Strings of Life: Conversations with Old-Time Musicians from Virginia and North Carolina

About this book

This book concerns traditional music in upper North Carolina and southwestern Virginia. The historians are its practitioners. This collection of anecdotes stories and utterances came from the musicians as they talked about themselves or about other players with whom they are or were familiar. This historical-musical census-of-sorts cites and identifies more than 1 300 players of traditional music in an area that in terms of its music disregards state borders. Of the musicians who could be dated about 120 were born prior to 1870; at least 400 between 1870 and 1900; and more than 220 after 1900. The majority of these musicians have never before been documented. Of the 1 300 only some fifteen perecent are women; only some five percent are black. This book functions by letting the informants take their lead and an effort has been made to keep auctorial instrusion to a minimum.