Sunday, September 01, 2002

Keeping the music alive

This is public music, meant to be played and passed on, not stored in a museum or stashed in a vault.

By RALPH BERRIER JR.
THE ROANOKE TIMES

    Pickin' parties. Hootenannies. Jamborees. Jam sessions.

    Whatever you call them, they are the beating heart of mountain music in the Virginia hills. Whenever two or more players gather in the name of bluegrass or old-time mountain music, fiddles and banjos in tow, and make a joyful noise until the cows come home, they are keeping ancient sounds alive.

    In a world where you can hear the latest syrupy Nashville country ballads on the radio, get up-to-the-second video images from Afghanistan and watch the British cricket playoffs on satellite TV - yet still can't find much bluegrass on the airwaves - the jam session is essential to the survival of good old, down-home mountain music.

    The quaint images of the jam session are those of a grandfather showing a grandson an old fiddle tune, a mother gently strumming a banjo and singing a ballad for a daughter to learn, or a bunch of guys singing and playing at a church picnic. Lately, though, jam sessions have moved into more visible venues - public places where everyone is

   invited to join in song and dance or just listen and enjoy. Cafes, fast-food joints, college-town bars and coffee shops are now some of the best places to hear mountain music in Southwest Virginia.

    As Natalee Waters' photographs show, you can participate in or listen to a jam at least five nights a week. Musicians jam at Joe's Diner in Radford and at the Cafe at Champs in Blacksburg on Monday, at Baylee's in Blacksburg on Tuesday, at the VFW in Hillsville and Mill Mountain Coffee in Roanoke on Wednesday, at Anna's Restaurant in Narrows on Thursday and on the streets of Floyd on Friday - not to mention the McDonald's in Fairlawn, the Hardee's in Dublin and the carpet shop in Boones Mill.

    In the tradition of the old-time front-porch pickin' party, local musicians gather in semicircles and play the tunes that are as familiar to them as the English language. All good pickers know the mountain music canon. Two strangers with a fiddle and a guitar can meet for the first time and rip through "Soldier's Joy" as if they've played together their whole lives. This is public music meant to be played and passed on, not stored in a museum or stashed away in a sealed vault.

    Jam sessions are equal parts performance and lesson. Hot pickers show off on bluegrass breakdowns and the other musicians learn their licks by watching and listening. Tunes are swapped like recipes. The music becomes a chain letter that gets passed on to two people, then five, then 10, then hundreds.

    Most jam sessions fall in either of two musical categories, "bluegrass" or "old-time." "Bluegrass" was popularized in the 1940s by Bill Monroe, who built his lively, showy style on the bedrock foundation of old fiddle tunes and Southern ballads. The Monroe doctrine for bluegrass consists of high harmony singing and instrumental solos in which musicians step up and show off in the rhythmic, three-fingered style of banjo picking popularized by Earl Scruggs.

    "Old-time" relies upon the instruments, mainly fiddle and banjo, playing in unison and repeating the melodies over and over and over again with few spots for solos. The fiddle and old-fashioned clawhammer banjo - in which the thumb beats a rhythm on the top strings while the fingers flick the melody lines - conjure up a swirling, hypnotic sound that makes for great square dance music.

    It's gotten to the point that you can go somewhere in our region just about any night of the week and hear regular folks jamming on some down-home music. A musical trail runs from Roanoke to Radford, from Floyd to Blacksburg and on and on to anywhere people gather in public to play mountain music.

    It would be hard to imagine - and even harder to listen to - a bunch of strangers showing up with guitars and drums for a rock 'n' roll jam session. Mountain music, though, invites people to come to the table, pull up a chair and gorge themselves. Actually, it requires it.

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