Fiddle fun

Hey Y’all,
Next fiddle club meeting will be
Sunday, November 20 at 6:30p
Atlantic Bar & Grill (5062 Lincoln)

We’ll play a few English ceilidh (pronounced ‘kaylee’) tunes, which will be posted soon. And we’ll try them out with a couple of easy dances. Invite your friends and family to come along and dance. No admission fee. No registration required.

And here’s some cool stuff I found that I wanted to share.

First off, is my snapshot of a photograph from the 1920s taken by Frank Hohenberger, a native of Indianapolis who opened a photo studio in Nashville, the county seat of bucolic Brown County, Indiana. Hohenberger is famous for his portraits of the people, homesteads and landscapes of Brown County. This photo, title “The Old Fiddler” may have been taken in Indiana, or perhaps on one of Hohenberger’s trips to Kentucky. The identity of the fiddler is unknown.

The Old Fiddler

This print is in a display of Hohenberger portraits hanging on the walls of the Indiana Memorial Union at Indiana University in Bloomington. I used to see it nearly every day as I cut through the Union on my way to the library. Several books of Hohenberger’s photos have been published by Indiana University Press. Most notable is the book compiled by my friend Dillon Bustin, a dance caller and banjoist now living in Massachusetts, with the great title If You Don’t Out Die Me.

And from a neighboring continent, the haunting sounds of a three string fiddle–rabeca de tres cordas–played by the makerLeonildo Pereira from the southern coast of Brazil.

Here are some photos of Sr. Pereira and his instrument.

For more information and a fabulous map, check out rabeca.org.

And come back in a few days for some fun English tunes to learn.

Paul Tyler, convener

 

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