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Show I 'They Like Mountain Music' in North Carolina r ' ' s i ? " ! 7n "',- v, f 7r$! - fT -T n i i "V 7f, 7v:f ;:lJrm " , v i-x fs - v?i" 7 v. 1 r 7r1 f f li ; : fc ! v;- i- I JIVE may be first in the hearts and feet of Young America, but the great reservoir reser-voir of folk music and dance in the Southern Appalachians is stronger than ever and spreading out of its home all over the country. Eighteen years ago, Bascom Lamar La-mar Lunsford, a farmer-lawyer of Leicester, N. C, brooded unhappily over the fact that the old songs, stories, and dances he had heard and seen in his mountain childhood were dying out. The radio, juke box. and resort dance hall penetrated the mountains and captured the imagination imagi-nation and loyalty of youngsters. Such folklore as one saw was being watered down, or caricatured by hillbilly hill-billy and "cowboy" outfits, and ridiculed rid-iculed in vaudeville. That brooding resulted in the birth of the Asheville, N. C, annual Mountain Moun-tain Dance and Folk Festival. Everyone Ev-eryone said that the people mostly old-timers who still knew and loved the Appalachian folklore would never nev-er participate in public performances. perform-ances. Only a few of his old friends came to Lunsford's first festival . . . but ever since have been joined by a growing group of their neighbors, descendants, and other converts to the old tunes and steps. They came from places with homely names as Loafer's Glory, Soco Gap, Spook Creek and Sickmill Creek. And they also came from the faraway Smokies, bearing the sonorous names of the Indian country from Stecoah, Nantahala, Hiawassee, and Cullasaja. v Asheville's Biggest Event. Now the Annual Folk Festival out-draws out-draws any event held in Asheville. Some 600 amateurs perform buck-and-wing dancers, clog dancers, and over a dozen formally organized square dance teams, not to mention fiddlers, string bands, banjoists, vocalists vo-calists and choirs. This year the City Auditorium was packed to SRO for the event and many of the audience audi-ence were returned servicemen and women seeing and hearing Appalachian Appala-chian lore for the first time. - Regular Regu-lar attendants have learned to know and love the old ballads. The festival has resulted in expansion expan-sion of interest in the old entertainment. enter-tainment. A new generation of square dancers is growing up, and WHOOPS! Improvised figures such as this put color and zip into the dance contests, but the judges are inclined to frown on such departure from traditional square dance routine, and the team that sticks closest to the way granddad did it most frequently wins. The spectators, however, enjoy these tricky variations. youngsters are learning the difficult profession of "caller." Young vocalists vo-calists are learning and carrying on the songs of the Anglo-Saxon troubadours trou-badours which have remained fugitive fugi-tive in the Appalachians for generations. genera-tions. Lunsford has not let the citified performance destroy the informality which is the very heart of folklore. He refuses to issue a program, and as master of ceremonies calls up and introduces performers as the notion strikes him. No time for the "show" is set it starts "about sundown" sun-down" and runs until the performers perform-ers are tired. Annual championships are awarded. One championship team the Soco Gap group, led by the notable caller, Sam Queen, played and danced a command per- VYf "f," ' '7' , 7xr'il7 1 This melancholy fiddler at the festival fes-tival brought his chair up to the stage so he could tap his foot on it in tempo. A chair is a necessary prop for many of the musicians around Asheville. formance for the king and queen of England. All of them are amateurs farmers, schoolchildren, lumberers, lumber-ers, mill workers, teachers, in their ordinary occupations. Both the songs and dances of the Appalachians tend to grow and change because of the casual transmission trans-mission from minstrel to minstrel. But attempts to superimpose radical radi-cal changes are frowned upon. At this year's competition, one dance team, neatly costumed, smoothly performing, with several jive innovations, inno-vations, was easily the most popular popu-lar with the crowd of visitors. The judges, however, brought in a first-prize verdict for a team of ordinary or-dinary mountain dancers, clothed in about the sort of clothes they ordinarily ordi-narily would wear to a neighborhood dance. Square Dance Contests. Most spectacular and most popular popu-lar competition at the Festival is among these square dance teams. The traditional square dance is performed per-formed by only four couples (whence its name) but in the Southern Appalachian Ap-palachian settlements its character was altered. Everybody who came was permitted to dance, and the number has no practical limitations. Traditionally, the dance master, or "caller," was a musician or spectator. specta-tor. In the Appalachians, he is the most active participant and the pace-setter. "Calling" is a vibrant and obscure art. There are innumerable figures, fig-ures, and many "callers" are reluctant re-luctant to tell all the figures they know. Many have personal improvi sations. There are, however, traditional tradi-tional figures known to all square dancers, and a lively caller with a large and colorful repertoire, sometimes some-times may be imported a hundred miles to "call" a gala dance. Some of them are "singers" that is, they call the figures in time with the music, often with humorous interpellations. interpel-lations. A real mountain square dance is no place for soulful neckers. While a light, springing, slightly gliding step is the ideal, actually it is often more vigorous, ranging from energetic ener-getic to stomping. There is little chance for conversation, because it is essential to listen to and watch the caller closely, and there is a great deal of changing of partners, with the figure being changed suddenly sud-denly and frequently. Usually, after about every four figures, the caller announces a big ring movement such as "Promenade" or "Grand Right and Left." Music, usually violin, guitar and five-string banjo, follows a lively, headlong style, (about 140 quarter notes to the minute), with the time 2-4, sharply accented on the first note of each measure. This is qute a pace for beginners, and since a set often lasts 15 or more minutes, it often leaves the 16 or more participants laughing, flushed, exhilarated, but breathless. Lunsford himself has become a nationally known authority on folklore. folk-lore. Once he sat down and dictated dic-tated from memory 316 old ballads, for Columbia university. He hunts lost fragments of ballads like a bird-dog bird-dog stalks quail, and has chanced upon many rare' songs which had been thought lost forever, but which survived in the dying memory of some occupant of a remote mountain moun-tain cabin. s |
