![\"Appalachian](\"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/files\/2016\/05\/Simcoe41.jpg\")
<\/a>Appalachian storyteller Orville Hicks contributes to the authenticity of the festival. Photo by Lonnie Webster for the High Country Press<\/p><\/div>\n
Later at the festival, I conversed with Orville Hicks, a famed Appalachian storyteller, as he sat at a booth where he sold a book he wrote. At another station, a native Appalachian showed me how to throw an axe at a mark, which continues to be a recreational activity for some mountain folk. Following that activity, I walked past a group that was making apple cider until I found the jam circle, which was popular throughout the duration of the festival.<\/p>\n
Thus by providing a feasible space for musicians to play participatory old time music, and also by contextualizing it with other Appalachian traditions that emphasize Jones\u2019s values of self-reliance and community, the Boone Heritage Festival\u2019s implicit claim that it would celebrate Boone\u2019s heritage was validated. As discussed, most \u2018folk festivals\u2019 are merely sites of decontextualized, reconstructed, and commodified Appalachian music. This festival was qualitatively different from most other heritage or folk festivals.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Musicians play together in a jam circle at the festival. Photo by Lonnie Webster for the High Country Press<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
The Jones House<\/i><\/p>\n
The Jones House is a thriving cultural and community center located in downtown Boone that provides music lessons for several Appalachian instruments, hosts concerts (both free and for-profit), displays local artwork, and provides an open, weekly jam band session on Thursday evenings. It is a non-profit cultural center that is funded by the City of Boone, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Lessons at the Jones House present the opportunity for locals to learn the fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, ukulele, the dulcimer, and flatfoot dancing, usually under the instruction of an Appalachian native, which I define above as an Appalachian who grew up in a Gemeinschaft<\/i> community in which they learned Appalachian music orally and aurally in a classical \u2018folk\u2019 tradition. [4] \u00a0Lessons are taught in group settings and cost $125 for fifteen meetings (less for children). Instruments are available for rent at an affordable price. Students of music lessons are not exclusively elementary school-aged musicians whose parents have pushed them into learning an instrument, as is the case with many middle class families that are motived by classed distinctions of hobbies. Though there were certainly several students that fall into this category\u2014and I say this not to diminish the value they get from the lessons, but merely to point out that several of these students may be pulled into the Jones House community in the same way that students in the Jalopy Theatre are pulled into it\u2014the ages of music students at the Jones House are mixed.<\/p>\n
In my beginner banjo class, there were several adults that wanted to learn the banjo for personal edification. Therefore my banjo class presented the opportunity to learn banjo amongst adults, students, and children alike, under the direction of Deborah Jean (DJ), a native Appalachian. While DJ did distribute a sheet of banjo tabs and lyrics for the song \u201cCome Fly Me,\u201d we mostly learned the music aurally and orally. In a 21st century twist on the limitations of aural transmission of music, several students took videos of DJ playing on their cell phones so they could later practice the music by modeling her playing.<\/p>\n
In Boone, thanks in part to structures such as the Jones House and the Boone Heritage Festival, old time music is often commodified and decontextualized to some degree, but it is usually treated in such a way that encourages participatory music, the inclusion of native Appalachian musicians, and it is located within the context of Appalachian values and history. Several veritable \u2018mountain folk\u2019 spoil Boone\u2019s cultural infrastructures with their constant presence. At many of the cultural events in Boone, many of the same faces are present; I felt such a sense of community that my understanding of Boone\u2019s music community verged on the Gemeinschaft<\/i>. There are few signs that these structures and the participants appropriate Appalachian culture, as we will see in Brooklyn. The interest in Appalachian culture is seemingly not motivated by the desire to accrue social capital, but out of a genuine desire to understand the culture of the place and the desire to learn how to play music participatorily. Because the Boone music community includes many different types of residents in the Boone community, I conclude that the community is mostly accessible to all local residents, \u00a0thereby respecting the history (and definition) of folk music.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
CASE STUDY TWO: BROOKLYN, NEW YORK <\/b><\/p>\n \u201cDespite his careful notation of their songs, [Cecil Sharp] found it impossible to catch the slides, slurs, and tangy gutturals of their free expression\u201d (Langrall 1986: 38).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Unlike the music scene in Boone, when one explores the old time music scene in Brooklyn, New York, one does not often encounter the word \u2018Appalachia\u2019 used as an influence or characterization of the music. The old time cultural infrastructures in Brooklyn are more likely to describe their music as \u2018rural,\u2019 \u2018working class,\u2019 or perhaps \u2018roots music.\u2019 As described in Chapter Three<\/a>, the term \u2018folk\u2019 is ubiquitously thrown around in the general American musical landscape, and \u2018folk\u2019 as a musical genre has become such a fuzzy, elastic concept that it encompasses not only Mumford and Sons, but acoustic-indie groups such as Bon Iver and suburban Seattle group Fleet Foxes. The Brooklyn old time scene is located in the neighborhoods of Red Hook, Carroll Gardens, and Brooklyn Heights, which have indeed gentrified, but are not as homogeneously middle-class white as the local folk music scene would suggest. The musical infrastructures in Brooklyn pay aesthetic homage to Appalachia, and occasionally provide ways to learn about the history of old time music, if not the larger history of Appalachia. Yet as described, though this may attempt to contextualize the music, it also adds a pedantic, academic element to old time music. This section will focus on a prominent cult of personality that shapes the Brooklyn music scene as well as two important institutions that dominate the old time music scene in Brooklyn: the Jalopy Theatre and the Brooklyn Folk Festival.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Jalopy Theatre<\/i><\/p>\n The Jalopy, which is a joint tavern-theatre venture, opened in 2004 as \u201cMoonshine Bar\u201d (Jalopy Tavern; online). Although the production of moonshine factually occurred throughout southern Appalachia, it has been exaggerated, romanticized in film, and has even been commodified: at most liquor stores, one can find \u2018moonshine\u2019 sold in mason jars that try to pass of as authentically brewed, regardless of its legal, uniform production. In 2012, the Jalopy attained its present name. A \u201cJalopy\u201d is an old, decrepit car. While it appears that this name was inspired by a co-founder\u2019s interest in restoring classic American cars (Beck 2012: online), it also alludes to the Jalopy\u2019s fascination with interior decorations that resemble all things old, used, antique. The name choices of the theatre underscore the way that the Jalopy community views Appalachia.<\/p>\n The Village Voice<\/em> writes of the Jalopy, \u201cGrab a mason jar full of beer and sit back in one of the old church pews and fall into a different age\u2014your mutton chops that look out of place in Williamsburg seem to make sense down here\u201d (Eisinger n.d: online). This critic sounds eerily similar to a viewer of Tol\u2019Able David<\/i>, whom I cited in Chapter Three<\/a> as describing that the film left him with \u201cnostalgia for a place I had never been, a time I never knew\u201d (Coppedge 1982: 42). The d\u00e9cor of the Jalopy is intended to transport the city-weary Brooklynite to a simpler era. If a patron were to look up from one of the wooden church pews, which is the seating in the theatre, they might see a washtub bass hanging from the ceiling, which as I have alluded was used by many Appalachian musicians, such as the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers, in an authentic context. Here, in the Jalopy, which is situated in a comfortable neighborhood of a global city, there is little to no context for this washtub bass. Although the Jalopy is a for-profit enterprise that does not make much money, its d\u00e9cor reminds me of a Cracker Barrel or a Hard Rock Caf\u00e9; the Jalopy\u2019s Appalachian chic d\u00e9cor serves to allude to a culture in the pursuit of profit. The past and present names and d\u00e9cor of the Jalopy therefore belie a sense of \u2018folksy rebelliousness.\u2019 To what extent can this exist within a modern, affluent, Gesellschaft<\/i> context?<\/p>\n The Jalopy has received positive reviews by respected gatekeepers of taste such as the New York Times<\/i>, New York Magazine<\/i>, and The New Yorker<\/i>. In December 2015, New York Magazine published in its annual gift issue and included as one of its suggestions fiddle lessons at the Jalopy for the \u201cyoung American roots listener.\u201d<\/p>\n New York Magazine: November 2015 issue.<\/p><\/div>\n Compared to the Jones House, lessons here are much more expensive: $585 for twelve weeks of group lessons, according to the posting. This posting is striking in many ways. Its presence in this place and time has been made possible by more than a century of fetishization of Appalachian culture and music. Not using the word \u2018Appalachian\u2019 in the advertisement, nor hinting at the mountain\u2019s history, the posting here presents fiddle lessons as a gift suggestion next to a nearly $1000 polka dot dress and a \u201csnazzy velvet tux.\u201d This suggests that fiddle lessons are an acceptable high-class gift idea. Next, the image itself is startling: it uses the image of a young white male, dressed as a well-heeled lad of a past aristocracy. Comically, he is poised to play classical violin although the posting is for fiddle lessons that are associated with moonshine, hillbillyism, and powhitetrash<\/i>. This posting serves to entice middle class families to send their children to learn \u2018roots\u2019 music at the Jalopy, perhaps as an adorable alternative to classical violin lessons. The message that these lessons are for \u2018young roots\u2019 fans\u2014as opposed to fans of other ages\u2014further reveals the classed meanings of fiddle lessons and by extension folk music in New York.<\/p>\n However, an observation of one such fiddle class reveals that the bourgeois hype about the Jalopy is somewhat forced upon it by non-members. In October 2015, I sat in on a fiddle class, which consisted of a 30-something year old instructor who sat in a circle with six children. The rapport between the teacher and students was warm, even playful, but it did not closely resemble the lessons in the Jones House I had witnessed. This was because, as I later learned, the teacher is a classically trained violinist who \u2018learned\u2019 how to fiddle a mere week before he began to teach classes at the Jalopy. His professional training and his lack of knowledge of authentic old time fiddling affected nearly every aspect of his lesson. While there was evidence that he sometimes taught tunes with the aid of aural methods\u2014singing the tune together, and the like\u2014the first step in learning the tunes was to read sheet music, as per his classical training. At one point, the teacher noted, \u201cthis tune is in A-minor.\u201d Applying harmony and musical theory to old time music is a modern, professionalized idea. Thus I have pointed out the myriad ways that this lesson illustrates how far removed old time fiddling is at the Jalopy from its original context and even from the Jones House. As the New York Magazine<\/i> posting suggests, lessons at the Jalopy have been shaped by middle class tastes and understandings \u2018folk music\u2019 and culture. This fiddle lesson session bespeaks the unresolved tension at the Jalopy between sophisticated professionalism, attempted authenticity, and even class insecurity.<\/p>\n Yet, at the same time, I caught glimpses of what I believe to be true Appalachian old time characteristics in the very same lesson. Much different from my own experiences of twelve years of classical violin lessons, the group element of the lessons was meaningful enough to steer the tone of the lessons away from the Suzuki method. Although surely not all native Appalachian musicians learned to play in group settings, the group dynamic more closely resembled the Appalachian value of community and togetherness, even invoking a community bean stringing; the young fiddlers had a common goal and listened to each other to arrive there. Also, despite the overt fetishization of old time music and the obscurity of the term \u2018Appalachia,\u2019 the Jalopy exists to create community in such an inherent way that it is difficult to argue its discordance with Appalachian values. The Jalopy is one of the sponsors of the Brooklyn Folk Festival, which is a platform that further reveals the extent to which old time music is commodified in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Brooklyn Folk Festival and Eli Smith<\/i><\/p>\n On April 9th, 2016, I attended the 8th annual Brooklyn Folk Festival, where I volunteered backstage and thus had the chance to interact with the musicians. By observing the festival during the afternoon and evening, I made many observations about the folk music community. The festival made many attempts\u2014and both succeeded and failed in many ways\u2014at presenting an authentic platform for genuine folk musicians to share their music. However, as we would expect, the furthest extent to which the festival was successful in presenting authentic musical formations was limited in that it went only as deep as revivalism, which as I have argued is inherently appropriative, pedantic, and leads to further bourgeois interest in folk music. Indeed, I attended a screening of a film written and produced in 1983 by John Cohen, a member of revivalist group the New Lost City Ramblers. In another example of folk revivalism at the festival, I sat in on an old time jam session. Compared to Boone, where old time jam circles are participatory and democratic in that everyone takes turns soloing on a theme, the festival jam circle was hierarchical. It was led by a fiddler who academically explained the origin of the base tune to the other musicians before they began to play it. For me, his explanations of fiddle tunes from Mississippi exaggerated the fact that we were in a world city, completely removed in time and space from the origins of the music.<\/p>\n During the afternoon session, for which tickets cost $25, the attendees were mostly 30-year-old parents with their babies and toddlers, many of whom wore fashionable, quirky glasses that have become a popular aesthetic in college-educated crowds. Despite the strong presence of diversity in the neighborhood outside the festival grounds, as stated, the clientele at this hour seemed to be mostly white and middle-class, if my judgments about their comportment, aesthetics, and conversations are correct. During the evening portion of the concert, the clientele became mostly twenty-somethings whose aesthetic I will describe as Appalachian-hipster: beards, flannel, suspenders, and distressed leather boots abounded. Sitting politely in the church pews of St. Anne\u2019s Church, the concertgoers watched acts perform that had names such as: Spirit Family Reunion, the Hickhoppers, and Jarron \u201cBlindboy\u201d Paxton. These names somewhat cheaply appropriate Appalachian culture. The Spirit Family Reunion, a group of Brooklyn-based college graduates, is not a family group, yet their band name taps into the prevalent Appalachian music occurrence of family groups as sites of musical production (see Chapter Two<\/a>). Jarron \u201cBlindboy\u201d Paxton, who attended Marist College for a few semesters, grew up in California. Yet he sings with a thick southern accent, as do so many of these acts, which is an obvious appropriation of Appalachian musical culture.<\/p>\n The most authentic facet of the festival was the backstage camaraderie and unmistakable sense of community. The Jalopy co-sponsors this festival, so the community at the festival is an extension of the Jalopy community. Because many of these musicians were drawn to folk music because of the powerful sense of nostalgia it gives them, to a time before the mechanical sound of synthesizers, during a romanticized era in which community members took care of each other and did not live in alienated urban areas, the musical community is highly populated with curious, caring individuals that value a sense of community. Their attempt to play music with \u2018that high lonesome sound\u2019 is a way to perhaps regain a sense of humanity that is lost in cities and in pop music. Jarron Paxton told me that most of these talented musicians do not play folk music for the money; when they want to make money, they perform as \u2018Americana\u2019 musicians, which is a musical buzz word that is apparently more \u2018exotic\u2019 and commercially lucrative that is \u2018folk\u2019 music. At St. Anne\u2019s Church, even if the musicians appropriated Appalachian dress and garb, it seemed to be partially because they are in search of the other (imagined, romanticized) facets of Appalachian culture that they feel is lacking from their current possibilities. However, I theorize that their other motivations to participate in the urban folk scene are more shallow: they desire appreciation and a renown for \u2018coolness,\u2019 which they can achieve by shallowly nodding to Appalachian aesthetics and all of the romantic characteristics that accompany them.<\/p>\n The Brooklyn Folk Festival is organized by Eli Smith, an Oberlin-educated millennial banjo teacher at the Jalopy and radio host of the \u201cDown Home Radio Show.\u201d[5] On his website, he describes his show as being \u201ca hardcore, unreconstructed, paleo-acoustic folk music program.\u201d Rendered in such esoteric terms, how comfortable would an Appalachian native feel appearing on this show? A neo-revivalist to the core, Smith is somewhat a historian of folk music. He has formulated ideas about the purpose of old time music, ascribing it similar political meanings that hybridize the original, pre-capitalist context of the music and the politicized meanings of the 1960s musical leftists. He sees the goal of his local movement as honoring the working class heroes, and he speaks lucidly about the commodification of Appalachian music:<\/p>\n By promoting and perpetuating the music of America\u2019s rural working class, black and white, you bring honor to them, to the memory of all the people who actually built the country\u2026Because the capitalists and the vampires and all the bloodsuckers, what did they ever do? Forget them. Let\u2019s talk about the everyday people who did the grunt work and created their own culture before it was destroyed by the forces of mass media and so-called progress. (Interview with Brooklyn Magazine, 2015)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Smith is also in a band called the Down Hill Strugglers, which is also a spin on the names of early commercial Appalachian string bands. A still from one of their music videos reveals that they have an appreciation of an Appalachian aesthetic, admiring it so much that their music video takes place not in their urban jungle, but in an unnamed outdoor field\u2014and leather boots abound.<\/p>\n<\/a>