Here’s an unsympathetic portrayal of an old-time fiddler’s contest, from a 1909 article found in the Journal of American Folklore (22:238-250) by Louis Rand Bascom (“Ballads and Songs of Western North Carolina”):
The convention is essentially an affair of the people, and is usually held in a stuffy little schoolhouse, lighted by one or two evil-smelling lamps, and provided with a rude, temporary stage. On this the fifteen fiddlers and “follerers of banjo pickin” sit, their coats and hats hung conveniently on pegs above their heads, their faces inscrutable.
To all appearances they do not care to whom the prize is awarded, for the winner will undoubtedly treat. Also, they are not bothered by the note taking of zealous judges, as these gentlemen are not appointed until after each contestant has finished his allotted “three pieces.”
To one unused to the mountain tunes, the business of selecting the best player would be unlike telling which snale [sic] has eaten the rhododendron leaf, for execution and techniques differ little with the individual performers, and the same tune, no matter what it may be called, always sounds the same.
It is composed of practically two bars which are repeated over and over again until the fiddler or banjo picker, as the case may be, stops abruptly from sheer fatigue.
Well, but did you enjoy it, Louie?
(The Bascom passage was quoted in a paper titled “A Short History of Fiddling and of the California State Old-Time Fiddlers’ Association,” by Kenneth Leivers (1974), with a distinctly more positive look at the Golden State’s fiddling heritage. The Leivers paper can be found on the web as a PDF.)
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