Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions (2 page)

“His grandfather had made dulcimers. Brant's instruments had diamond-shaped sound holes. He used to sell his dulcimers for $12.00. Then he raised his price to $12.50. He explained that it was to cover inflation! Brant had a small model that he used to put on a table and play with a bow. He said his grandfather used to play that way.”

In the early 1970s, Dr. Gainer continued, he was a judge at a fiddler's convention at the State Forest Festival in Elkins, West Virginia. The participants included about 30 traditional West Virginia fiddlers. Dr. Gainer brought a Brant dulcimer with him to the convention. None of the fiddlers had ever seen one.

When Dr. Gainer and I finished our conversation, I hung up, and spent a few moments looking out the window. “It's going to be a long trail!” I thought to myself. This book describes some of the things that happened and some of the things I learned on the trail of the dulcimer's history. I hope you enjoy the traveling as much as I did!

The dulcimer comes to us out of the mists of the Appalachian mountain past. Prior to the post–World War II urban folk revival, its craftsmanship and musical traditions were principally centered in the Allegheny, Blue Ridge, and Cumberland mountains. The identity of most makers prior to the 20th century is unknown.

Dissemination of the dulcimer increased rapidly after World War II, with dulcimer-making and -playing moving into the national musical mainstream as part of the urban folk revival. For enthusiasts, the beautiful handmade instrument proved to be irresistible. In the hands of skilled craftspeople, the dulcimer underwent changes and modifications to increase its musical capabilities, while excited players created versatile new playing techniques. At a dulcimer workshop I attended in the 1990s, one class learned to play Pachelbel's
Canon
in four parts on an instrument whose capabilities, a generation earlier, had scarcely extended beyond “Sourwood Mountain.”

Today, many music stores carry one or a few dulcimers, along with recordings and instruction books. Dulcimer festivals, teaching programs, and clubs thrive throughout the country. Classroom groups and other groups such as Boy and Girl Scout troops can purchase cardboard dulcimers, which produce remarkably good sound, for group instruction. Wal-Mart sells a dulcimer that is made in China.

As the dulcimer grew in popularity, curiosity about its history also grew. The instrument was as mysterious as it was beautiful. Our knowledge of the history of such folk music instruments as the guitar, banjo, fiddle, and mandolin is well supported by printed and written records, but there are no comparable resources for the dulcimer. Its history is that of an American folk art. By the time anyone became seriously interested in discovering the dulcimer's history, most of it had been lost.

A lot of what we have learned since I talked to Patrick Gainer (see the prologue) reflects the operation of a busy, happy “jungle telegraph.” Enthusiasts have combed the mountain world; sought out friendly mountain people who knew where something might perhaps be learned or found; made endless trips to flea markets with never-flagging hope that was rewarded with a big thrill perhaps once or twice in a dozen years; stretched meager assets to buy old dulcimers from owners and antique dealers, at auctions and on eBay; and busily exchanged information by phone and email. The jungle telegraph provided much of the information in this book.

At the outset, a clarification is needed. The word
dulcimer
describes two instruments that are not musically related. No one knows why both instruments have the same name. One is now known as the hammered dulcimer, the modifying adjective added in modern times to distinguish it from the dulcimer of the Appalachians, which is the subject of this book.

Regarding the name of the Appalachian dulcimer, folklorist Charles Seeger speculated, “What more attractive name could have been found for the delicate instrument by the hard-bitten, Bible-reading lot of pioneers who found in music almost the sole recreation of their secluded lives? Is it not sanctioned by Holy Writ?” And in fact, the word
dulcimer
appears in the King James version of the Bible (Daniel 3:10). We'll discuss this below.

The hammered dulcimer is a trapezoid-shaped instrument, with many courses of strings passing over one or two bridges. The strings are struck with hammers held in each hand. An excellent, illustrated book on that instrument,
The Hammered Dulcimer: A History
by Paul M. Gifford, has been published by Scarecrow Press in its American Folk Music and Musicians Series (no. 5).

This type of instrument was brought to America from Europe during the colonial period. In the United States, hammered dulcimers were made in small shops in places such as New York and Michigan. In the 1890s, the Sears Roebuck catalog offered hammered dulcimers for $20. However, they fell into relative disuse during the 20th century and were not rediscovered until the 1970s. Like the type of dulcimer that is the subject of this book, the hammered dulcimer is enjoying a renaissance today, with skilled makers and players active throughout the country.

As noted above, the word
dulcimer
appears in the King James version of the Bible, and this has sometimes been cited as an authority for the antiquity of the Appalachian dulcimer. However, there is a double error here. First, the Bible refers to the
hammered
dulcimer, which was well known in Elizabethan England. Second, it is a mistranslation of the Greek word
symphonia
(a form of bagpipe).

As with the hammered dulcimer, the other type of dulcimer did not acquire a modifying adjective until the folk revival, when the awareness that there were two different types of instruments with the same name began to spread. Choosing the identifying adjective proved to be difficult. The instrument is variously known today as the Appalachian dulcimer, the mountain dulcimer, the fretted dulcimer, and the lap dulcimer. I have always preferred
Appalachian dulcimer
, but usage today has principally settled on
mountain dulcimer
. Since the type of instrument to which this book is devoted is fully clear, I will do for the balance of the book what was always done in the past—I will just call it a dulcimer, without an adjective.

In its traditional world, the instrument's name was and is widely pronounced “dul-see-more” or “del-see-more.” In Ohio, it has been known by the beautiful name
dulcerine
. In West Virginia, where the mountaineers have their own approach to many things, dulcimers were variously called “dew-climbers” and “hog fiddles.” Perhaps West Virginia hogs can play them!

Two features of the dulcimer's traditional dissemination stand out. First, indications are that the dulcimer was not particularly common in its traditional world. Many old dulcimers have turned up, and continue to turn up, throughout Appalachia and beyond. But by comparison with such instruments as the fiddle, banjo and, after 1900, the guitar, their total numbers are not great.

In the period 1916–1918, English folk song collector Cecil Sharp, accompanied by his assistant Maud Karpeles, spent 46 weeks in the Appalachian Mountain regions of North Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, and (for only a few days) West Virginia, amassing a great regional collection of Anglo-American folk songs. In 1932, Oxford University Press published
English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians
, collected by Cecil Sharp, edited by Maud Karpeles, comprising 274 songs and ballads with 968 tunes. Sharp and Karpeles's experience of the Appalachian world of the early 20th century was direct, personal, and on a substantial scale. In her preface to the book, Karpeles noted: “The dulcimer . . . we saw and heard only in some of the Kentucky mountains-schools [principally Hind-man Settlement School and Pine Mountain Settlement School, discussed in this book in chapter 6] and never in the homes of the people, where it is evidently but rarely to be found.”

From the early 1920s to 1940, commercial recording companies released thousands of recordings of country and “hillbilly” music, played by Appalachian musicians. As far as is known, the dulcimer was not used in a single one of these recordings.

The second feature of traditional dulcimer dissemination is that the instrument has often been known and played in certain local areas, while remaining largely or wholly unknown in nearby communities or counties. For example, old dulcimers have been found in several areas of West Virginia, including the city of Huntington (see chapter 5) and Upshur County, but Dr. Gainer's fiddlers (see the prologue) probably came from other areas!

The Appalachian dulcimer can be described as an elongated soundbox with a raised and centered fretboard running down its top. In most but not all instances, traditional dulcimers have a peg box and scroll at one end. Many dulcimers made prior to the post–World War II folk revival have three strings, held by horizontal wooden pegs. Two pegs that are usually on the left hold the melody and middle strings, while the peg on the right holds the bass string. However, four strings are standard on many old Virginia dulcimers, and the author's collection includes an old dulcimer from southwestern Virginia or northeastern Tennessee that had five.

There are a number of traditional dulcimer body styles, including straight sides and lozenge shape. However, most dulcimers fall into two groups: those with a rounded single-bout shape and those with an hourglass shape. The single-bout shape is the earlier style, with one specimen known that is dated 1832 (see chapter 3). This style may have originated in southwestern Virginia, about or not long after 1800. Except for perhaps one or two specimens, hourglass-shaped instruments made their appearance after the Civil War, in Kentucky, West Virginia, and, after the 1880s, North Carolina.

Most dulcimers of both types are in the general range of 32 to 36 inches long. Single-bout dulcimers usually vary in width at their widest point from about 7 to 10 inches. The body of the hourglass dulcimer is usually narrower, with the wider (lower) bout usually measuring 5½ to 7 inches.

For single-bout dulcimers, the vibrating string length (VSL)—the span of the strings from nut to bridge—is usually in the range of 24 to 26 inches. For the hourglass type, the VSL is usually at or close to 28 inches. This is a meaningful difference that tracks with substantial consistency and reflects separate development.

Heart-shaped sound holes are often found on hourglass dulcimers but not on single-bout dulcimers. Single-bout dulcimers often have
f
-shaped or
S
-shaped sound holes, or patterns of small drilled holes, but hourglass-shaped dulcimers typically do not.

Many types of wood were used by the makers of both types of instruments, with poplar, walnut, and cherry being well represented, and maple not far behind. Construction with two different types of wood, popular with the coming of the folk revival, was rare among earlier makers. The skill of the makers and quality of construction varied widely, with some surviving specimens being “backwoods primitives,” and others exhibiting excellent craftsmanship.

Traditional dulcimers typically had 15 to 17 frets, usually made of shop wire or broom wire, bent into the shape of staples and inserted into the fretboard. Between the last fret and the tailpiece is an open space, intended to accommodate strumming. In hourglass dulcimers, this space is usually hollowed out to facilitate the action of a playing pick, but this “strum hollow” is not found in old single-bout dulcimers.

The frets were often of uneven width. Since only the melody string was intended to be fretted, the maker took care to place the left-hand edge of each fret close to the edge of the fretboard that faces the player. But many makers scarcely cared how far the frets reached across the fretboard, and the right-hand line of the frets is often uneven.

By modern standards of dulcimer construction that utilize computer-generated fret patterns, many traditional dulcimers are inaccurately fretted. Placement of the frets was done either by ear or by copying somebody else's inaccurate fret pattern. In addition, there is a noticeable tendency for the fretting above the 10th fret—high
do
in
do
-
sol
-
sol
Ionian tuning—to become pretty much arbitrary, with the frets being close together and approximately equally spaced. “Close enough!” one can almost hear the traditional maker saying.

Audible inaccuracy in fret patterns did not seem to distress old-time makers or players. I have seen and played old dulcimers that were so inaccurately fretted that they hurt my ear, but that had heavy damage at the strumming area of the fretboard resulting from years of use!

The Appalachian dulcimer is different in so many ways from other fretted instruments with which we are familiar that we can be forgiven for believing that it is unique. But musicologists have seen it before. They inform us that the dulcimer is a “diatonically fretted zither.” Each word of this expression is important and helpful.