Prominent Women in Appalachian History

[theHandpuppet]

1. A Banjo on Her Knee—Part I: Appalachian Women and America's First Instrument

I thought many of you, including those interested in Appalachian music, will appreciate this fascinating look at how women were an integral though mostly forgotten part of early Appalachian music.
Unfortunately, the text of part 2 of this series does not appear to be available for online reading. If you're interesting in obtaining a copy and/or a copy of "In Praise of Banjo Picking Women", please visit the website of the Old Time Herald, a site which is itself worth bookmarking.

http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-8/8-2/full-banjo-on-her-knee.html
The Old-Time Herald Volume 8, Number 2
Feature
A Banjo on Her Knee—Part I: Appalachian Women and America’s First Instrument
by Susan A. Eacker and Geoff Eacker

In an article titled "In Praise of Banjo-Picking Women" published over 10 years ago in the pages of the Old-Time Herald, Mike Seeger noted that in his fieldwork with "old-timers" in the Southern mountains, he had been told that their fathers and mothers played the banjo before the turn of the 20th century. Seeger went on to ask, "Why do we not have accounts of this—either visually or in the literature?" This article is a long overdue affirmation of Seeger’s findings and a response to his question. Since I teach women’s history, I was intrigued by the idea of uncovering some of these invisible banjo women. Geoff makes 5-string banjos and plays clawhammer style, but most of our record collection and our knowledge centered around male banjo players. It was only after we began our research that we learned that most of these men had learned to play from a female relative. This list is exhaustive but a partial account includes the following: Ralph Stanley learned to play clawhammer style from his mother, Lucy Smith Stanley. "Grandpa" Louis Jones took his first frailing lessons from Cynthia May Carver, a.k.a. "Cousin Emmy," from Lamb, Kentucky. Northwestern North Carolina banjoist Clarence "Tom" Ashley (who popularized the tune "The Coo-Coo&quot , learned to play clawhammer banjo in 1905 (at the age of eight) from his Aunts Ary and Daisy. National Heritage Fellow and banjo player Morgan Sexton of Linefork, Kentucky, got his first lessons from his older sister Hettie. And Earl Scruggs’ two older sisters, Eula Mae and Ruby, both played the banjo and surely taught their younger brother a tune or two.

The fact that so many well-known old-time male musicians have been inspired and influenced by a female in the family should force us to rethink the ways in which banjo music in Appalachia has been promulgated and preserved. While this might strike a sour note with some, the evidence suggests that it was women who have historically kept old-time music—especially banjo and ballads—alive in the hills and hollers of the Southern mountains. (As case in point, consider the fact that when British ballad collectors Cecil Sharp and Maude Karpeles made their foray into Eastern Kentucky, Western North Carolina and the Virginias in 1916-17, approximately 75% of the 968 tunes they collected and later compiled as English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians were sung to them by women.)...

...Yet, the common folk in southern Appalachia had surely been picking the banjo long before this mass appeal began. How the banjo got to the Southern mountains is still a matter of speculation. In fact, the topic has inspired the literary equivalent of "dueling banjos." Some banjo scholars claim that the down-stroke style of playing was picked up by mountain whites directly from slaves. Others see the Civil War—which brought together blacks and whites in both grey and blue—as the mode of transmission. In addition, the minstrel show, especially as it traveled down the tributaries of the Ohio into Eastern Kentucky and Western Virginia in the early 19th century, probably exposed many rural Appalachians to the instrument.

The fact that 19th-century Appalachian women banjo players have remained invisible may be because mountain women and men were largely isolated and on the bottom rung of the economic ladder. As social historians can attest, the marginalized leave few records, which may help to answer Seeger’s question of why such accounts are hard to come by. When "our contemporary ancestors" (as they were called by outsiders) were "discovered" in the mountains in the early part of the last century, part of their supposed quaintness lay in their musical culture. Ballad collectors like Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles, Olive Dame Campbell, and the numerous women who started rural settlement schools like Hindman and Pine Mountain in Southeastern Kentucky, were keen on establishing a Celtic connection between Appalachians and their Northern European ancestors. To this end, they sought after unaccompanied ballads with British bloodlines. The banjo was not a link in their musical canon and mountain men and women were discouraged from playing this indigenous instrument, while encouraged to pluck the dulcimer, erroneously thought to have come from Great Britain. (Kentuckian Jean Ritchie, singularly responsible for popularizing the dulcimer during the folk revival, told us in an informal interview that her family considered the banjo a "low instrument.&quot ....

MORE at link provided above.