It Is Not Bluegrass (and That Is the Point)
While many people use the terms interchangeably, Old Time music is actually “Bluegrass’s granddaddy”. Unlike Bluegrass, which often focuses on individual virtuosos taking solo “breaks,” Old Time is a communal experience centered around the rhythm. In this tradition, the fiddle is the undisputed king, carrying the weight of the melody while the banjo acts more like the drum of the session. The instruments themselves are even different; for instance, an Old Time banjo is often an “open back” model without a resonator, sometimes even using a pair of socks inside to dampen the sound and keep it from being too “obnoxious”.
“In old times it’s much more centered around the fiddle. The fiddle is the king, carries the weight of the tune, plays all the melody, and the banjo… is more of the drum of the session.”
From African Roots to Murder Ballads
The history of these sounds is as “creepy and dark” as the hollows they come from. The banjo itself is an African instrument, brought to Appalachia through the slave trade and originally known by names like the “banga”. Over time, these African rhythms married the fiddle traditions of the Irish, Scots, and Germans. This fusion birthed haunting “murder ballads” that have been passed down for centuries. Some songs, like “Two Sisters,” are potentially the oldest in the English language, tellings tales of sibling rivalry that end in tragedy and macabre rituals where fiddles are constructed from the bones and hair of the deceased.
“They take the dead body apart and make a fiddle out of it… and then the fiddle begins to haunt, when it’s played, the murderer.”
The Crooked Spirit of the Mountains
Appalachian music was born from hardship, pain, and death, serving as a “world language” that allowed a ragtag bunch of people to turn their suffering into a family. You can hear this history in the Mountain Dulcimer, which is considered the only “true North American instrument” and was created out of necessity by pioneers who couldn’t bring large instruments on ships. Many of these tunes are “crooked,” meaning they don’t follow standard musical timing and have extra beats or unexpected chord changes that make them nearly impossible to write down on paper. These songs, like “Elk River Blues,” which was written by a man watching his family farm be flooded by the government, were meant to be felt and heard rather than read.
“Appalachian music… was people came together from a lot of different backgrounds that didn’t have much in common through hardship, through pain, through suffering, through death and failure and they came together and created a family.”
Old Time music is like a well-worn family quilt. It is stitched together from scraps of many different traditions, it has plenty of “crooked” seams, but it is exactly what you need to keep the cold away when life gets heavy.
Ready to hear these state champions “burn it up” on the banjo and dulcimer? You won’t want to miss the full session where the Creepalachia Pluckers bring these haunting histories and “crooked” melodies to life! Watch the original video here:
