Published on Show Me Mizzou Dec. 19, 2024
Story by Jack Wax, BS Ed ’73, MS ’76, MA ’87
Photos by Abbie Lankitus
Classes for the day have ended at the Sinquefield Music Center, but the sound of fiddle melodies and toe-tapping guitar rhythms still fills the lobby. A group of 20 musicians sit in a circle and play their instruments. On a recent evening, banjo and dulcimer players join in, strumming and picking along with the group. Many of the lively songs they play are centuries old, as is the song-circle structure, but the energy is fresh. This is a Missouri old-time music jam, held on the MU campus at 5:30 p.m., on the first Monday of every month that classes are in session.
Anyone who shows up can participate or listen. Some musicians hold down day jobs in the Columbia area. Others are retired. Several are MU students, and a smattering of them perform in other groups during the week. They range in age from their 20s to their 80s, and in level of musical experience from beginner to well-seasoned. “We are exposing young people to a big part of our heritage that they might not know about,”says Howard Marshall, leader of the jams and an authority on old-time Missouri music. Marshall is a fiddle player, historian, author and professor emeritus of the Department of Art History and Archaeology. In 2023, he published Keep It Old-Time: Fiddle Music in Missouri from the 1960s Folk Music Revival to the Present (University of Missouri Press), the final of three crucial volumes devoted to the state’s fiddle music.
Marshall and the School of Music’s Budds Center for American Music Studies co-sponsor the hour-long jam sessions.Megan Murph, director of the Budds Center, shares a commitment with Marshall to preserve and promote Missouri’s musical heritage “These tunes are passed down from generation to generation as part of our living history,” Murph says.
Rooted in the British Isles, the music evolved in the American colonies, eventually migrating west with early settlers. Over time, old-time music absorbed West African rhythms, Appalachian folk traditions, minstrel show elements and Tin Pan Alley song structures. Although thousands of old-time songs have been transcribed into musical notation, traditionally they are learned and played by ear, which explains the absence of music stands and sheet music at jam sessions.
Asher Ferguson and Amanda Arbuckle, both fiddle players and MU undergraduates, try to make it to the old-time jams each month. They encountered traditional music by chance, then fell in love with playing it. Marshall considers the younger generation’s interest as evidence that old-time music not only has a past but also a future. “It’s kind of amazing that so many people want to play the music,” he says. “After all these years, it’s still informal fun and an interesting way to meet people.”
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