Ingredients of Fiddle Tunes

After several years of teaching and playing at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington, Marc Savoy, accordion maker and player, said he did not want to return. 

- Dudley Laufman

"Why not?" said Frank Ferrel. "Because it is tough to bring the bayou climate, the smells, the architecture, the language, the landscape, up here to the cool and relatively new Pacific Northwest. I can bring the music, but without those other ingredients, it is incomplete. Now you take Dudley, all he has to do is describe a New Hampshire winter, and everything else is pretty much in place. Oh, the houses are a little funny here, and maybe the trees taller, but mostly it is like the coast of Maine." "Well," said Frank, "we can fix that. We have an old bakery here on the fort with a big cauldron in the middle. We'll shut the windows, turn on a humidifier, crank up the cauldron and have a gumbo going in it, and some black coffee at hand. You can have your classes in there." He did and it worked.

He was right, though, about the ingredients. Anita Best, folklorist from Newfoundland, says in the Rufus Guinchard film, "It's great that you can play your own music... that you don't always have to be playing American stuff, or Canadian stuff or French stuff. You can say I got that from here. This belongs here. The particular combination of geography, culture, and weather that produces Newfoundlanders ... the spirit of Newfoundlanders, it belongs here and is reflected in the music."

A talented person could stay in the confines of Harvard Square, never leave, and, on several instruments and the help of recordings, play music from many cultures ... sound bites ... surfing.

But the "ingredients" would be missing. Unless you traveled and/ or lived in the various places, the sound bite would be minus the "ingredients." Somebody says to me that they are an Irish musician. I say are you from Ireland. No, I am from Franklin. Have you ever smelled peat smoke. No, should I? They should get on an Aer Lingus to Shannon, and stay there for a bit. You don't have to be Irish. Just experience the ingredients.