THE REFERENCE TO THE "APPALACHIAN" MUSIC STYLE:

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While the reference to Appalachian music is made more often, like with certain 
tracks of Gene Estribou & Jean-Paul Pickens, Jack Rose, and then also with the 
next to be reviewed item we must first try to figure out first what thos 
Appalachian style is. There are several American styles with an evolution of one 
until 200 hundred years which any distinctive guitarist at least with the best 
of it should be able to get acquaintance with ot. These genres are hillbilly, 
bluegrass, Appalachian. Myself, I cannot completely describe and distinguish the 
style enough, so I asked the “bruton town newsletter” gow to describe it for me. 
Kevin,Mark & Jim were so kind to help me a bit :

“ Appalachian denotes a geographic area, a mountain range, to be specific” M. 
“It runs most of the way up the eastern US, set back from the seaboard but 
marking a watershed from what starts to be considered the Midwest, & then the 
geological formation actually continues up through Greenland -it was, geologists 
figure, actually directly hooked onto Scotland/Wales/etc. once in the distant 
past prior to serious continental drifting. Which helps explain why so many 
Scots-Irish immigrants felt right at home when they got here. There's really 
equally significant populations of German/Austrian immigrants in the 
Appalachians too, especially towards the north -Mennonites and Amish and various 
such groups settled the area heavily in PA. What that means in action is that 
there's still a strong European peasant cultural influence in the area, 
combining German, Scots-Irish, and some northern Italian and Scandinavian 
elements as well.” K.  “They brought their music with them, and their 
instruments as well. Appalachian instruments include dulcimer, dobro, banjo°, 
hammered dulcimer, fiddle, psaltery, guitar among others, no doubt. The musical 
style is a derivation of Irish & English traditional. Ballads as well as jigs & 
reels, though I doubt they call them that. Also known as "mountain music" here 
in the USA, it is a sparser derivation of Irish & English trad, with lots of 
"twang" in the vocals. Not to be insulting, but think of it as a hillbilly 
version of traditional British Isles music. Can be very haunting and as I said 
sparse, in the ballads. The up-tempo stuff (think jigs, reels, etc) is a bit 
like Bluegrass, but again, a bit sparser, a bit closer to it's British 
antecedent than Bluegrass (which also is derived from English & Irish music.)” 
Mark
“Maybe more that what is generally thought of as hillbilly is basically a 
backwoods, somewhat hermetic derivation of the Scots-Irish and Germanic roots.” K. 
“Hillbilly : Those are the hills that the British/Irish ex-patriots settled in. 
The High Lonesome sound, influenced by Roscoe Holcomb etc etc. or possibly, in 
possession of the Gun Club's Miami since they mixed in some of the influence 
there.” Stevo
“People often confuse bluegrass and Appalachian music, though they're really 
totally distinct styles. Bluegrass really is not "traditional folk" at all (even 
though some trad songs have been part of the repertoire from its inception), but 
a popular form that developed in the 1940s and that reflected the gradual 
urbanization of hillbilly populations -it's slicker, faster, more "mainstream" 
American, and very different rhythmically (very imitative of railroad rhythms, 
check it out). Mountain music goes to the city, you could say.” Kevin 

°“Just a clarification about the banjo-that wasn’t brought with the immigrants, 
but with the African slaves, it's actually derived from an African instrument, 
although it did quickly become part of the Appalachian

and bluegrass sounds.” “It is a good example of the kind of cultural exchange 
that was taking place between different groups by the end of the 1800s. The 
common perception is that African- and Euro-derived populations kept themselves 
separate (due to purported reasons ranging from geography to racism), but in 
fact on the ground there was a fairly vigorous interplay. Dock Boggs was playing 
music clearly identifiable as blues on his banjo in the 1920s, while there are 
numerous examples of Black string bands in the 20s and 30s that sound totally 
hillbilly. Basically, poor farming folk shared experiences and social status in 
ways that transcended the obvious separations of race.” 

“A good example for it is the High Atmosphere compilation on Rounder records. 
Comprised of field recordings collected in North Carolina and Virginia in 1965 
by John Cohen, is a perfect distillation and representation of the musical 
style, and does a pretty good job showing the range of the music; lots of banjo, 
some guitar, solo vocals, and just a little bit of fiddle music.  Another superb 
collection musically is the 2CD Mountain Music of Kentucky comp, also on 
Rounder, also collected by John Cohen, from recordings made in 1959. And there 
are a few volumes of the Alan Lomax Southern Journey series that are great too;  
Vol. 2: Ballads And Breakdowns - Songs From The Southern Mountains is just 
awesome.

Basically, those 3 discs will give you a pretty solid idea of the flavor and 
depth of the tradition. If you find you like this stuff and want to dig further, 
there are excellent single discs by the likes of Hobart Smith, Bascom Lamar 
Lunsford, Roscoe Holcomb, Clarence Ashley, the Watson Family, Wade Ward, etc., as well as other good collections dating back to the 20s and 30s (I'm still 
making my way through Yazoo's 7CD  Kentucky Mountain Music box of 30s stuff, 
great but overwhelming).” Kevin

“The genre label I'm most familiar with is "Old Timey", which distinguishes the 
20s/30s era stuff from the more urbanized sounds of "bluegrass" and "country". 
Any compilation record on Arhoolie with "String Bands" and the name of a state 
in the title would make a decent sampler. Dock Boggs' "Country Blues" is about 
as "overtypical" as you could ask for” Jim

“In terms of current "indie"-type material, the only things I can think of that 
genuinely drink from the Appalachian well are Tim Renner's various projects, 
especially the Spectral Light... stuff, and probably Iron & Wine; Tim really 
lives & breathes the music from the inside out, whereas I&W uses the concepts 
from a distance in a more singer-songwriterly vein, but both can capture that 
feel. There are other folks who try to associate themselves w/the style, 
probably to try and glom some authenticity from it, but they're pretty obviously 
pretenders to ears that have any knowledge of the tradition (not naming names, 
feeling polite today).” Kevin

More info on Appalachian : 
http://www.sbgmusic.com/html/teacher/reference/cultures/appalach.html
& http://www.appalachianmusic.net/ & http://cass.etsu.edu/ARCHIVES/music.htm
http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/NilesCenter/appwlcme.html
http://www.rootsweb.com/~tncampbe/hist-bogan/amusic.html

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“Other current bands/artists that have a definite Appalchian 
influence would include:

Jolie Holland
Gillian Welch
Black Twig Pickers
Will Oldham/Palace and its various incarnations

And since Appalachian music was a major influence on what became 
Country music in the US, you could probably count any number of 
bands that have a old-timey/country influence like:

Brightblack (a new band that recently issued an album)
Early Day Miners
My Morning Jacket
Lambchop

Also, it's worth noting that some musicologists have argued that 
many British folk ballads survived in a purer form in Appalchia (or 
at least continued to be played as popular music) longer than in 
they did in most of Great Britian.  There's a pretty good film 
called Songcatcher about the "rediscovery" of British folk songs in 
Appalachia.

Here is also the Allmusic Guide description of the genre:

"The folk music of rural Appalachia — primarily concentrated in 
western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern 
Kentucky, and Tennessee — provided much of the basis for bluegrass 
and country music. Centered around stringed instruments — fiddle, 
guitar, bass, mandolin, banjo, dulcimer, etc. — and rudimentary 
percussion (if any), Appalachian folk largely descended from English 
and Scots-Irish folk traditions, brought to the region by colonial 
immigrants seeking territory and farmland to call their own; there 
were also smaller influences from other European immigrants, African-
Americans, and Native Americans. Because of the rugged landscape, 
transportation and communication were difficult, leaving the 
region's culture and music to develop in relative isolation over the 
course of the 1800s. Life in the mountains was often tough and 
lonely, and music became the most popular means of expression and 
entertainment. Appalachian folk songs were simple and covered all 
facets of everyday life, both extraordinary and run-of-the-mill — 
work (especially coal mining, logging, and working on the river), 
love, death, religion (including many traditional hymns), and murder 
(the famed ballad of "Tom Dooley" originated here). Known as old-
timey music or hillbilly music, Appalachian folk began to find 
popular acceptance during the 1920s thanks in part to its 
traditional values, which were also fairly well ingrained in the 
culture at large. The recordings of the Carter Family helped 
preserve crucial parts of the Appalachian folk repertoire, and 
helped pave the way for both country music and, especially, 
bluegrass (birthed in the '40s thanks to the work of Bill Monroe). 
Evolution of the Appalachian folk tradition was inevitable by this 
point, since the music's popularity was accompanied by hordes of 
talent scouts, opening both the region and its performers up to a 
great deal of outside influence. However, even if Appalachian folk 
is no longer a thriving tradition (due mainly to ever-increasing 
outside influence and a population exodus from the still-
impoverished area), the music is still the subject of much 
preservationist fascination, and has become virtually synonymous 
with American folk tradition." jmaxgilbert

“KMM> Yeah, good catch, forgot about the Twig Pickers.
<<blushing>> would've been a better catch if I'd remembered that, erm,
it's Mike's band, not Jack's :-\ ...
KMM> I guess I was thinking about Jack's music more in the American
KMM> primitive guitar camp, & while Fahey etc. definitely were aware
KMM> of mountain music, there's also not really any tradition of solo
KMM> fingerpicked raga guitar in Appalachia that I'm aware of...

I think that's correct, but then those folks also tend to pull out the
odd *tune* and play it fairly straight (cf the end of _Raag
Manifestos_, any random Fahey live gig ...).

As I've been reading this thread and thinking about the kinds of
examples being thrown around, I think part of the problem here is, it
*is* a pretty loose term, and it's not so much used to sort a
recording into a musical genre via well-defined *musical* parameters,
so much as to situate a player *culturally* in a tradition/ethos.

If we're going to use the word for its literal meaning, well, it's
very difficult for me to listen to sacred harp singing and not
consider it "Appalachian", but it sure doesn't sound like the Skillet
Lickers. It's kind of hard for me to distinguish the edge between
"string band" and "bluegrass" if I start looking at certain individual
records; it's kind of hard for me to not consider bluegrass
Appalachian, given how much of it I've heard in, ahem, Appalachia.

But then, I wouldn't call XX Committee "Appalachian music" just
because they were from Altoona, either.

Here's what I think is happening when people use the term:

o It's something which reflects, at some level intentionally, the
  "indigenous music" of the region: as a bunch of people have said,
  this is music that is descended, after a long stretch of isolation
  from external trends, from the music of the original 19th C.
  settlers. There's a focus on transmitting (albeit with the
  possibility of personal adaptation) a *pre-given* repertoire, rather
  than creating a body of work of one's own ... whether the music in
  question is a Child ballad or a song from the Sacred Harp.

  (Even when pop tunes started creeping into the repertoire, they were
  still "received material, transformed"; I suspect that there are
  more of *those* than original material amongst the 30s recordings.
  People who like this stuff now (see next section) would, I'm sure,
  rather that hadn't happened, but there it is.)

  To me, one of the most prominent *musical* markers of what we're
  talking about is the self-effacement of the musicians as musicians
  ... take that Dock Boggs mp3, the singing is, for all the drama of
  the lyric, almost catatonically dispassionate. What's missing is the
  sense of the singer "telling a story" by inhabiting its narrator;
  he's "telling the lyric", as if he's reporting *what the song is*
  rather than *what happened*. I think this applies generally to the
  instrumental music as well; in most music in this century there's a
  point beyond which one isn't playing the song, one is interpreting
  the song ... the thing that people are responding to by calling it
  "Appalachian" is: that point is very close in, and it doesn't really
  get crossed very far.

o I'd say that when people use the term, they're really trying to
  point to the music as a "survival", that they're talking about the
  stuff that hasn't been mutated into "country" or "bluegrass" (forms
  that were, remember, developing simultaneously  with the recordings
  we call "old-timey"). This is the bit where we talk about specific
  musical markers: aside from the singing style and the focus on
  repertoire, banjo is played clawhammer style rather than
  finger-picked;* tempi and rhythms are different (the dances are
  different!); "down-home" instruments take the lead role, newfangled
  things like the pedal steel are generally absent** (tho remember
  that "down-home" often meant "mass-produced/catalog-bought" whether
  you're talking about "original" instruments like fiddles/guitars or
  autoharps etc.); "rough" or at least transparent recording process
  (no "sweetening", no added instrumentation, etc.); group interplay
  within fairly limited parameters predominates over individual
  improvisational soloing in instrumental passages (cf trad jazz vs.
  bebop).

  *Compare http://www.bgot.org.vt.edu/video/cripple_moderate.rm and
  http://www.bgot.org.vt.edu/video/cripple_scruggs.rm respectively.

  **Although if the other elements are strong enough and the core
  instruments are front-and-center, you can get away with doing
  different things in the background; to take that Pelt song, it's an
  "Appalachian" performance of an "Appalachian" tune, with its own
  autonomous existence, co-existing with that "other stuff"
  DroneOn-ing away in the background. OTOH, muck around with any one
  of those core elements and it dies; see those early Elektra records
  (hell, let's pick on Cynthia Gooding, why not?) where they're really
  trying to be "authentic" but then that *trained and oh-so-polite
  well-enunciated vocal phrasing" hits and, well, <<barf>> ... next
  thing you know, you're on the Animal House staircase with Bluto.

  There's a way the term gets thrown around by "outsiders"* that sort
  of reduces it to (pardon me, and i'll take the fall for this too)
  Poor White Exotica; that is, it's being treated as some pathway to
  The Authenticity of Our Primitive Ancestors in exactly the way that
  the same listeners treat Burundi tribal drumming, or Picasso treated
  African masks. This is pretty much a constant going back to the
  reception of the _Anthology_ by the NYC folkies, Greil Marcus and
  his ilk, etc. ... in fact, probably the easiest way to understand
  what people mean by calling something "Appalachian" is to read it as
  "sounds like the non-cajun tracks on the _Anthology_", because
  that's what's really going on in their brains anyway ;-).

  *An insider would use a more specific to begin with.
  
  And the old-time stuff tends to sound "wyrd" to *us*, where the same
  tune done country-style probably would not, precisely because being
  "out of time" is a generator of the Uncanny in its own right.

So yes, those folks in Pittsburgh can be called "preservationist" if
you want to; the early 60s folkies were "preservationist" too, the
people who looked up the old guys and cast them out on the festival
circuit in the mid-60s were preservationists, Harry Smith was a
preservationist ... but the thing itself *is* sort of preservationist
in intent, *and always was*. "Old-timey" isn't a recent name for it,
and they played it "old-timey" in part (at some level, conscious or
un-, IMHO) as a statement of identity, an act of cultural resistance
to the economic and cultural disruptions in the region, which were
seen as invasive ... "we do it *this* way, like we always have",
eliding "old" and "self" simultaneously with eliding "new" and "other"
(yes, even as the growth of regional radio stations allowed forming a
regional "old" identity using the same tools that were bringing in the
"outside new" forms ... ain't contradiction grand?). Again, that
once-removed quality in the performance: a sense of one's self as
*transmitter* of a song which is autonomous from the singer.

But then, I'm from Pittsburgh, so what do I know? :-D ... wish Mr.
Renner would pipe up as he's probably the best person here to have an
opinion on the subject ...

PS, if you can track down a copy of Nick Tosches' book
_Country_, the first few chapters would help *a lot*.” Jim Fl.

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A few guitarists influenced by Appalachian styles are reviewed at 
http://psychedelicfolk.homestead.com/guitar3.html