Traditional music played on a bowed stringed instrument. The fiddle has been in America
since European settlement, and its cultural significance is magnified by its prominence in
so many different regional and ethnic styles throughout the continent. Fiddle tunes are the
backbone of the dance repertoire in many American traditions, and the fiddle has been
pressed into other uses as well. Though fiddle music ebbed in favor during the mid-20th
century, by the later part of the century the instrument enjoyed a resurgence. The
American traditions within which the fiddle is central are variegated, yet not so different
as to preclude a remarkable cross-cultural sharing in which the fiddle is instrumental.
The word “fiddle” has long and deep English roots; indeed, the word is cognate with
“violin,” since the Italian violino is, in effect, “little viol,” and “viol” is simply “fiddle” in
Romance guise. To musicians in North America, “fiddle” and “violin” are essentially
synonymous terms, though the former is apt to be informal and the latter formal. Yet,
people persist in inquiring whether the two terms signify different instruments, or at least
different musical styles. The sense that the words signify something different reveals a
sort of cultural clutter that a little history may illuminate.
Fiddle-like instruments have existed in Europe, Asia, and Africa for millenia. Central
Asia, the original domain for the cultivation of the horse, may also be the original domain
for the fiddle with its horsehair bow. The modern violin originated in the 16th and 17th
centuries in northern Italy, where a cluster of famed instrument makers settled upon a
design for the violin that proved vastly popular. The Italian violin spread northward
through Europe, displacing other varieties of fiddles as it took hold. By the early 18th
century it had established itself as a court instrument in Great Britain, and by the late 18th
century the success of a number of violin manufactories, which produced the new violins
in quantity, made the instrument accessible to ordinary people. It thus emerged as the
central instrument in a revolution in instrumental music and popular dance that swept the
British Isles in the later 18th century That cultural revolution parallels rather neatly the
larger social and political revolutions that transformed the English-speaking world in the
later 18th century.
Americans often think of American fiddle music as simply continuing and elaborating
on the British styles and repertoire. To an extent this is true, but the reality is more
complex. The modern repertoires and styles of fiddling in the English-speaking world,
and indeed in much of northern and central Europe, took shape in the late 18th and early
19th centuries. During this period, every region participated in the revolution in
instrumental music and dance, yet each region developed a particular style and repertoire
influenced by its own cultural norms and values. Thus, the modern styles of Scotland,
Ireland, England, Quebec, and Maritime Canada, New England/New York/Pennsylvania,
and the Piedmont/ Appalachian region of the Upper South arose in the same general era.
Though the flow of culture was largely from the British Isles to America, these regional
styles can best be described, not in terms of ancestry and descent, but as cultural cousins.
There is a classic form to instrumental tunes (and for the most part this means fiddle
tunes) in the cultural style that has predominated since the 18th century. A typical tune
has two sections (or “strains”), each having a duration of eight or sixteen beats (or
“steps,” in terms of dance). The strains are subdivided into shorter melodic sections (“phrases”), which may correspond to phrasing in the dance steps. In theory, all of the
phrases could be made up of musically distinct material (abcd), but in practice the
weaving of similar melodic material into different phrases (similar to rhyme and
assonance in verbal art) is aesthetically attractive and aids the memory as well (such as,
abac). The first strain is played, then repeated; next, the second strain is played, then
repeated; then the entire tune is repeated. The same tune may be repeated in this way
until the dance is over, or the music may move from one tune to another in medley
fashion.
The relationship of instrumental music to dance is profound. The origin and history of
virtually all of the many genres of American fiddle tunes are bound up in dance forms
that arose in the later 18th or early 19th century in the British Isles or continental Europe
and spread rapidly to the Americas. The reel, a quick-paced instrumental tune in 2/4 or
4/4 originally associated with group dancing in lines (longways), dates from before the
late 18th century but became the dominant genre in the new repertory. The jig, which
also predates the Revolution but developed a large and complex repertoire soon after, has
a structure and rhythm similar to the reel but uses 6/8 meter. The slip jig, popular in Irish
music but less common in other regions, uses 9/8 meter. The hornpipe—not the earlier
hornpipe genre but a bold new form of the late 18th century—is usually in 4/4 but at a
slower pace than the reel; it marks the advent of the modern solo fancy dance, and its
phrases or strains characteristically close with three crisp eighth notes, echoing the steps
of the dancer.
The beginning of the 19th century brought couple dancing and an array of associated
genres to the Americas. First was the 3/4-time waltz, which arrived from Europe via
England as the century began. The 1840s brought two new dances of central European
provenance, the schottische (a German dance inspired by the European Romantic rage for
things Scottish) and the polka. Both were fashionable ballroom dances, yet their enduring
popularity in America (especially in the North and Midwest) was buttressed by the
simultaneous immigration of German and other ethnic populations from central Europe.
By the mid-19th century, new dances emerged together with clusters of new
instrumental repertoire. The clog was the first of a parade of new solo fancy dances
leading ultimately to tap dancing in the 20th century. The Negro jig and other adaptations
owing to the popular influence of the minstrel stage revealed a more homegrown
American trend in dance and instrumental music. By the end of the century, ragtime
augured a 20th century of successive dance styles, with a debt to both African American
traditions and popular culture, which radiated through and left an imprint on American
fiddling.
Though fiddling and dancing seem inextricably intertwined, traditional fiddling has
made use of other musical genres in America. The march is a well-known item in many
fiddlers’ repertoires. Marching is a form of dancing, but the relationship to fiddling goes
deeper: Throughout the 19th century, many fiddlers in the United States were also fifers
in local flfe-and-drum corps, and there was thus a great degree of crossover between
fiddling and fifing repertoires. The fiddle also came to be closely associated (especially in
the American South) with a class of lyric folksongs that are spritely, playful, allusive, and
occasionally obscene. Verses from these songs are often performed by solo fiddlers or
ensembles along with the instrumental tune.
Such “instrumental songs”—that is, songs associated with instrumental music, as
opposed to the older solo lyric song tradition—may be an element in what might be
termed the gradual emancipation of fiddling from dance. So was the use of fiddles to
mimic the human voice in slow airs, hymns, and other songs. But for whatever reason,
the fiddle, while never losing its connections to dancing, prompted the evolution of a
repertoire of tunes that are maintained and performed solely to be listened to. Whether on
a back porch, in a saloon, or on a stage, the fiddle became a concert instrument in folk
tradition just as it did in popular and elite music.
Several regional styles of fiddling emerged in America, and their broad outline has
persisted despite the cultural flux and interchange of the 20th century. The performance
style on the fiddle varies most in bowing patterns. Bowing, as fiddlers attest, is the
essence of fiddling, and the way one handles the bow defines one’s style. In particular,
whether one plays each note with a separate bow stroke or joins together more than one
note in the same bow stroke (“slur”), and what pattern of slurs and separate strokes are
used, creates the musical texture that, in regular recurrence, is called style.
In any region there is a wide variety of bowing styles—fiddling provides room at the
local level for stylistic variety, and most localities boast fiddlers who perform at various
levels of technical proficiency and stylistic elaboration. But there are larger patterns of
stylistic consistency that deflne regional and subregional styles. In Canada and the
Northern United States, the bowing styles reflect a preference for separate bow strokes,
and slurs tend to group the notes into twos or fours. In the Southern United States,
particularly in the Upper South, there is a preference for bowing patterns that syncopate
the musical texture—groupings of notes in a complex fabric of threes and twos, stylized
anticipations of the beat, and other devices closely resembling the syncopations
characteristic of 20thcentury American popular music. The resemblance is not fortuitous,
for evidence suggests that these patterns of syncopa-tion first emerged in Southern
fiddling, then spread into other zones of folk and popular music.
In the 19th century, both Whites and Blacks participated in Southern fiddling, shaping
together the emergent regional style. The syncopated patterns are an African American
contribution to folk fiddling—and ultimately, through fiddling, to the popular musical
idiom of the civilization at large. This is only the most dramatic example of an ethnic
contribution to American fiddling. The early regional styles were all syntheses of an
ethnically heterogeneous population assembled from various parts of the British Isles,
northern Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and perhaps even American Indian cultures. The
cultural syntheses in fiddling can be said to represent an infusion of ethnic elements into
the new regional cultures of America.
Later immigrants also left their mark in fiddling. The Irish immigrants after 1850,
populating both urban areas and rural regions, brought the new Irish style with them and
influenced both style and repertoire, especially in Canada and in urban areas of the
Northern United States. The German immigration similarly had an impact on Midwestern
fiddling, and German and Jewish musicians contributed to traditional fiddling styles in
another way through their major influence upon American popular and “classical” music,
which in turn had an impact on rural folk styles. By the 20th century, immigration had
less influence on rural areas and the regional styles rooted there, but urban neighborhoods
continued to sustain a wide variety of ethnic musics depending on the fiddle. Since the
diffusion of the Italian violin was not limited to Europe and the Americas, but included North Afirica, the Middle East, and Asia as well, contemporary immigrants from those
parts of the world have brought with them not only a host of fiddling traditions but
several that already utilized the modern violin.
The repertoire of American folk fiddling is vast and varied. Tunes are not simply
musical fodder, to be shaped and reshaped as fancy directs. Rather, they are treated like
precious artifacts, to be acquired, preserved, and rendered faithfully. Most fiddlers do not
compose tunes, but some do, both by conscious composition and by using traditional
unconscious devices like dreams. The repertoire multiplies both by the addition of new
tunes and by the gradual differentiation of tune variants until they become new tunes. The
process of differentiation is aided by the wide variation in tune titles and the periodic
experimentation with recasting tunes in different “keys,” enabling tune variants
ultimately to stand side by side in the same regional repertoire.
The repertoire of all of the older regions dates from the 18th century. Though a few
tunes may be older, they are not older in their modern instrumental form. The 19th
century gready swelled the repertoires of all of the larger regions of the English-speaking
world, but the American regional styles seemed to expand their repertoires exponentially.
The Northern and Southern styles are paralleled by Northern and Southern repertoires
with surprisingly little overlap until the modern media fostered interregional sharing. The
Northern repertoire was to an extent sustained by a vigorous print cul ture for fiddle
tunes. In the South, where musical literacy was confined to the church and the
cosmopolitan parlor, printed music had virtually no influence on the larger course of
tradition. Meanwhile, the repertoires of Canadian fiddling traditions, including the French
traditions, were deeply influenced by the pervasive influence of Irish fiddling.
The older British American fiddling tradition is essentially a solo tradition. By the
19th century, however, the fiddle began to appear in ensembles. Southern tradition
generated and lent to popular music the fiddle-banjo ensemble, the banjo being an
originally African instrument that took root in the Upper South. Elsewhere, the fiddle
began to be accompanied by the pianoforte or the accordion. With the migration of the
guitar from parlor to porch in the 20th century, fiddle-and-guitar duos became popular,
especially in the South. In general, the fiddle has been part of every kind of ensemble,
including jazz bands, and almost always maintains a lead role. The traditions of Southern
string bands, bluegrass, and Western Swing bands have perhaps led to the fullest
integration of fiddling into a larger ensemble context.
Despite the ubiquity of the Italian violin as a model and the omnipresence of
inexpensive store-bought violins (Sears Roebuck Company distributed violins from its
catalog by the early years of the 20th century), homemade fiddles have never disappeared
from the American scene. From Southern gourd fiddles through the cigar-box fiddle
(really a device for children), some homemade fiddles have kept alive the ancient idea of
the fiddle as a modest and structurally variable bowed instrument. Meanwhile, other
makers have adopted and adapted the Italian model, and their handiwork is readily
encountered at fiddlers’ conventions throughout the United States. Often the local
repairer of fiddles is also an occasional maker of new instruments. It is a testimony both
to the popularity of fiddling and to the cross-cultural fascination with the shape, form,
and resonance of a violin that violin making continues to thrive as a home art.
The titles of American fiddle tunes are a rich domain for creative expression. Some,
like “Bonaparte’s Retreat” and “Hull’s Victory,” commemorate historical events (especially battles) and personages. Many, especially in the South, commemorate places,
geographic features, natural phenomena, or the vibrancy of the seasonal round
(“Waynesboro,” “Three Forks of Cheat,” “Forked Deer,” “Frosty Morning”), conveying
through the fiddler’s repertoire, publicly announced, a celebration of sense of place and
way of life. Some are named after local persons, including other fiddlers or authors of
tunes. Many are named after women. Many are playful, and some of these are obscene
(“Dog Shit a Rye Straw”), with the associated obscene verses in turn generating playful
title substitutions (“The Dog in Difficulty”). With some regularity, the titles are rhythmic
and assonant in a way that seems to evoke the music itself. All in all, American fiddle
tune titles, with their knack for celebration, evocation, and playfulness, amount to a sort
of imaginative triumph in the art of naming.
As a popular and imagination-provoking instrument, the fiddle is the subject of an
array of associated lore. Sto-ries connecting the fiddle with the devil are widespread, and
its association with the devil has perhaps prevented its adoption for religious services,
even in churches in which electric guitars and drums are safely in the fold. In the South
and sometimes elsewhere in America, fiddlers insert rattlesnake rattles into their fiddles.
There are legends surrounding the fiddle or in which a fiddle is central. Among fiddlers,
the music connects up memory in a thousand ways, and fiddlers often pepper their
performances with associated stories and anecdotes that amount to a sort of running
contextualization of their art.
The fiddle has historically been a man’s instrument; though a few women have always
played the fiddle, the late 20th century provided the first generation with numerous
women fiddlers of the finest caliber within their regional or ethnic traditions. Hence,
much of the lore surrounding the instrument is a sort of men’s lore, and some men
describe the fiddle itself in feminine terms. It remains to be seen how the character of that
lore may shift as women become central to the perpetuation of fiddling as an art.
The fiddling contest, a traditional cultural event honoring fiddling, has a documented
history spanning two centuries in America. In the 20th century, fiddlers’ conventions,
incorporating the fiddling contest but broadening to include a variety of musical and
dance traditions, have been popular throughout the country. Also notable in the 20th
century (though largely absent in the South) is the sprouting up of dozens of state and
regional fiddlers’ associations, which sponsor conventions, publish newsletters, sell
records, tapes, and souvenirs, and otherwise provide a modicum of modern organization
and “networking” to fiddlers and fiddling enthusiasts. The continuing popularity of
fiddlers’ conventions and fiddle records, and the renascence of dance styles that employ
fiddle music, seem to assure that the fiddle will maintain its central role in American folk
music in the decades to come.
Alan Jabbour
References
Bayard, Samuel Preston. 1944. Hill Country Tunes: Instrumental Folk Music of Southwestern
Pennsylvania. Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, Vol. 39. Philadelphia: American
Folklore Society.
——. 1982. Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife: Instrumental Folk Tunes in Pennsylvania.
University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Blaustein, Richard J. 1971. Traditional Music and Social Change: The Old-Time Fiddlen
Association Movement in the UnitedStates. Ph.D. Diss. Indiana University.
Jabbour, Alan. 1971. American Fiddle Tunes. LP with Accompanying Booklet. AFS L62.
Washington, DC: Library of Congress.
Wells, Paul E 1978. New England Traditional Fiddling: An Anthology of Recordings, 1926–1975.
LP with Accompanying Booklet. JEMF 105. Los Angeles: John Edwards Memorial Foundation