Folk Storytelling Shifts into a Music Tradition

A Jones House Jam Session. These sessions have people from around the community come together and share traditional folk music and stories. Photo Cred: Mark Freed

Sofia Carmichael, Community Desk Lead 

A banjo, a dulcimer, a haunting melody, and rich storytelling. These are all the elements you might hear in music from the Appalachian region, but what you might not know is how Appalachian folklore has shaped this music tradition. The Appalachian region is cemented by its storytelling. The complex tales about creatures that live among us and have been passed on through generations have been set to music that has filled all of our ears, even if we didn’t know it. From classic folk and blues musicians to 50s doo-wop groups and classic rock, these stories and influences continue to evolve. 

“Songs were passed down from person to person for hundreds of years. They changed some over those times, but some of the songs that were recorded long ago, you can still hear people doing versions of those songs today,” said Mark Freed, a professor at Appalachian State University. “There’s something lasting about stories that can capture somebody’s imagination. You can sell a lot of pop songs with a catchy hook, and that works. But at some point, those songs kind of fall out of the way, and these are the ones that last.”

Freed also serves as the folklorist of the Jones House, which has a rich history with folklore. Freed teaches a course at ASU called Appalachian Music, where he discusses a comprehensive history of music from the Cherokee traditions to the swing band radio sounds to even modern-day bands like Wednesday. His fascination and interest started with music, and especially the banjo. He always loved the music of bands like The Grateful Dead and other rock and reggae bands, which led him to the deeper history of folklore. 

“When my mom turned 40, my dad bought her a banjo, and she was not a musician, so I ended up taking it to college with me, and started goofing off a little bit on that,” said Freed. “Then, after college, I joined a band, and started playing jam band music, and I was exploring and finding the sort of roots of the music I was interested in. I discovered that some of the stuff that influenced Jerry Garcia [of the Grateful Dead] was a lot of string band music, and I worked my way backwards to bluegrass, and I just continued to find the forerunners of the people that I was interested in, and that led me to the roots of the bango, and Western North Carolina.”

These folk stories are a culmination of cultures coming together. From European to African to Cherokee origins, these stories have been passed down from generation to generation to create unique stories. 

“The British Isles were influential, but there were also a lot of German people who were coming to Appalachia. There was also Asian representation in some of these work camps and certainly African influences. In work camps, there would be people singing songs in Italian, singing songs in Polish, songs in Russian, and they would learn folk music from these different nationalities.”

Folklore is a unique category of storytelling. It has to meet four primary elements: it has to be anonymous, it has to be passed down through the oral tradition, it includes a formula, and it involves variation. Ballads are some of the most famous types of folk songs and stories that meet this requirement. The ballad gave Appalachia and its surrounding areas life and popularity towards folk music. These ballads were forgotten for many years, until people like Francis Child rediscovered them and gave them a new life, where they are now known as child ballads. 

“Ballads were really popular in the British Isles from the 1400s to the 1700s, and when classical music started coming up, they got swept under the rug, but some people still sang them,” said Freed. “Then, this scholar from Harvard named Francis Child got really interested in these story songs, so he went over to England, and he collected the written version of these songs. He was inspired by the Brothers Grimm and the work they did collecting stories.”

Many people, like Child, worked to preserve these stories and keep the tradition alive. People like Olive Dame Campbell would go around and listen to people singing the old ballads, like a very famous one called “Barbara Allen.” The ballads and other idle tunes, depending on what area you were in, had different melodies or lyric variations. 

“Nobody knows who wrote that melody. It was passed down to people, not from writing the notes out on paper and learning it like a classical musician would learn a Bach piece. It was passed down from one fiddler or one banjo player to the next,” said Freed.

Not only are the stories and the word of folk music important to Appalachia, but also the instruments these stories are set to. From the mountain dulcimer to the fretless banjo, these sounds help to define the rich history of this music. 

“In Watauga County, there was somebody who came through with a mountain dulcimer. When they travelled through, there was someone who traced the shape of it and started making mountain dulcimers, which became an important instrument locally,” said Freed. “Then there was the mountain fretless banjo, which is a banjo with a smaller head and a fretless neck, which was the style made around here, which was the string band tradition.”

Whether it be a string band or just a guy with a banjo and a melodic voice, folk music captures the attention of listeners through intricate and drama-filled stories. The universal themes of love, passion, and death are what is loved and what brings people in about this storytelling, like the story of the “Two Sisters.” 

“One of my favourite [ballads] is called ‘Two Sisters,’ and there are two sisters who are both in love with the same guy. The older sister is jealous of the younger sister because he likes the younger sister. So the older sister pushes the younger sister into the river to drown,”  said Freed “The younger sister’s body floats down the river, and a miller takes her body out of the river and builds a fiddle out of it. Including her hair for the bow, and her finger bones for the tuning bars. Then, as he plays the instrument, the instrument sings to him how she was murdered.”

Music brings us all together. Whether it is liking a certain genre of music or being a really big fan of a certain musician, we all find people who share the same love that we do. But the folk community has a certain magic and inclusivity that you can’t find anywhere else, because the music is personal and connected. 

“When I first moved here, one of my jobs was to put together the traditional artist directory for the Blue Ridge Heritage Area,” said Freed.  “I called this woman, Etta Baker, who made this record in the 1950s called Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians. And, she was in the phone book, and I called her up, and she answered the phone, and she was perfectly happy to talk to a stranger. I could have never gotten the number of one of my rock and roll heroes, let alone have them take the time to share with me.”

Folk music shares that quality of folklore and these stories that intrigue us so much, because it is personal and it is about coming together to hear not only a story but the rich history behind the story. 

“It’s a real human thing. For folk stuff, it usually requires getting together and sharing in person, and I get fed off of that,” said Freed. “I think that when people discover that and they have the opportunity to have that human connection and interaction and passing on of a tradition that's part of something bigger than you and deeper than you.”