What’s a hog fiddle? Why this blog?

The first question is easy to answer. The second took me longer, and I’m not sure I have a good answer to it yet. A “hog fiddle” is simply another name for the Appalachian dulcimer or mountain dulcimer. The name comes from West Virginia, where the instrument has been played traditionally since at least the 1880s. I don’t know its etymology, but I can guess: Think of a hog trying to play the fiddle! A dulcimer, let’s face it, is limited musically. But it has its aficionados, and I’m one of them. Hence the name. And hence this blog.

Hogfiddle will focus on the Appalachian dulcimer from its origins in 19th-century Virginia to the folk music revival of the 1960s and 70s, Anglo-Celtic folk hymns, ballads, fiddle tunes and other traditional music. At school and at home, my desks are aswirl with scraps of paper, half-completed outlines, photocopied articles, printouts of old stories downloaded from newspaper websites and other ephemera somehow related to music. I’ve also have published several articles in low-circulation outlets like the Prairie Picayune, the volunteer newsletter at Lincoln’s New Salem State Historic Site, where I’m a volunteer interpreter. And I have several “Pick-and-Noter Pages” on my faculty website that deal with dulcimer history. Blogging seems like a way of organizing and archiving some of this clutter on the World Wide Web in a forum that doesn’t necessarily require the extensive documentation and endless fine-tuning so often associated with scholarly publication. I was inspired to try it when I saw a writer’s journal kept by Joy Harjo. A Creek/Muskogee poet and musician, Harjo fronts a “song-chant-jazz-tribal fusion” band called Poetic Justice and plays tenor and soprano saxophone in addition to writing poetry.

Since Hogfiddle will highlight songs that few people remember and an instrument practically nobody has ever heard of, I don’t expect it to be a high-intensity, heavy-traffic website. Besides, I’m a full-time teacher (mass communications, English and an interdisciplinary humanities course in Native American cultures at Springfield College in Illinois/Benedictine University. If my Curriculum Committee OKs it, I hope to add another cultural studies course in blues and roots music fall semester). About the only writing I do now is to scribble comments on student papers, mostly “What’s your thesis?” and “Be specific.” So I don’t have the time to take on a major writing project. But I admired the way Joy Harjo can use her blog to work through tentative ideas and share them in a not-yet- polished version. I don't have a fan base to maintain, and I've been assured I never will! But trying out this new medium of blogging on a musical research and writing journal appeals to my inner geek and inner mass-com instructor. Who knows? It may serve a useful purpose. And even if it doesn’t, it’ll get some of those scraps of paper up off my desk.