The official site for the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, as well as other fiddle tunes education and performance programs at Centrum, the nonprofit center for the arts located at Fort Worden State Park, in Port Townsend, Washington.
When Larry first started researching dances in Western Pennsylvania, every single caller he knew was a fiddler. If you're a fiddler, or a budding dance caller, you'll want to know about this track at Fiddle Tunes.
This special workshop for dance callers will focus on calling square dances and community dances. It is geared towards both intermediate and beginning callers, though the level will be somewhat dependent on who shows up. Intermediate callers will have the opportunity to improve their skills and broaden their repertoires and newer callers will be able to learn to call from scratch. All sessions feature calling to live music with live dancers. The class will meet every day from 9 a.m. - noon and each session will build on the previous one, so plan to come all week.
Fiddle Tunes and Voice Works program manager Peter McCracken was recently a guest on Port Townsend's new public radio station KPTZ 91.9 FM to give a preview of the 2011 Voice Works gathering, as well as the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes.
The interview gives an excellent introduction to the artists taking part in each gathering.
You can play the file in-line, or download the mp3 file to listen on your mobile device.
We have a special project this year at the Festival of Fiddle Tunes, featuring six winners of the National Heritage Fellowship – an honor awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts to recognize our nation’s diverse cultural heritage. It is given to musicians, but also to dancers, crafts persons, storytellers, instrument builders, etc. Fiddle Tunes has hosted many other National Heritage Fellows over the years, but this is the most we’ve ever had at one time!
Dudley Laufman, New England contra dance fiddler and caller (2010)
Mark Savoy, Cajun accordion player and builder (1992)
Each of these people exemplifies their own regional style of music, but perhaps even more important, each is champion of their culture’s unique music.
Paul Dahlin
Some of the other National Heritage Award winners who have been at Fiddle Tunes are: Tommy Jarrell, Dewey Balfa, Howard Armstrong, Melvin Wine, Canray Fontenot, Clyde Davenport, DL Menard, Mick Moloney, Kenny Baker, Will Keys, Bob Holt, Joe Thompson, Ralph Blizard, Kevin Burke, Mike Seeger, and Bob McQuillen.
When I look at this list of heavy hitters, I am awestruck. These are people who have changed so many lives, including my own. As music becomes more and more homogenized, as musicians everywhere have access to every sound from all over the world, these folks who play a distinct regional style and take it to another level are becoming rarer and rarer.
What is great about Fiddle Tunes is that we get to experience the musicians "just playing" -- not necessarily performing, or teaching, but just doing what they would do at home on the porch or at a community dance. Not so many bells and whistles, maybe, but for me, a deeper experience and a much more personal one.
We've posted this year's tutorial staff on the faculty page - scroll down to see who's teaching. Beginning tutorials are geared towards real beginners; intermediate tutorials will incorporate some stylistic instruction. We'll see you all very soon!
Those of you interested in registering for The Festival of American Fiddle Tunes now have until June 3 at 11:59 PM to take advantage of early-bird pricing. For more information, please contact Hali Ransom at hransom@centrum.org.
The Festival of American Fiddle Tunes
Early-Bird Deadline: June 3 at 11:59 PM
Adult Tuition: $100 increase on/after June 4 to $625
Youth Tuition: $50 increase on/after June 4 to $475
Chaperone Tuition: $50 increase on/after June 4 to $425
One of the things I love about Fiddle Tunes is that some of the faculty are NOT full-time professional musicians; they might be farmers or furniture makers or school bus drivers.
Quebecois fiddler Bertrand Deraspe comes from a long line of fisherman. He just recently retired from fishing and gave his boat to his son, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to come to Fiddle Tunes as it’s right at the height of fishing season!
Bertrand plays in a different style of Quebecois fiddling than what we’ve had at Fiddle Tunes in the past – it’s a style that is unique to the Magdalen Islands, where Bertrand was born and still lives. The islands form an archipelago right smack in the middle of the St. Lawrence Bay, 50 miles by boat from anywhere! This is one of the places that the original Acadians (who became the Cajuns after settling in Louisiana) retreated to, where the British didn’t come after them.
Here’s a description of Bertrand by National Geographic writer Kennedy Warne, who plays fiddle and was in the Magdalen Islands investigating harp seals:
“Bertrand was amazing. He would lean forward on his chair, say something like "'Ere is a tune I learned from a woodcutter," and start into some soulful melody that gradually increased in volume and speed until both his legs pounded up and down on the wooden floor, beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, and the musical equivalent of sparks flew from his bow.”
Thirty five years ago, nearly to the day, my life was changed forever by a performance of Cajun music by Dewey and Rodney Balfa, Marc Savoy, and Ally Young. Why that music got to me in that way, I’ll never know – it is one of the beautiful mysteries of the power of music. Marc is of course most famous for his accordion playing and building, but on this tour (we’re talking about way back in 1976, when I was 21 years old) he was playing second fiddle, because the elder Balfa brother, Will, didn’t want to travel. So there we are, on the floor of the big hall at San Diego State, sitting right in front of the stage, and Dewey Balfa and Marc Savoy are playing fiddles and I’m crying my eyes out, feeling that my whole life is about to undergo a huge shift. Which it did.
We started making trips to southwest Louisiana to visit and learn from the musicians there – I sometimes wonder if they ever regretted being so open-hearted with us – they certainly told everyone they met wherever they went (and the performance I saw was at the end of a national tour) to come down to Louisiana and visit. It was on our first trip to Cajun country that we first met Michael Doucet.
At that time, there were just a handful of young people from southwest Louisiana who were interested in Cajun music, and the undisputed leader of them was Michael Doucet. His fire and dedication, his insistence on having the music be part of a living breathing tradition (not a museum piece), and his musical creativity – these are qualities Michael shares with the greatest of Cajun fiddlers, Dennis McGee and Dewey Balfa. I think it is no accident that Michael studied with both of them, but he did exactly what they did: took the music that had been passed on to him, and both preserved and changed it at the same time, putting his own stamp on the music.
On that same first trip, we got to know Ann Savoy, by that time she and Marc were married and living in their beautiful old home. Ann is a marvel – an unassuming but killer strong rhythm guitarist, the possessor of a voice with a beautiful timbre, a treasure house of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Cajun songs, from centuries-old traditional ballads to dance hall favorites of the 1950s, and she is a famous style icon as well. I’ve lost track of all the albums she’s done, with Marc and Michael, with the Savoy Family Band, with the Magnolia Sisters, on her own with the Sleepless Knights, and most famously her collaborations with Linda Ronstadt. She’s also done music for films and appeared in films, written the best book so far about Cajun music, and there’s probably dozens of other projects I can’t remember right now.
Wilson and Joel Savoy (two of Marc and Ann’s talented kids) will also be on hand – it is a great pleasure to welcome Michael Doucet and the Savoy family back to Fiddle Tunes!
When I checked out Trio Chicontepec on YouTube, it made me want to put on my dancing shoes and stomp around – even though I’m pretty much of a non-dancer.
There is something that you can absorb about a traditional style by dancing to the music, trying to move the way the genuine people move, walking in their shoes in a way – just as you absorb some important aspects of a traditional music by listening to the way the musicians speak – the lilt of their voices, the way their voices rise and fall plays into the way the music is phrased, even for instrumental music.
Rolando “Quecho” Hernandez, founder and patriarch of the group, is truly a fiddle virtuoso, with cascades of elaborate flowery notes, but his music sounds like fun, and the vocal harmonies are wonderful. He started Trio Chicontepec in the 1950s and they’ve played all over the globe, but they also have a music school in Chicontepec where kids and adults of all ages come to learn how to play the fiddle and the jarana.
They are super-welcoming people who will encourage you to express yourself and take part in the festivities, whether by playing a tune or by dancing. There is a saying “El que lo pida, lo baila” – whoever asks for the tune, has to dance it – so I hope that folks will not be shy about making requests!
Bobby Hicks is the king of harmony bluegrass fiddling. He is one of a very small handful of fiddlers still alive and actively playing, who worked with the father of bluegrass music, Bill Monroe – you’ve heard Bobby’s fiddling on classic instrumentals like “Wheel Hoss,” “Big Mon,” “Roanoke”. These are tunes with two and sometimes three fiddles, playing in perfect harmony with plenty of grit and groove.
Bobby joined the Bluegrass Boys as a bass player at the age of 21, and switched over to fiddle after Gordon Terry was drafted. He played with Bill Monroe until early 1960, then went on to play with various country music stars including Mel Tillis and Porter Wagoner, then 21 years with Ricky Skaggs.
His honors include five Grammy awards, 3 gold records, 8 IBMA (Int’l Bluegrass Music Assn’) awards, etc. etc. After more than 50 years in the fiddle business, Bobby is still playing great and has also been actively teaching, so if you are interested in learning bluegrass/Texas swing fiddle with lots of double stops, he’s your man!
