From November through the first week of April, a off-season workshops was held at Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site on playing music appropriate to the 1830s in open modal tunings on the Appalachian dulcimer. We used Songs and Tales of the Wilderness Road by Ralph Lee Smith and Madeline MacNeil, adding a few songs that are attested in central Illinois during our period or that have strong associations with people from New Salem and Menard County.
Before and after the workshops, which were held on the first Saturday of the month except during the holiday season, I posted YouTube clips and other information to Hogfiddle concerning the songs and their historical background. I began posting video files to the blog while teaching interdisciplinary humanities courses in blues and Native American cultural traditions at Benedictine University Springfield, and I found the technique carried over very well for the workshops.
Below is a message sent out today to members of the Prairieland Dulcimer Strings email list in Springfield, Ill., summing up the workshops:
Monday, April 4, 2011 2:24 PM
Thanks to everyone who came to our off-season workshops at Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site on playing 1830s-vintage music on the mountain dulcimer ... and to those who quietly followed the workshops as I sent out notices to the Prairieland Dulcimer Strings email list ... I've been coordinating workshops like this for several years now, and I thought this year's workshops were the best ever. That's partly due to our book, "Songs and Tales of the Wilderness Road," by Ralph Lee Smith and Madeline MacNeil, but also largely to you guys. I learned a lot from our exchanges of information and playing techniques.
As I promised during our last session Saturday, April 2, I'm sending you a couple of links ... and I've pulled together the main email messages and posts to my blog Hogfiddle that I sent out as we went along.
First, the links to other websites:
http://www.slowplayers.org/SCTLS/modes.htm
-- The Small Circle Tune Learning Session, an Irish traditional slow jam group in Colorado, put up a very useful chart of key signatures for the different modes (which explains why "D for dulcimer" [two sharps] looks like B minor, G mixolydian and A dorian), among other things.
http://www.kitchenmusician.net/
-- Sarah Lee Johnson, hammered dulcimer player and music writer for Smoke & Fire News, magazine for buckskinners and colonial war reenactors, has a wealth of information about living history and music. A lot of it is about the Old Northwest. It's a little earlier than our period, but not by much.
And below are the promised links to Hogfiddle blog posts I've been putting up, with video clips of people playing the tunes in our book along with other information. Also a couple of songs that aren't in "Songs and Tales of the Wilderness Road" but have strong associations with New Salem or people who lived there. When I taught cultural studies classes at Benedictine, I started introducing my classes with video clips like this and the kids liked them. So I decided to try it for the workshops, too.
I'm one of those people who can't learn music from tablature - I *have to* hear it - so the videos on the blog helped me. But please let me know what you think, too. How'd it work?
Here are the Hogfiddle links (most recent first). One warning, tho' ... we sort of made up the schedule as we went along, so you'll find some duplication on the blog when we didn't get through all the songs one month and I put some of them back up for the following workshops, stuff like that. And there are other inconsistencies as well. We got off to a slow start, met in November but didn't really get started up again till February. Now that it's over, though, I think the posts are almost like a table of contents or syllabus for their workshops:
April 2 [posted March 27]
http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2011/03/songs-of-wilderness-road-new-salem_27.html
-- Background information on "Clar de Kitchen," [not in the book] along with a link to the 1832 sheet music (in D, so we don't have to transpose it for mountain dulcimer) a YouTube clip and a 30-second sound bite from a CD.
April 2. [posted March 21]
http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2011/03/songs-of-wilderness-road-new-salem_21.html
-- Background information and YouTube clips for The "Riddle Song," "Storms Are on the Ocean" and "Sheep Shell Corn." A little bit about modes, too, since "Sheep Shell Corn" is mixolydian and the other two are Ionian.
March 5. [posted March 7]
http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2011/03/songs-of-wilderness-road-new-salem-i.html
-- Information about "I Will Arise and Go to Jesus" [not in the book] and a link to the Kitchen Musician website, which has a wealth of information about music history by a writer for Smoke & Fire, the magazine for buckskinners and Revolutionary War reenactors. A lot it is about the Old Northwest.
Feb. ___ [Jan. 30]
http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2011/01/songs-of-wilderness-road-daa-new-salem.html
-- YouTube clips on noter technique ... demonstrated by Ben Seymour, Jean Ritchie and "Strumelia" of the Friends of the Mountain Dulcimer website.
Feb. ___ [posted Jan. 25]
http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2011/01/notes-songs-of-wilderness-road-in-d.html
-- Notes on Ionian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Dorian Tunings. Embedded YouTube clips and background on "Cumberland Gap," "I Gave My Love a Cherry," "Sheep Shell Corn," "Shady Grove," "Old Man at the Mill" and "Three Babes/Wife of Usher's Well."
Nov. 6 [posted Nov. 11]
http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-salem-workshops-on-1830s.html
-- Some general information about how decided to base the workshops on "Songs and Tales of the Wilderness Road" and to work with open modal tunings (DAA Ionian and DAG Dorian), with links to "Tipping it up to Nancy"/"Old Woman from Wexford" (not in the book).
-- Pete
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