Everyday Music: Exploring Sounds and Cultures

Introduction

Introduction O N US HIGHWAY 175 south of Dallas, thunderheads push across hazy sky, darkening the landscape with heavy shadows. The air is hot and sticky. Huge drops of rain spatter in a staccato beat on the hood of my car, fogging the interior glass so quickly that I can hardly see. I slow down to pull off the road and skid onto the gravel shoulder. After about fifteen minutes , the storm subsides. Sun streaks through the clouds in front of me as the steady rhythm of the wipers on my dripping windshield keeps time with the music now running through my head. Between 1983 and 1988 I traveled more than thirty-five thousand miles around Texas, not all at once, but on different trips. I’d usually venture out for three or four days, but sometimes I’d leave for a week or two. I camped, stayed in motels, and visited friends. Mostly, I was alone, and the time by myself was exactly what I needed. I was hungry for the open road. I tried to blend in, but no matter how much I tried, my Boston accent usually slipped out and made it very clear that I was from some place faraway. One time, an old cowboy with leathery skin in a truck stop café even asked me in a heavy drawl if I was speaking Spanish. Embarrassed, I shook my head no and turned away. I wasn’t looking for trouble. I was doing fieldwork for a radio series called Traditional Music in Texas for the National Public Radio station in Dallas. I had a sense of what I might find based on my research and recordings that others had made, but often I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I’d stop in a town or in the middle of an innercity neighborhood and start talking to people at gas stations, or restaurants, or little grocery stores. In nightclubs, VFW Halls, and lodges that hosted dances, I’d ask questions about local music. I was looking for performers whose music was rooted in their cultural backgrounds. Whether or not they were profesTexas FM 813, April 16, 2011 2 / Introduction Trio Los Olmos recording songs in the living room of their home for the Traditional Music in Texas radio series, Fort Worth, Texas, February 1984 sionals didn’t matter. I was collecting folklore, the time-honored songs, stories, poems, and other oral traditions that had been passed on from one generation to another by word of mouth, most often through families and people in the communities where the musicians lived and worked. Everyday Music begins where I left off years ago. I selected the people for this book because they made such a strong impression when I first met them. Reconnecting seemed like a good idea, although I soon discovered many had died. Some of the musical traditions they embraced had lost their appeal. Others have taken new directions. As I near Athens, the landscape thickens with trees—pine, poplar, red oak, and cherry laurel—scattered across the sandy soil and rolling pastures of native grass and Texas buttercups. The town’s Old Fiddlers Contest and Reunion , started in 1932, is held annually on the lawn of the Henderson County Courthouse on the last Friday in May. People begin gathering in the morning. They bring picnic baskets, spread blankets, and unfold chairs, staking out their places in the shade of the towering hardwood trees on the square. By noon, more than three hundred people of all ages are in the audience. Fiddle cases lie open near a makeshift covered stage on a flat-bed trailer, sandwiched be- Introduction \ 3 tween concession stands selling everything from snow cones, funnel cakes, and homemade ice cream to barbecue beef, ribs, turkey legs, and East Texas sausage links. Contestants range in age from six to eighty-five, and the competition is broken into five divisions, each with its own prizes, varying from $200 to $500. The judges assess the bowing technique, tempo, tune selection, and contestant ’s understanding of the old-time fiddling sound. On the street about fifty yards from the stage, I see Howard Dee “Wes” Westmoreland III. He’s practicing with two of his friends, readying himself for the competition. I haven’t talked to Wes since he was a teenager in the mid1980s . “I got here in time to sign up in the 65...