Todd Jennings at Roanoke. In a couple of weeks the nearby burg of Galax will be hosting its annual Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention. For the neophytes who have yet to venture to our altitudes, the Fiddlers' Convention is a five-day music competition. Hundreds of instrumentalists, bands and dancers from all over the world show up to glorify the ethnic music of Appalachia.
Untold thousands make their yearly pilgrimage to revel in the local flavor.
This is a gross oversimplification. Those musicians who try to sneak in Tony Rice licks will forever decry Old-Time's seeming simplicity, but lovers of the form realize the beauty that lies therein. It's a music where the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. In the right setting an Old-Time combo creates an almost hypnotic sheet of sound. It's a genetic imprint of the Scottish and Irish music from which mountain music was spawned.