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Inter-related issues that continue to be relevant to the
CTM include questions of what counts as “traditional” music,
the definition of the region whose traditions the festival
is representing, and how to adequately represent the
diversity of traditions found in the region. Race issues
are addressed in these questions, but gender in the CTM
is one that gets little overt attention.
What Counts As Traditional Music
Throughout the Celebration’s history, the tension
between presenting traditional musicians that are not well
known and having headliners that will attract a wide audience
has not been resolved. The Traditional Music Committee
was not always in agreement as to what constituted the
traditions or who represented the traditions. The committee
clearly wanted to represent mountain traditions in their
diversity, but did not want to include much Bluegrass or
recent, composed music, so the notion of how much change
could be tolerated remained contested.
While it often remained unstated, it was the traditions
of the Appalachian region that were typically represented.
The organizers, however, often stretched their ideas of
the region’s boundaries to make sure a good variety
was presented, particularly to include African American
musicians that represent the musical culture traditional
to the Appalachian region. For this, then, they often included
artists from Atlanta or Washington, D.C. if their music
was traditionally linked to the region.
Race in the CTM
African American musicians have been represented at the
festival most years: 1974-1978, 1980-1984, 1986-1991, and
1994-2004 (all years except 1979, 1985, 1992, 1993, and
2005). The styles of music played by these performers include
guitar and harmonica (and vocal) blues; old time string
band music; country blues; gospel; and balladry.
In some cases, there has been an attempt to link black
and white music from the region together. For example,
Joan
Salmon-Campbell, a minister from Washington, D.C. who
was invited to perform in the 1977 CTM while she was on
campus for another event, introduced her rendition of “Black
is the Color” in this way:
I’ve done lots of festivals, but this is the first
time I’ve done an Appalachian festival, and I’m
delighted to participate, because you made me do some homework.
I am delighted to find out that a lot of the traditional
music of my people really come out of and feed a lot of
the music we’ve been singing tonight, especially
the music that this gentleman (Cliff Carlisle) just finished
playing.
Ed
Cabbell, a scholar, singer, and founder of the John
Henry Memorial Festival in West Virginia, was on the CTM
schedule in 2000 and 2001. In 1978, he introduced “Uncle” Homer
Walker, a fine “pre-blues” banjo player who
sang and played some songs from slavery times and was one
of the musicians that worked very actively with the John
Henry Festival:
…one of the things we try to do here, seeing he’s
sitting here, now with Uncle Homer playing the banjo, is
to make an awareness of blacks in the mountains and the
kind of music that we have done along with everybody else
in the mountains since we’ve been over in here. Since,
according to my research, about 1716 in what is now called
West Virginia, so our heritage goes back about as long
as anyone else’s in the mountains. And Uncle Homer
is going to do a few standard tunes here on the banjo.
Ed Cabbell takes pains to normalize “Uncle” Homer’s
performance and his repertoire by placing him “along
with everybody else in the mountains” and characterizing
his banjo tunes as “standard,” even though
Mr. Walker’s style is somewhat more free-flowing
than many white banjo players and he performs songs learned
from slave traditions.
Several other performers might be considered to be “cross-over” performers,
with repertoire and styles that are shared by many white
musicians. Bill
Livers was a fiddler and singer from Owen
County, Kentucky that benefited from the folk revival – he
was “discovered” by young, white, urban “back-to-the-landers” in
the 1970s and enjoyed a burst of musical activity late
in his life. While he was technically from outside Appalachia,
he was a Kentucky native and played many tunes also common
in white repertoires. Sparky
Rucker, a singer, banjoist,
and guitarist from Knoxville, Tennessee, was a frequent
performer at the CTM (1975, 1976, 1981, 1986, 1994, and
2002) and presented the 1994 Symposium on “Civil
War Music.” His music includes a mixture of blues
and gospel styles, as well as old time and country. Earl
White, fiddler and founding member of the Green Grass Cloggers,
performed in 2004 and spent several days on campus speaking
with students about his experiences. Part of his presentations
included discussions of being African American in a musical
scene and type of music (old time string band music) most
often connected with white musicians.
There have been many blues guitarists in the CTM line-up,
the majority of whom are African American. The
Foddrell Brothers performed in 1978, 1982, and 1983, one of whom
is the proud parent of three Berea College alumni. Nat
Reese, from Princeton, WV, plays “a mixture of country
blues and Delta blues” and performed several times – in
1980, 1990, 1991, 1998 – and will return in 2006.
Some of the performers were from admittedly marginal areas
of the region, but represent the black tradition of the
region: Etta
Baker, only one of two African American women
to perform at the festival, is from the Piedmont of North
Carolina (Morganton) and performed in 1983; Buddy
Moss,
from Atlanta, GA and Washington, DC (1978); Robert “Bud” Garrett (1984); Drink
Small from Columbia, SC (1980); Moses
Rascoe in 1989 (York, PA). Eddie Pennington from Princeton in
western Kentucky (1999) and Cliff Carlisle (formerly of
the Carlisle Brothers with his brother Bill) from Lexington,
Kentucky, are white guitarists who also play blues guitar.
Black gospel groups performing at the festival include
Berea College’s Black
Music Ensemble (1974 and 1995),
Northern
Kentucky Brotherhood from Covington, KY (1995),
Sons
of Glory from Wilmore, KY (1996), Mighty
Gospel Harmonizers from Lexington, KY (1997), and Tri-City
Messengers from
Cumberland, Kentucky (2002). In 1999, symposium speaker,
Carl Smith from Kentucky State College spoke on “African-American
Lined Hymns.”
Much more can be done with questions of race in the CTM.
My study has been very broad and descriptive – mostly
just trying to determine who appeared at the festival,
how it was conceived and initiated, and how these social
forces worked. One thing in particular that would be most
important would be to have someone with a broad knowledge
of African American music and Appalachian music analyze
the repertoires and playing styles of the performers in
the CTM to help broaden our understanding of the diversity
of African American traditional music, both in the Appalachian
region and in America more generally.
Gender in the
CTM
In order to understand the effects of gender on the CTM,
the artists themselves can be examined. Is there a pattern
in the instruments that are played by the different genders?
For example, are female musicians more likely to be vocalists
than their male counterparts? Are traditional fiddle players
usually male? What roles do different genders take on in
the festival atmosphere and in the music world?
Because traditional music is often passed on through families
and close neighbors, family music groups are very common
in the CTM. Almost any combination of related persons might
be found, such as wife-husband duos (Annadeene and J.P.
Fraley); parent-child duos (Lily May and Tim Pennington
or Lewis
and Donna Lamb); grandparent-grandchild (Addie
Graham and Rich Kirby); or larger family groups (McLain
Family Band or Grandpa, Ramona, and Alisa Jones).
All artists have a gendered experience, and this is often
expressed in the music they choose to sing. Jeanette
Carter,
for example, sang a song in the 1978 CTM she wrote about
her experience as a mother. One of David Morris’s
1977 songs was dedicated to a man who helped him survive
his experience as a Vietnam War veteran.
In investigating the influence of gender on the festival,
I found, through a survey of the 1974, 1984, 1994, and
2004 programs, that the first festival had the largest
representation of women proportional to the total musicians
(40%), with a drastic drop in the 1980s (18%) and a gradual
increase, but still low, to 25% in 2004. The percentage
of women serving in a leadership position throughout the
years is significantly lower than the percentage of men,
with only two women, Betty
Smith and Jean
Ritchie, filling
most of these capacities, serving as emcees, members of
the Traditional Music Committee, or workshop leaders over
the years. Women, again, especially these two exceptional
female musicians, have dominated in leadership of the sacred
music portion of the weekend on Sunday morning. This is
consistent with other cultural patterns in which women
are often more associated with church attendance, and female
leadership is more accepted.
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