Worth a great deal more than fiddler's pay for those interested in traditional mountain music. Milnes counters many of the myths surrounding West Virginian folk culture.Įssential reading for anyone interested in mountain music.Ī gem of a book. Milnes has combined his passion for the subject and his abiding respect for the people of West Virginia with carefully researched material and his own field notes and recordings. A fascinating look at the culture that enjoys, plays, preserves, and protects that music.Īn enjoyable book filled with anecdotes, local history, and keen observations about musical lives.
Goes a long way toward enlightening readers about traditional music in central West Virginia. Has much to offer for the fiddler who would like to develop conceptual understanding of the fiddle's place in history and society. The result is an enjoyable book filled with anecdotes, local history, and keen observations about musical lives.Īn excellent step toward giving West Virginia's musical heritage its rightful place in American musical study. A musician himself, Milnes has been collecting songs and stories in West Virginia for more than twenty-five years. He discusses religious music, balladeering, the influence of black musicians and styles, dancing, banjo and dulcimer traditions, and the importance of old-time music as a cultural pillar of West Virginia life. Milnes explores the legacies of the state's best-known performers and musical families. These elements have come together to create a body of music tied more to place and circumstance than to ethnicity. Shedding new light on a region that maintains ties to the cultural identities of its earliest European and African inhabitants, Gerald Milnes shows how folk music in West Virginia borrowed rhythmic, melodic, and vocal forms from the Celtic, Anglo, Germanic, and African traditions.
While encountering the influences of an increasingly overwhelming popular culture, the men and women in this book follow age-old patterns of folklife and custom, making their own music and dance in celebration of them.
Play of a Fiddle gives voice to people who steadfastly hold to and build on the folk traditions of their ancestors.
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