Presents a collection of traditional rhymes, songs, and riddles about various aspects of mountain life.

Easy solos in several styles for beginners... great tune selection! Includes Down Yonder; Goodbye Liza Jane; and many others. Each tune has a complete explanation of rhythm and fingering, along with helpful playing hints.

The Fiddle Handbook is a treasure trove of information spanning the whole range of fiddle playing. It looks in detail at the most commonly played styles among today's fiddlers. From America, there's old time, bluegrass, Cajun, Western swing, country, blues, rock, klezmer, and jazz, while from the British Isles there's Irish, Scottish, and English. There is also a quick romp through Eastern Europe and beyond, from the spike fiddles of Africa and Asia to the Chinese Erhu, the fabulous Indian Sarangi, and the mysterious Norwegian Hardingfele. A wealth of musical examples – ornaments, bowing patterns, scales, modes, exercises and complete tunes – are faithfully reproduced in the audio tracks to give you a taste of each style. And finally, the book answers once and for all the hoary old question, “What's the difference between a fiddle and a violin?” The answer, of course, is that fiddle players have more fun....

The Fiddle Book is about Fiddles, Fiddlers and Fiddling. It is not about violins. Violins are played in string quartets and symphony orchestras. Violins play sonatas and concertos and tone poems. Violinists are people like Jascha Heifetz and Isaac Stern. Fiddles are played at square dances and hoedowns in the front parlor or the back yard. Fiddlers play jigs, reels, hornpipes and the like. Fiddlers are people like Uncle Charlie Higgins, Eck Robertson, Grandma Davis and Max Collins. This book is about fiddles. It is the most comprehensive document on the folk music fiddle and fiddling styles ever published, and includes the music to more than 150 fiddle tunes faithfully transcribed from the playing of traditional musicians.

The South has always been one of the most distinctive regions of the United States, with its own set of traditions and a turbulent history. Although often associated with cotton, hearty food, and rich dialects, the South is also noted for its strong sense of religion, which has significantly shaped its history. Dramatic political, social, and economic events have often shaped the development of southern religion, making the nuanced dissection of the religious history of the region a difficult undertaking. For instance, segregation and the subsequent civil rights movement profoundly affected churches in the South as they sought to mesh the tenets of their faith with the prevailing culture. Editors Walter H. Conser and Rodger M. Payne and the book’s contributors place their work firmly in the trend of modern studies of southern religion that analyze cultural changes to gain a better understanding of religion’s place in southern culture now and in the future. Southern Crossroads: Perspectives on Religion and Culture takes a broad, interdisciplinary approach that explores the intersection of religion and various aspects of southern life. The volume is organized into three sections, such as “Religious Aspects of Southern Culture,” that deal with a variety of topics, including food, art, literature, violence, ritual, shrines, music, and interactions among religious groups. The authors survey many combinations of religion and culture, with discussions ranging from the effect of Elvis Presley’s music on southern spirituality to yard shrines in Miami to the archaeological record of African American slave religion. The book explores the experiences of immigrant religious groups in the South, also dealing with the reactions of native southerners to the groups arriving in the region. The authors discuss the emergence of religious and cultural acceptance, as well as some of the apparent resistance to this development, as they explore the experiences of Buddhist Americans in the South and Jewish foodways. Southern Crossroads also looks at distinct markers of religious identity and the role they play in gender, politics, ritual, and violence. The authors address issues such as the role of women in Southern Baptist churches and the religious overtones of lynching, with its themes of blood sacrifice and atonement. Southern Crossroads offers valuable insights into how southern religion is studied and how people and congregations evolve and adapt in an age of constant cultural change.

Play of a Fiddle gives voice to people who steadfastly hold to and build on the folk traditions of their ancestors. While encountering the influences of an increasingly overwhelming popular culture, the men and women in this book follow age-old patterns of folklife and custom, making their own music and dance in celebration of them. Shedding new light on a region that maintains ties to the cultural identities of its earliest European and African inhabitants, Gerald Milnes shows how folk music in West Virginia borrowed rhythmic, melodic, and vocal forms from the Celtic, Anglo, Germanic, and African traditions. These elements have come together to create a body of music tied more to place and circumstance than to ethnicity. Milnes explores the legacies of the state's best-known performers and musical families. He discusses religious music, balladeering, the influence of black musicians and styles, dancing, banjo and dulcimer traditions, and the importance of old-time music as a cultural pillar of West Virginia life. A musician himself, Milnes has been collecting songs and stories in West Virginia for more than twenty-five years. The result is an enjoyable book filled with anecdotes, local history, and keen observations about musical lives.

Frank C. Brown organized the North Carolina Folklore Society in 1913. Both Dr. Brown and the Society collected stores from individuals—Brown through his classes at Duke University and through his summer expeditions in the North Carolina mountains, and the Society by interviewing its members—and also levied on the previous collections made by friends and members of the Society. The result was a large mass of texts and notes assembled over a period of nearly forty years and covering every aspect of local tradition.

“Simple solutions for survival in this family-unfriendly culture…Eye-opening…heart-wrenching and uplifting.”—San Francisco Chronicle Even more resonant today than at its original publication in 1996, The Shelter of Each Other traces the effects of our society’s “anti-family” way of life, where parents are overtaxed, children are undersupervised, and technology is rapidly dictating how we interact. As she did in her number-one bestseller Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher illuminates how our families are suffering at the hands of shifting cultural norms, and she snaps our gaze into crisp focus. Drawing on the fascinating stories of families rich and poor, angry and despairing, religious and skeptical, and probing deep into her own family memories and experiences, Pipher clears a path to the strength and energy at the core of family life. Compassionate and heart-wrenching, The Shelter of Each Other is an impassioned call for us to gather our families in our arms and hold on to them for dear life.