Tunebooks are some of the most important resources for both musicians and researchers of fiddling. Many of them were compiled by fiddlers themselves, and these collections of tunes serve not only as valuable records of musical history, but also as source materials that keep fiddling a vibrant musical tradition in contemporary society. In the United States, the majority of tunebooks are documents of the older hoedown tunes played for square and contra dances as well as a range of other genres that are often considered “old-time.” Arguably, they would include reels, jigs, hornpipes, country waltzes, schottisches, blues, ragtime, minstrel tunes, hymns, sentimental parlor songs, and other genres played in a distinctive style associated with fiddle traditions. Major tunebooks served as significant records of fiddling from the Appalachian and Midwest regions. Recently, ethnomusicologists and folklorists have compiled books that preserve a record of individual state’s fiddling repertoires and styles. Harry Bolick and Stephen Austin take this approach by offering transcriptions of over 300 tunes that were documented primarily in 1936 and 1939 under the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration. Although WPA fieldworkers often were encouraged to document ballads and other folksongs, they came to pay significant attention to instrumental folk music, and we’re fortunate to have their work compiled in this important volume.
Bolick and Austin have written an excellent tunebook that is a model for similar projects. There has been a groundswell of scholarship on American fiddling over the past four decades, and despite exemplary studies of old-time string band music from Mississippi, there has been limited scholarship on the state’s old-time fiddling traditions. Many of the tunes in this new publication continue to be played in fiddlers’ active repertoires, and Bolick and Austin provide a major resource for showing the continuity and variations within this tradition. They offer excellent transcriptions and clear analysis of tunes played on fiddle and banjo, and there are links to audio recordings that allow listeners to hear what was documented over seventy-five years ago. Much of the music was likely integral to the core repertoires of various Anglo communities throughout the state, and the WPA administrators even minimized the presence of fiddling in African-American communities. Nevertheless, at least eight black fiddlers were documented in the project. Their presence is especially useful for exploring connections between blues and old-time string band music in various regions of Mississippi. Lyrics of a smattering of these selections, for example, show that the AAB lyric form is clearly evident in fiddle songs.
Furthermore, the book affirms that black fiddlers were active in regions that are now more prominently known for blues music, namely the Delta, Hill Country, and Gulf Coast. The connections between blues and country are becoming more apparent, but the bifurcation of fiddle tunes as “white” and blues as “black” was so codified by the 1930s that a WPA guideline actually discouraged the collection of fiddle tunes played by African-American musicians. This unfortunate dictum indicates why well-known tunes, such as “Carroll County Blues,” were not included in this tunebook. Fortunately, we have excellent documentation of some of the tunes of black fiddlers who were overlooked during the 1930s. John Work’s documentation was integral to subsequent fieldwork by Alan Lomax, and their findings challenge the exclusionary and even essentializing assumptions common to this era.
The historical context for the WPA work frames the writing in the first part of the book. The New Deal saw two major projects for collecting not just fiddle tunes but other genres of folk music in the later 1930s. Bolick and Austin succinctly place these folklore collection projects within the wider currents of WPA cultural initiatives and the focus on the work of key fieldworkers in the Mississippi office of the Federal Music Project. Robert Winslow Gordon, John Lomax, Charles Seeger, and other WPA folklorists strongly influenced the 1936 project. They established guidelines for collectors and organized both professional and amateur fieldworkers in this phase. Their initial approach was primarily on items and inventories, and this text-centered approach is clearly evident in the presentations of tunes recorded that year.
By 1939, Benjamin Botkin, Herbert Halpert, Alan Lomax, and others exerted a stronger influence on WPA projects, and they initiated a shift into more contextually oriented fieldwork. On an overt level, their influence is evident in the 1939 documentation, as it includes more information on the fiddlers and their music. Curiously, and perhaps tellingly, one of the richest and most engaging descriptions of musical context, however, came from the earlier project. Ruth Bass’s lyrical account of a fiddle contest in Hazelhurst reveals that there were early collectors interested in the wider contexts of the music. It would be worthwhile to peruse field notes, collectanea, and other source material archived at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and at the American Folklife Center to explore how other fieldworkers wrote about their experiences and observations.
Bolick and Austin provide good finding aids for the audio recordings that have been digitized and are available on the worldwide web. These recordings enhance the presentation of the aural tradition that they illustrate in their meticulous transcriptions. This representation of 1930s folklife is also vibrantly expressed in the photographs selected for publication and in the written documents from fieldworkers that are also included in the book. The book also includes a representative sample of banjo tunes that were recorded, and an accompanying description of techniques for playing the instrument. Although it is not a full-fledged ethnomusicological analysis of individual tunes, the description provides a useful understanding of major techniques used by musicians. These features within the tunebook provide especially important resources for understanding Mississippi fiddle tunes within a wider context of string band music and the broader patterns of musical expression in America’s southern states.
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[Review length: 956 words • Review posted on October 10, 2017]