Late last night, I decided that my new (what shall I call it?) headgear was finished. If I went any further, I might as well just add earflaps and pom-poms and then, I could join wicked_danu mountaineering in the Swiss Alps.
Growing up in Oregon in the 1960s and 70s, I some heard a lot of country and folk music. Thanks to my dad, I also listened to plenty of Jazz. My little revolution was turning to formal music in the Western European Classical tradition. I studied Music Theory with Richard Wooley, Jeri Haskins, Angela Carlson, Charlie Moomaw and composer Ileana Perez Velazquez. A lot of music theory is about connecting nomenclature to what your ear already knows. Even so, naming can be a powerful act. I used to go with my father (who was Catholic) to Mass. Prior to Vatican II, the liturgy was in Latin and there was lots of gorgeous, modal Gregorian Chant. Later at Marylhurst College, one of the sisters gave me a thorough theoretical introduction to that music. Learning to name what you hear allows you the pleasures of unexpected, out-of-context flashes of recognition. Lots of the folk music I was hearing, especially from the Appalachian Mountains, was quite modal.
The Appalachian Mountains run from New Foundland 1,500 miles southeast through . As they began to form 300 million years ago, they are among the oldest mountains in North America. They were created as plates collided. Geologists have found that, in fact, they are part of Morocco's Anti-Atlas range as they were part of the supercontinent Pangea when North America and Africa were still connected. Part of the same mountain chain is found in Scotland, from the North American-European collision. Yes, I thought Geology class was kind of fun. The Appalachias are primarily rural and very poor. If you remember watching Daniel Boone
Today, I was thinking about two of the singers I grew up listening to, Pete Seeger and Jean Ritchie. Ritchie, the youngest of 14 children, was borning into a singing family in Kentucky and raised on Appalachian music. She is a mountain dulcimer player, but hers was not the first dulcimer I heard. I already knew the songs of John Jacob Niles. He was also born in Kentucky and was a composer, singer and collector of traditional ballads. He studied in Paris at the Schola Cantorum where Eric Satie studied and knew Gertrude Stein. He was also a mountain dulcimer player and had a high, eerie voice. The Schola Cantorum was founded by Vincent d'Indy and its curriculum placed a lot of emphasis on the study of Gregorian Chant.
Here's a guy from Jerusalem, Bradley Fish, who plays the heck out of his dulcimer.
When I went off to university and met Prof. Kathy Kerr, she introduced me to Appalachian music and clog dancing. Here is a very short clip of the young Jean Ritchie and the young Pete Seeger. She is playing an Appalachian toy called the Limber Jack
Here the two now old friends, Jean and Pete, sing an Appalachian folksong together.
Finally, here are the The Rainbow Cloggers. While I have performed a lot (Turkish, Balkan, North Indian, Israeli, French), I have mostly enjoyed clogging as recreation. They take it to a whole new "colorful" level! object width="425" height="350">
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