why no flute in Appalachian music?

[PB+J]

The question is really why is there no flute in old-time music today. Culture has a tendency to retrospectively 'filter out' what it deems 'inconsistency'. The flute is not associated with an identity that has been 'distilled' into an almost exclusive association with fiddle, banjo and guitar. That says more about modern focus, taste and interpretation than it does about the diversity that existed before that 'neat' template evolved and was reinforced. We know that flute and fiddle were common dance accompaniment in the European countries where many of the immigrant population came from.

I've seen old 19th century American photographs of flute players posed with fiddle and banjo players: concertina and clarinet among other instruments too. And there is no doubting that flutes would've been carried by imigrants from the British Isles and other European countries into those regions where indigenous American folk forms were influenced and evolved. The flute is one of the most easily portable instruments. The nature of immigrants music would likely have varied far more from isolated farmstead to isolated farmstead than we care to credit. The musicians dwelling in that vast patchwork of households initially had no reason or cause to conform to a general 'template'. They would've just played what they knew and had access to and the vast majority of those ordinary working folk left no record of that variety for posterity. That invisibility is the space which the subsequent evolution of a culture occupies and retrospectively and progressively 'filters out' difference erasing 'inconsistency' replacing it with it's own 'certainties' of identity and pattern.

And I hate to have to burst the bubble of the determinedly exclusive Scots-Irish focus of the discussion and remind that there was a strong English vernacular flute tradition in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Bitter anti-English sentiment was a historical reality, for very justifiable reason among certain communities, but we should not let that prejudice distort our understanding of the full cultural picture.

No one's bubble is burst. Here in the United States we are well aware that the many of the earliest settlers were from England.

We can't help but notice how music in the US diverges from music in England though.

[BigBpiper]

And I hate to have to burst the bubble of the determinedly exclusive Scots-Irish focus of the discussion and remind that there was a strong English vernacular flute tradition in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Bitter anti-English sentiment was a historical reality, for very justifiable reason among certain communities, but we should not let that prejudice or distort our understanding of fact or deny the full diversity of the cultural picture.

I certainly wasn't meaning to be offensive in the least by my previous post, if that is to what you are referring. I don't feel bitter at all towards the English. Like I said in my previous post, I'm no expert. I can only offer information based off of my own experiences and what I have heard from whom I believe to be trustworthy individuals. The fact is, English music (certainly instrumentaly!) is something I'm very unfamiliar with. Therefore, I can't speak to specific similarities between British and OT music. Irish music and sean-nós dance, however, were both present in my home growing up, and I was fortunate for several years of my childhood to live in an Appalachian region. So naturally, I would have primarily noticed the similarities between the music and dance of the area and my native Irish music.

[Conical bore]

I've seen old 19th century American photographs of flute players posed with fiddle and banjo players; and concertina and clarinet among other instruments too. And there is no doubting that flutes would've been carried by imigrants from the British Isles and other European countries into those regions where indigenous American folk forms were influenced and evolving.

I think the point here is that American folk forms had already evolved into what we'd call the OldTime genre by the time anything we'd recognize as a "modern" 19th Century flute arrived in the Appalachian region. They were playing tunes brought up into the hills on fiddles from British, Scottish, and Irish sources, at least a hundred years earlier. And later, guitars and banjos as we get into the 20th Century.

The flute was more recent, especially if we believe the conventional wisdom that it didn't arrive in the hands of "folk" musicians in Ireland until the latter part of the 19th Century, as affordable cast-offs from orchestra players transitioning to the Boehm flute. By the time affordable flutes arrived on the scene -- either these wooden cast-offs or the new cheap Boehm metal models in the Sears Catalog -- the format of OldTime Appalachian music was well established as "string band" music.

Another aspect of this (mentioned earlier) is that it isn't that hard to cobble together a homemade fiddle, dulcimer, or banjo. Harmonicas were cheap and available mail order from the Sears catalog, so that's probably the one surviving wind instrument in the genre. Without a lathe, which would be a rare item up in the mountains, you're not going to make a homemade flute that can play in tune along with a string band (no bamboo up the mountains). My family comes from that area, and I've seen many crude but playable string instruments from up in the hills of North Carolina and Tennessee. I've never seen a homemade flute from that area (doesn't mean they don't exist).

[an seanduine]

I've mentioned this before, but here I go again. Conical bore is right, insofar as he sees no folk/fife tradition in Tennessee, Carolinas, and certainly not in the closed set of what we call 'old timey' music. But that is just not the full story of early American music. The Cane Fife and drum music from the Mississippii Delta cleaves much closer to the blues and gospel tradition. To get started on this see Otha Turner's biography http://www.othaturner.com/bio.html
The fife and drum corps in the South started much like that in the North, associated with militias and during the American Civil War the military, but then intersected with afro-blues sources. They were partly absorbed into the New Orleans street band culture. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fife_and_drum_blues
Not 'Old Timey', but definitely Old Time.

Bob

[jim stone]

Let me add that one of the reasons there is no flute in Appalachian music is that we don't go to the sessions. Having played flute in OT sessions for years, and generally been more than welcome, I encourage folks to go. If you know the tunes and play them in an OT style, to which Irish fluting techniques and ornamentation is well suited, it's likely to work out well. As mentioned I've sometimes (rarely but sometimes) had trouble, but things improved dramatically once people heard me play. A lot of this music is beautiful and interesting, and generally easy enough to pick up, and it's nice to see the wooden flute flourish in other musical venues.

[tstermitz]

I have to vote with cultural traditions. The practical explanations don't ring true.

In the 19th Century I'm sure flutes (or fifes) were readily available, familiar, cheaper and more portable than violins.

Flutes were used in concert halls, chamber orchestras, family gatherings, and casual music. Stephen Foster played an 8-key Firth, Pond & Co, and the American flutes were quality instruments from 1820s on.

Too quiet? Maybe flutes blended too quietly compared with the louder banjos and violins.

Too Legato? OT music seems to prefer staccato.

Did Canadian folk music & dance traditions also neglect the flute? Quebequos? Cape Breton?

Even in ITM historically, aside from some token flutes, didn't the fiddles dominate?

[jim stone]

Right. Flutes were popular and people had to play something on them, and many people
could play well enough. A good deal of the tunes they played, other than classical, became part of the OT tradition today. They just weren't recorded. I figure flutes were probably widely used in OT music back in the day when the tunes were originally played. There has been a tendency to equate OT with Appalachian, is all. There's a lot more to OT than the high, lonesome sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7rrfy9rxbY

[PB+J]

The question of what instruments get used is really interesting. Banjo is everywhere in US music till the 1920s. Then it very quickly gets replaced by guitar. African Americans stop playing it almost altogether, even though its an African instrument in origin. By the 1950s, it's the instrument of the white "folk."

As I understand it, just to take the Irish example, in the 18th century Irish music was all harp harp harp. Then according to Francis O'Neill it's the pipes the pipes. He says that in his childhood (born 1847) only people who did not want to make a living at music played flute. Serious musicians aiming to make money at it played pipes or fiddle. Then by the twentieth century the pipes die out--I have no idea why--and apparently by the 1950s many Irish people had no idea there was an "Irish" pipe.

O'Neill is pretty vague about "flute," sometimes including what we would consider whistles as flutes. He refers to "the German flute" sometimes, I assume meaning Boehm. But he says they were played everywhere in ireland, and I assume they were probably played everywhere in England and Scotland, though I don't know.

Instruments get "gendered." It might be that flute was "gendered female" in Scots-irish culture. It's certainly gendered female now: in our daughter's middle school band, the flutes are all girls, which is typical.

It's worth noting that at the moment when we get serious recordings of "folk" performers, a lot of them have moved to cities, both northern cities and southern regional cities that were industrializing. It's easy to find the origins of both "country" and "blues" in people who were displaced from their rural homes. And it's also pretty clear that anybody moving from the hills of Tennessee to Memphis was going to run into other immigrants in those cities, and gone to vaudeville shows, and bought a lot of records. So as mentioned the recordings we have are less of a record of folk practice than they might at first appear to be.

[Mr.Gumby]

He refers to "the German flute" sometimes, I assume meaning Boehm.

German, Concert and Timber flutes are all names for the same thing. Simple system, wooden flutes.

[ecadre]

No one's bubble is burst. Here in the United States we are well aware that the many of the earliest settlers were from England.

We can't help but notice how music in the US diverges from music in England though.

To put it bluntly, if you can hear the influence of Irish traditions in Appalachian/Old time music song and dance and not that of English traditions, then it simply demonstrates your ignorance of English music, song and dance and the history of folk traditions in Britain and Ireland.

Look up Cecil Sharpe's and Maude Karpeles' work in collecting songs in the Appalachians. Note the similarity of Appalachian styles of step dancing to English styles of stepping (flat-footing). Note that the tune you mentioned in your opening post was well known across Scotland and England. Note that large numbers of English settlers arrived in Appalachia and they did take their music, songs and dances with them.

English folk and traditional music is routinely ignored even in our own media. When mentioned on popular TV programmes it's usually to disparage it and laugh at it. English songs, dances and tunes are routinely attributed to other countries and the close historical links between English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh folk music covered up with ethno-nationalist claptrap ... and now it seems it's being written out of North American musical history too.

[mendipman]

No one's bubble is burst. Here in the United States we are well aware that the many of the earliest settlers were from England.

We can't help but notice how music in the US diverges from music in England though.

To put it bluntly, if you can hear the influence of Irish traditions in Appalachian/Old time music song and dance and not that of English traditions, then it simply demonstrates your ignorance of English music, song and dance and the history of folk traditions in Britain and Ireland.

Look up Cecil Sharpe's and Maude Karpeles' work in collecting songs in the Appalachians. Note the similarity of Appalachian styles of step dancing to English styles of stepping (flat-footing). Note that the tune you mentioned in your opening post was well known across Scotland and England. Note that large numbers of English settlers arrived in Appalachia and they did take their music, songs and dances with them.

English folk and traditional music is routinely ignored even in our own media. When mentioned on popular TV programmes it's usually to disparage it and laugh at it. English songs, dances and tunes are routinely attributed to other countries and the close historical links between English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh folk music covered up with ethno-nationalist claptrap ... and now it seems it's being written out of North American musical history too.

What informs my interest in replying to the OP on this thread, is that I'm intimately connected with American old time musicians and play both American old time and English regional music, including for our regional form of stepping from my local Mendip area in Somerset. A foot in both camps if you like. The importance of understanding and respecting regionality has been hard- taught into me first-hand, in Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee, by some of the finest and most respected contemporary American OT musicians, and those principles have inevitably fed and been 'reimported' to my home context and are now fundamental to my own approach to reengaging with, educating and sharing my regional music in our local communities. I'm truly grateful to those American friends for their kindness, generosity, knowledge, patience, inspiration and guidance. In my case I would refer to the effect of their teaching on my understanding and outlook as 'life-changing'. I'm also a busy researcher in specific fields of English vernacular music. So any assumption of ignorance is a little wide of it's mark. I don't think the replies of our US friends here are meant as rude. But I too am passionate about the way in which English vernacular has been 'written out' and repressed and to a large extent denied - predominantly by the social and economic mechanisms and the prejudice and disdain of our own establishment. We ordinary English folks have a vernacular culture; that fact does not disrespect or conflict with other vernacular cultures, instead it adds diversity and beauty. And we should always remember and take collective strength that denied does not equate to absent or lacking.

[Conical bore]

Right. Flutes were popular and people had to play something on them, and many people
could play well enough. A good deal of the tunes they played, other than classical, became part of the OT tradition today. They just weren't recorded. I figure flutes were probably widely used in OT music back in the day when the tunes were originally played.

It's still a question of the timeline. The music we call "Appalachian" or "Appalachian Old Time" (the subject of the thread) evolved over a very long period of time. The mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee were starting to be settled all the way back to the Revolutionary War era. The music that we call Old Time goes back much further than the arrival of the Irish immigrant wave of the 19th Century, and the flutes they brought with them. Or that they bought from flute makers in the USA at the time.

So the question would be -- if "flutes were probably widely used in OT music back in the day when the tunes were originally played," and this period dates back as far as the 1700's or maybe even earlier, then exactly what kinds of flutes are we talking about? Do we mean primitive cane flutes? Baroque flutes that migrated from the city orchestras up into the mountains?

I'm not sure either type could have easily played along with the fiddles and banjos up in the mountains. A distinct advantage of string instruments is the way they can adjust to each other's tuning. Not so easy with fixed pitch early or primitive-design flutes.

Note that large numbers of English settlers arrived in Appalachia and they did take their music, songs and dances with them.

Indeed, and in fact my own family on my Mother's side is English, dating back to a guy who stepped off the boat in New England during the 1700's. And then the family ended up in the northwestern corner of the North Carolina mountains until the early part of the 20th Century. I have an Irish great grandmother who married into my Father's side of the family, but as far as I can tell, his family was primarily English and ended up in Georgia (and later Florida, like my Mom's side).

I don't know exactly what kind of music they were playing while still up in the mountains, but I do have my grandfather's beat-up fiddle, complete with a big screw holding the neck on, a homemade repair. The tone is weak, but probably good enough for the time. It makes a nice wall hanger.

[PB+J]

To put it bluntly, if you can hear the influence of Irish traditions in Appalachian/Old time music song and dance and not that of English traditions, then it simply demonstrates your ignorance of English music, song and dance and the history of folk traditions in Britain and Ireland.

Look up Cecil Sharpe's and Maude Karpeles' work in collecting songs in the Appalachians. Note the similarity of Appalachian styles of step dancing to English styles of stepping (flat-footing). Note that the tune you mentioned in your opening post was well known across Scotland and England. Note that large numbers of English settlers arrived in Appalachia and they did take their music, songs and dances with them.

English folk and traditional music is routinely ignored even in our own media. When mentioned on popular TV programmes it's usually to disparage it and laugh at it. English songs, dances and tunes are routinely attributed to other countries and the close historical links between English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh folk music covered up with ethno-nationalist claptrap ... and now it seems it's being written out of North American musical history too.

Did you notice the title of thread and the specific question" Thanks for the intelligence that English music had an influence of music in the US, Captain Obvious.

Poor England! Sadly ignored while screwing ireland over for centuries. Agreed, it's never a good idea to ignore the history of violent colonial oppression.

This is how cultural imperialism works. I'm asking about Irish immigrants to Appalachia, and you're specifically telling me that the really important thing I need to know is about clog dancing in who gives a sh*t-shire.

Let me be clear: the fact that English folk culture exerted a large influence of folk culture in the US is indeed Very well known. In the early 20th century, it's closely connected to racial anglo saxonism: for example, John Powell and the White Top Folk Festival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Powell_(musician) For what it's worth, This very same John Powell, advocate of English folk music, declared my great great grandfather a black man, making me legally a black man in the state in which I now reside. It was part of his effort to preserve the purity and primacy of anglo saxon culture.

http://theaporetic.com/?p=54




But let's make sure to not let the focus slip off England.

[paddler]

I hope this thread doesn't degenerate into argument and hostility, because I have found it truly fascinating so far!
Hopefully, its not too late to ask this basic question: Isn't it true that when the influence of Irish (and other) earlier
musical traditions occurred in Appalachian/Old Time music, the flute was not actually present in those other traditions?

My understanding is that the flute was adopted into Irish traditional music at a much later stage, as was the whistle, and
that they eventually became mainstays despite being "modern" instruments that were introduced into a tradition that did
not include them at all. This begs the question of whether the relative absence of the flute in OT music an opportunity
waiting for a talented flute player to demonstrate the capabilities of the instrument to shine in that music, or is whether
there is something more fundamental about the OT musical tradition that is incompatible with the flute? Stated another
way, is there any aspect of Irish traditional music that makes it especially suitable for flutes but which is absent in OT?

I don't know enough about OT to be able to even start to answer these questions, but the little I have heard, I really like.

[Steampacket]

Well it seems there was no tradition of flute playing amongst the mostly Scots-Irish/Ulster women and men, together with Scottish and English people, that settled in the Appalachians back in the day, so they would have their own music with them, which which became Appalachian music. The Irish traditional music that was played in Ireland, by Irish men and women who emigrated, would have mostly lived on in the Irish Catholic communities in the cities on the Eastern Coast of the New World. Here you'd find the simple system flute and uilleann pipes.

Then by the twentieth century the pipes die out--I have no idea why--and apparently by the 1950s many Irish people had no idea there was an "Irish" pipe. pj+b

That's just not true pj+b, where are you getting your information from, Donald Trump? Uilleann piping has never died out in Ireland. Leo Rowsome was playing pipes, making pipes and repairing pipes from 1922 up until his death in 1970. There were uilleann pipe makers such as William Rowsome, Leo Rowsome, the Taylor Brothers, the Maloney Brothers, Thomas Keenan, Dan Dowd, John Clarke, Matt Kiernan, Tadgh and Denis Crowley, Moss Kennedy etc., Uilleann pipers such as Brother Gildas, Leo Rowsome, William Rowsome, Ned Gorman, Tom Dywer, Tom Rowsome, Micheal O Riabhaigh, Tommy Kearney, Martin Rocheford, May McCarthy, Peter McLoughlin, Michael Falsey, Seamus Ennis, Dan Dowd, John Ward, John Doran, Johnny Doran, Felix Doran, Tony Rainey to name but a few.