafted by Neil Hendricks of Early Strings in Reno, Nevada. "Mr. Hendricks made exactly what I was looking for. He even made me a bow out of Osage Orange, a wood that no American citizen had seen before Lewis & Clark ventured forth. The French name for Osage Orange is bois d'arc, or 'wood of the bow.' Of course, they were talking about a different sort of bow, but I like the connection."

Singing while fiddling is not an easy thing to do, and Dan does this very well, although it was not always a part of his act.

"When I first started doing the show, I didn't sing and play at the same time. I did all the songs a cappella. Carl Weintraub, an actor/storyteller and the artistic director of the company 'We Tell Stories,' agreed to take a look at my Cruzatte program and advise me on ways to improve it. Among the many suggestions he gave me -- suggestions which, by they way, changed the program from being barely watchable to being where it is today -- he told me that, 'You have to sing and play at the same time.'

"'But I can't sing and play at the same time,' I assured him.

"'Well, you have to sing and play at the same time.'

"So I started to try to sing and play at the same time. This was rather difficult for me, particularly using the standard, under-the-chin violin hold -- not impossible, though. While I sang, I just played chords on the fiddle. I managed to do it, but it felt incredibly unnatural. At one point, however, while rehearsing the show in the garage for the chalk faces I drew on the back of our garage door and a stuffed Barney doll in a lawn chair, the fiddle slipped down to my chest. Maybe I was tired, I don't know. But I immediately saw how holding it that way made sense for Cruzatte, not just because it's much easier to sing while holding the fiddle that way, but it's much easier to dance while holding the fiddle that way, too. It also tells the audience, from the moment Cruzatte comes on stage, that he's a fiddler and not a violinist. And it also allows Cruzatte to make more direct contact with the audience. The fiddle is not as much in the way as it is when using the standard hold."

As part of the performance Dan dances his way into the audience while playing the fiddle and singing -- not an easy task at all!

"I learned the clogging-while-walking from Gary Francisco, otherwise known as Disneyland's Farley the Fiddler. It actually wasn't that hard to get the clogging. The trick was introducing the skills gradually. First, you learn the basic step; then you add the fiddle, but just simple bowings on open strings; then you add more complicated bowings, but still just on open strings; then you can start playing familiar tunes. Holding the fiddle the way I do for Cruzatte, down on my chest rather than under my chin, makes it much easier to dance and play at the same time.

"Taper du pieds, the clogging-while-sitting, is quite a bit different from the clogging-while-walking. Donna Hebert taught me how to do it. I first heard it on a recording of Jean Carignan, the remarkable French Canadian fiddler, more than twenty years ago and tried to imitate what I heard. I had no success, though every few years I'd try to get it. Finally, when I started putting together the Cruzatte show, I knew that I had to find outside help. Donna explained to me how it worked and wrote it out in music notation. Again, breaking it down into the same parts that I broke down the other sort of clogging made it fairly easy to pick up once Donna got involved."

...

[Beverley Conrad is a fiddler and storyteller from Pennsylvania. See her ad on this page or her website at www.fiddlerwoman.com]

 

Dorado and Samson Schmitt at Birdland; Photo: John Verity

The Spirit of Django Returns to New York City: An Interview with Dorado Schmitt during New York's Django Fest 2002

By Peter Anick

It was fifty years ago that the music world mourned the loss of Django Reinhardt, the celebrated Gypsy guitarist who created a new genre of music that combined American jazz with European Gypsy string music. In the half century since, his musical legacy has been kept alive by fellow Manouche musicians who reverently pass down his style of playing from father to son. Always careful to preserve the "spirit" of Django, each generation of players has expanded the repertoire and incorporated new influences into the genre. A number of these Manouche musicians have achieved legendary status in their own right, but they have rarely traveled too far from their roots, preferring to play at family gatherings, regional festivals and local cafes. As a result, much of the best Gypsy jazz has seldom been heard in person outside certain regions of France, Germany, and Holland.

This state of affairs has been changing recently, thanks to a few dedicated promoters who have been working to introduce contemporary Gypsy jazz to worldwide audiences. New York audiences can be thankful for the efforts of Stratta-Philips Productions, which for the past three years has held a Django Festival at New York's famous Birdland jazz club on 44th Street. The list of performers there reads like a who's who of jazz manouche: Biréli Lagrène, Babik Reinhardt, Boulou and Elios Ferré, Jimmy Rosenberg, Florin Niculescu Last November's roster included Dorado Schmitt, one of the rare icons of Gypsy jazz who is equally at home on guitar and violin. A prolific composer, many of his tunes are now standards of the genre. If you have seen Tony Gatlif's movie "Latcho Drom," then you may recall Dorado from the scenes shot at the Gypsy pilgrimage in the French beach town of Les Saintes-Maries de la Mer. The "Tchavolo Swing" that he fiddles in the film is becoming a favorite among American "Gypsy jazz" bands.

The New York Django Festival is set up as a week-long series of concerts, pairing up European headliners with American jazz artists. This creates an atmosphere reminiscent of the '30s and '40s, when American jazzmen visiting Paris would seek out opportunities to jam with Django. I ordered a portabella mushroom sandwich and sat back to enjoy the opening act of guitarist Angelo Debarre and accordion phenomenon Ludovic Beier. Their rapid- fire exchanges left the audience breathless, and I'll bet there were enough dropped jaws in the place to interfere with many a meal. Dorado Schmitt, accompanied by his son Samson, started out his set on guitar, charming the audience with an intimate ballad entitled "New York in November." Then, with a crash of chords, he launched into a scorching rendition of the Gypsy classic, "Dark Eyes." With his broad-brimmed hat, bright red suit, thin mustache and sly smile, he looked every bit the guitar wizard. Phrases rolled off his fingers with ease, sometimes intense, sometimes humorous, but always melodic and full of joy. Before switching to violin, he let his son take the solo spotlight for a number. The twenty-three-year-old Samson proved to be a fine guitarist himself, clearly showing the influence of his father while adding a few twists of his own.

The evening ended with a fiery jam including fellow headliners Angelo and Ludovic, as well as American Fred Weiss on flute and saxophone. In the presence of the sax, Dorado's violin took on a horn-like attack, with wild chromatic phrases and darting arpeggios that climbed the fingerboard. For an encore, Dorado suggested they play the Gypsy standard "Minor Swing." Apparently Fred had never played the tune before and was about to make another suggestion, but it was too late. Dorado bowed the introductory notes and the band broke into full swing. To give Fred time to get his bearings, Dorado graciously improvised one chorus after another until Fred, listening intently to pick up the changes, finally nodded that he was ready to give it a shot. The result was one of the hottest renditions of this old chestnut that I'd heard in a long time. Django Fest's goal of promoting inter-cultural chemistry had succeeded again!

I made an appointment to interview Dorado the following day and we ended up chatting in the hotel lobby, with his wife Gabriella helping me out with the occasional hard-to-translate French phrase and his son Samson accompanying him on guitar. Between musical selections, I pieced together the story of his life.

He was born into a musical family in the Lorraine region of France in 1957. He might well have become an accordion player had it not been for competition from his twin sister: "My father had a small accordion. I had a twin sister who also wanted to play the accordion and we fought over it. My father got angry and he said 'We'll cut the accordion in two and you can each have a half.' So after that, I took up the guitar. It was my father who taught me the guitar, since he played both violin and guitar." That was at age seven. His father, who played the traditional csardas on the violin, steered him away from Santana and Jimi Hendrix and towards the music of Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. "My father kept insisting, 'You are Manouche. You have to study Django! He is the master.'"

I asked him how a young boy goes about learning this style, which requires tremendous technique. "You have to listen to a lot of Django Reinhardt and you must love the music. You must have the willpower as well. Because the music of Django is very energetic. You have to have a lot of physical strength." He recalled that the first of Django's solos that he tackled was "Nuages." "Every day I listened to his solo and tried to pick out a little bit of it."

By the age of twelve, Dorado was playing at local Gypsy festivals and in 1978 he started his own group, the Dorado Trio, along with brothers-in-law Gino Reinhardt and Hono Winterstein. By this time, he had taken up the violin as well, modeling his approach on that of Stéphane Grappelli. With the addition of guitarist Claudio Fawari to the group, he could alternate between guitar and violin. The group was well received throughout Europe, making several recordings, one of which topped the German jazz charts. But his career was almost derailed by an automobile accident that left him in a coma with multiple fractures.

Remarkably, thanks to operations, physical therapy and sheer willpower, he was able to take up the guitar and violin again and a few years later was back on the concert stage. It was around this time that filmmaker Tony Gatlif was planning the Gypsy music documentary "Latcho Drom."

...

Around the same time as "Latcho Drom," Dorado was featured in other films, "Les Fous de Django" and "Nuages." In 1995, his group recorded a new album, Parisienne, which contained his latin-tinged "Bossa Dorado" that has since become one of the most- played tunes in the modern Gypsy jazz repertoire. Two years later, the untimely death of his bass player Gino dampened his enthusiasm for performing. Nevertheless, he continued to teach his son Samson, who was by then becoming quite an accomplished guitar player in his own right. I asked Samson what it was like to learn from his father.

Sampson: He is a very good instructor. He has passed on all his knowledge.

Do you learn primarily by playing pieces, practicing arpeggios, or what?

To play this music, one must already be Manouche. Among us, the music is in the blood. Still it's quite tricky, especially "la pompe" (the rhythm) for accompaniment. The speed, for example, in "Les Yeux Noirs" (Dark Eyes). [They demonstrate with a few choruses of "Dark Eyes," taken at a rapid clip. To maintain a solid rhythm accompaniment at such a pace for a long time is clearly physically demanding.]

The rhythm is very important for the soloist. It must be very square, like a metronome.

­­

In 1999, Dorado and Samson teamed up to tour together. Last year, Samson released his first CD. Entitled Djieske, which means "from the heart," it features the young virtuoso violinist, Timbo Mehrstein, who, like Samson, has benefitted from the tutelage of Dorado. Bassist Jean Cortes and rhythm guitar veterans Hono and Popots Winterstein round out the group. Dorado himself plays on several selections and has contributed four new compositions. I expect that some of these new tunes will become standards, as they have that elusive quality that makes them stick in your head after one or two listenings. Particularly memorable for me are the evocative ballad "New York in November" and the playfully moody "Paris sous la Pluie" (Paris in the Rain), both of which have an almost visual quality to them. Samson, following in his father's footsteps, also displays a knack for composition on the CD. Three of his tunes are featured, and they confirm that jazz manouche is entering the 21st century in very competent hands.

...

The last few years have seen Dorado receive a lot of the recognition that he richly deserves. In 2000, he was invited to play in Liberchies, Belgium, Django's hometown, where he was awarded the prestigious "Euro-Django" prize. He was selected to host the Django Reinhardt Gypsy Festival in Fontenay sous Bois, Paris. And, of course, he made his first appearance in America at the 2001 Django Festival in New York City. Fortunately for those of us on this side of the pond, more appearances are planned ­­ in San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. On July 23rd, he will be back in New York for a Lincoln Center concert aptly titled "The Spirit of Django, 50 Years After His Death." If you have a chance to catch any of these upcoming shows, you owe it to yourself to sample some of the best jazz manouche that has ever reached these shores.

[Fiddler Magazine wishes to thank Pat Philips, Gabriella Franziska Leneutre, and Bernard Spaeth for their help with this article. Thanks also to Frank Forte and John Verity for the use of their photos. For more info on future Django Festivals and the upcoming Spirit of Django concert, contact Pat at Stratta-Philips Productions (tel: 212 744-8836, email: patmusic2@aol.com). For online information about Dorado and Samson, there is now a web site at http://dorado.schmitt.free.fr/ which has concert and discography information, including tune samples.]

[Peter Anick, co-author of Mel Bay's "Old Time Fiddling Across America," plays fiddle and mandolin with the Massachusetts-based "jamgrass" band Acoustic Planet.]

For full versions of these articles, please visit Fiddler Magazine store to order back issues.