Fiddling as an Avenue of Black-White Musical Interchange

Abstract

It is common for historians to view the development of American popular music in terms of the blending of African and European musical elements and the melding of folk and popular traditions. textbook designed for use in university-level classes in popular music history, for example, states: A distinctive popular tradition emerged only through cross-pollination of established European styles with white and AfricanAmerican folk music. African-American music has been the primary catalyst in the evolutionary process. Change has come about mainly through the infusion of African elements into the prevailing popular style (Campbell 1996, xiii). The well-known story of Sam Phillips, head of Sun Records in Memphis in the 1950s, whose search for a white singer who sounded black ultimately resulted in launching the career of Elvis Presley, is only the most calculated instance of this process at work. Working backward from the present, we can see this pattern underlying the development of virtually all genres of popular music, including rap, rock, rhythm and blues, gospel, jazz, ragtime, and country. Blackface minstrelsy is often seen as the first manifestation of this process, but the roots of black-white musical interchange lie even deeper than that. The earliest meeting ground between white and black musicians was dance music played primarily on the fiddle. This merging of traditions began at least as early as the late seventeenth century and has had an impact that continues to the present. The threads of this interchange are woven PAUL F. WELLS is Director of the Center for Popular Music and Associate Professor of Music at Middle Tennessee State University. His research interests include fiddling and fiddle tunes, bluegrass, country music, Irish music, and the history of music publishing. past president of the Society for American Music, Wells plays American, Canadian, and Irish traditional music on fiddle, flute, guitar, mandolin, and banjo.