In the course of my research into the sociocultural history of Appalachia and its place in the American and global mind, I’ve been struck consistently by the dichotomies inherent in observer’s views of the mountains, its people, and the cultural heritage they’ve produced. In my mind, Appalachia – or perhaps, more accurately, some “idea” of Appalachia – has long represented a crystallization of the essential conflicts at the heart of our ongoing national dialogue: conservation vs. industrialization, preservation vs. progress, rural vs. urban, and so on. As a native of the Blue Ridge foothills, I possess firsthand knowledge of the often-devastating impact of those battles upon the region’s lands and communities; on the other hand, I’ve also witnessed the persistence with which the people who call the area home have fought to maintain social, cultural, and land-use traditions in the face of overwhelming odds.
In the summer of 2013, I was honored to hold a residency at Wildacres, an artists’ retreat in McDowell County, NC. The small mountaintop cabin where I was lodged had two magnificent views: the south-facing windows, looking out through the trees across the peaks and eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge; and the west-facing wall, on which was hung a large and colorful tapestry, hand-woven in a nearby town. When the sun had set and my workday was done, I spent each night reading, listening to the wind and the animals, and, especially, looking at and reflecting on that tapestry: the untold story of the person(s) who made it, of the generations through which the knowledge of how to make such things were passed, of the countless hours spent passing the weft through the warp with love and care. Warped + Wefted is my attempt to weave a musical tapestry out of my own personal history of and with Appalachian culture.
The first movement is based on two ballads. “One Morning in May” is a variant on an 18th-century English song, and is sung from the point of view of a young woman dying of syphilis. Varied repetition of this melody creates the primary formal skeleton of the movement. The other ballad, “East Virginia Blues” (also known as “Dark Holler Blues,” and dating from around the beginning of the 20th century), is threaded throughout the movement, first in fragmentation but gradually in a more complete and prominent form by the middle. I had in mind a kind of “Appalachian nachtmusik” – solemn, melancholy, and reflective – to mirror the sorrowful themes of these (and most) ballads from the southern mountains. The idea of evolution – a basic fact of the transmission of music in oral traditions – was central to my compositional strategies here; the melodies are subjected to constant transformation and recontextualization as the movement progresses. Another influence – the lining-out of hymns in Old Regular Baptist chuches – is evident in the heterophonic textures present in several spots in the movement.
By contrast, in the second movement, I aimed to evoke something of the ecstatically celebratory quality I hear in the performance of dance music in the southern Appalachians, especially in the string-band heritage of North Carolina and southwestern Virginia. I began by analyzing a number of fiddle and banjo tunes that I’m particularly fond of, and then set about composing several themes that maintain some of their prominent features – rhythmic ideas, melodic contours, and so on – filtered through my own compositional identity. These new themes form the primary content of the movement, but there are also direct quotations of three tunes that were primary influences in the process: “Cluck Old Hen,” “Johnson Boys,” and “Pateroller Song.” (The first two are common throughout the southern mountains; the third is an obscure variant, by Virginian multi-instrumentalist Hobart Smith, on the well-known “Salt River.”) All of this material – old and new – is subjected to a variety of manipulation as the movement progresses. Architecturally, the movement reflects the repetitive structure of these dance tunes, which typically cycle through two or three sections until the performers are done, yet I also aimed to achieve a narrative arch to the entire movement; the slow coda, which returns to the themes and mood of the first movement, completes this strategy. The movement’s subtitle references both the community of Turkey Cove that one drives through on the way to Wildacres, and the Moral Monday demonstrations that took place in the state capital last summer, and which were on my mind as I drove into the mountains. Setting aside political opinions, I think we can all agree that public expression of one’s views is vital to a healthy state and nation; certainly, many of the local residents with whom I spoke during my stay at Wildacres were inspired by these events, and spoke of a desire to join with others in Raleigh…
In borrowing old tunes for new uses, one always runs the risk of engaging in a kind of “cultural colonialism” – of stripping the music of its context and meaning, and somehow cheapening it in the process. But (to paraphrase Alan Lomax) traditions aren’t static – or, as old-time fiddler Mike Gangloff recently told me, “this music isn’t a thing to be revived – it’s living and evolving just fine.” I hope that what I’ve done here is viewed as a personal and respectful contribution in the evolution in that musical tradition.
I am grateful to Dr. Ed Jacobs and Dr. Jorge Richter for inviting me to contribute this piece to the 2014 NewMusic@ECU Festival, and to the musicians of the ECU Symphony Orchestra for taking on the challenge of putting the piece together. I dedicate this piece to my wife, Leslie Vincent, and daughter, Silver Vincent-Faris, whose love for me and enthusiastic support for my work are the warp and weft of my life’s tapestry.
