Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1916-03-16
FlDDLERS L|CHTEN
HEART OF GEORGIA
Old Echoes Heard When Noun
taineer Musicians Meet.
MANY ARE MOONSRINERS.
All of Fifty Men Assembled Are Deep
DYED Americans and Are Able to
Trace Their Ancestors Back Many
Years-Look With Scorn Upon Mod
ern Popular Music.

eFn FOPUldT MUSIC.
Atlanta.-The Old Fiddlers of Geor-
gia, first assembled as clan year
ago, have recently closed their second
engagement in this city. The pride or
Georgia's heart is in her annual grand
opera, and thousands of people con-
gregate in the Auditorium every April
to listen to strange music in a strange
tongue, and many of Them enjoy it ''al-
most as much as they think they do"
But the "old fiddlers' really touch the
heart.
AS q class these musicians represent
the mOuntaineer type, long and Timber
Of body, silent, slow Of speech, refined
of feature, with quiet gray eyes, hair
parted in the back. Their ancestors
took the mountains, and the sons have
never left the neighbOrhoOd. One fam
ilv live in the same house built by
their sire more than century ago. A
great majority Of the men are poor.
Their fare is simple, their life is bare
and hard, and almost the only diver
sion is from the music of the fiddle or
melodion-that is, if the family be rich
enough TO invest in melodeon. The
fiddle is often homemade.
When the mOuntaineer visits or re-
ceives visits the fiddle is used as the
entertainer, and when the men journey
to the county courthouse the inStru-
ment is carried along to make music
and join in with other fiddlerS cOngre-
gated there, and in the hands of these
men. who know no such thing as note
or tempo, the fiddle is made to sing for
all she's worth
Inactivity and isolation have not
made ambitious men of the mountain
GERS and on long sunny days when it's
too hot to work in the fields the fiddle
is picked up by pa" for the average
mOuntaineer does not seem to take to
master the instrument till he's in the
fOrtieS. Some of the fiddleS-there are
no viOlins in the convention-are older
than the tunes they play, having been
in the family generations, and in one
instance the instrument has been hand
ed down to seven SireS. The men look
with ScOTn upon modern popular music
ragtime and opera, and nothing inter
eStS them except tunes that have been
sung or played among them time out of
memory.
When the winter is a particularly
hard one and everything goes wrong
on the little strip Of land to make both
ends meet, the head of the family finds
a use for his cOrn-almOSt the only
crop he can depend upOn-and turns
his cabin into a distillery, sometimes
running the pipe into the kitchen china
ney to put the revenue officers off the
track Of smoke. The diStiller and law
breaker is found sooner or later and,
with others, plOdding slow and weary,
he is brought before the federal judge,
who gives a word of kindly counsel
and light sentence.
The fifty men assembled are not all
mOOnshinerS however. small per
centage coming from wire grass re-
giOns, but all are from the heart of the
woods on peak or in dale, far from the
roll of locomotive or hOnk of automo-
bile. All the musicians are Americans.
They do not represent the Georgia
Cracker from the fast that for centu-
ries they have not mingled in the low
lands If any enthusiasm on the sub
ject could be raised-which is not prob
able-the fiddlers could trace their or
igin straight back hundreds of years to
their mother country