reflections on 30+ years as a folklorist
Neil Rosenberg, folklorist and author of Bluegrass: A History is visiting Chicago this week. He and his wife Terri will be part of a public conversation and performance on Friday (2/26) at the Northwestern University Library in Evanston. On Tuesday, they dropped by the Old Town School of Folk Music for an invitational jam session …
Continue reading “Neil Rosenberg, Dean of Bluegrass Scholars”
Happy 90th birthday. (I missed it by a day.) It was on April 19, 1924, a Saturday, that the National Barn Dance began it’s 36-year run on radio station WLS in Chicago. In fact, the Barn Dance had more than a run. It dominated. It was model for all the live country music radio jamborees …
More accurately, today’s topic is the old-time music played by musicians from German communities around Hoagland, Indiana. The question of how much of the music played for barn dances and house dances was actually German is a question I’ve never been able to answer fully. There’s no doubt that square dancing was very popular in …