Folkways | UNC-TV

May’s Folkways’ finale finds two eastern North Carolina pastors sharing their different styles for spreading musical messages of faith.

Next, the infectious energy of square dancing, flat footing, and clogging from a Swannanoa gathering at Warren Wilson College steps up on Dance!

David Holt explains how a group of talented fiddle and banjo players from Surry County, NC, came to have a world-wide impact on Old Time Music. The music originated from English, Scotch-Irish, and African-American musical traditions but it was shaped and cross-pollinated into a distinctly American sound. Tommy Jarrell was one of those most widely known; his intense, driving style and contagious enthusiasm for the music has inspired generations of musician.

While the banjo has enjoyed popularity in the South for over 100 years, its history in the world is much longer. The banjo actually originated in Africa, and as Folkways host David Holt explains, slowly migrated to the Southern mountains after the Civil War. The Banjo weaves together the history and technique of the instrument that has made its reputation as an icon of the South to introduce some of its most dedicated players. As the banjo has aged, picking and musical styles have evolved with it, but it still stands as one of the South's most popular musical instruments. Carlie Marion from Elkin, NC, demonstrates the clawhammer style, a picking style popular 100 years ago. David then takes us to Madison, NC, to meet the Senior Band o Madison., a group of three retired men who gather weekly to play some of the older NC folk music. Younger musicians, like Kirk Sutphin, carry on the tradition from fathers or grandfathers and play in some of the fiddlers conventions or with some of the older banjo players. Some of the South's noted musicians like Earl Scruggs and Charlie Poole have legacies that last even now through current generations, as Poole's grandson, who still uses his grandfather's banjo to play in a three-finger picking style that predated bluegrass. Bluegrass, a notable favorite in North Carolina, still rings in North Carolina through players like T.W. Lambert, who talks about why he loves playing it.

So if you love the rhythmic twang of the banjo and are in the mood for a foot-tapping beat, watch The Banjo and learn about how this wonderful instrument originated while meeting some of its most faithful players.

Wooden duck decoys have gained popularity in the last 30 years as both home decorations and treasures passed down from father to son or grandfather to grandson. On the North Carolina coast, however, boat and decoy carving has meant more than trinkets. Woodworkers carve decoys for a variety of reasons. Some still use them to hunt prey. Others enjoy recreating a part of nature. And others make a living selling them, replicating not only ducks but birds and other wild fowl. Decoy-making was so popular on Harkers Island that several carvers decided to band together in a guild and denote a day that they could gather and sell their crafts under one roof. Their ideas resulted in the Core Sound Decoy Carvers Guild and the Core Sound Decoy Festival.

In Folkways Coastal Carvers, some of the most talented carvers on Harkers Island exhibit their wares and explain how they began making decoys and why they continue. James Rose, miniature boat builder, demonstrates his boats and talks about why he built each one and the significance it has to him. Curt Salter, decoy carver and founding member of the Core Sound Guild, explains step by step how he chooses the wood for a decoy and then cuts and carves it until it resembles a duck's body and head. His collection of historic decoys from a time when they brought home dinner is also quite impressive. Wayne Davis and Carl Huff are two other carvers that have designed their own styles of decoys.

For the average person today, a typical day means waking up to a cup of coffee brewed from an automatic coffeemaker, perhaps a microwaved packaged pastry or a trip to MacDonald's. Most people don't think of life without the conveniences that automation and fast food restaurants have brought us. However, in a camp in the mountains of Georgia, groups of people flock to retreat from everyday technology and learn how to live on what the earth provides alone. In these Earthskills workshops at Unicoi State Park in Helen, Georgia, participants live in teepees, make their own dishes and utensils, cook over a fire made by rubbing two sticks together, and learn how to form weapons to hunt for their food.

Folkways Earth Skills introduces these participants, as well as the survival skills they are learning. Differentiating between edible and toxic plants, for instance, proves valuable for meals. Rivercane has various uses, from weapons to baskets. One instructor demonstrates making pottery without the use of a pottery wheel or a large constructed kiln. Workshop participants learn how to make weapons, prepare animal hide for use in clothing or shelter and make a fire without using matches. No telephones, no computers, no electricity--these participants come to the workshop to get in touch with ancient ways and their natural surroundings. While living without meals that can be cooked in less than 15 minutes and gadgets that reduce several of the steps in our tasks may not sound like fun, instructors and participants show that even at the end of a day in which they have made their own utensils, gathered their own food and prepared their own clothing, they still have time to play music and dance.

If anyone had to answer a question about North Carolina's main musical instrument, the answer would be simple: the guitar. The guitar has found a home throughout North Carolina, and the mountains have cradled musicians like Wayne Henderson, Bryan Sutton and Doc Watson. FolkwaysThe Guitar seeks to demonstrate the range of guitar playing styles and sounds by calling on some talented players who have devoted their lives to playing or making guitars.

Host David Holt begins by introducing Dale McCoy, who demonstrates his style of finger picking, a style viewers may recognize from The Potters of Seagrove. Wayne Henderson not only dazzles audiences with the flight of his fingers, but he invites us into his guitar shop, where he explains the precision and care involved in handcrafting a guitar. Paul Graybeal, known well by people who collect guitars, handcrafts miniature and full-sized guitars, but devotes as much time and care to the process as one would do with a guitar that can play. Bryan Sutton demonstrates flat-picking and its variations and explains the demands made of a session player in Nashville. As a final treat, David Holt plays alongside the legendary Doc Watson, one of the great pioneers of Appalachian folk music.

Eustace bought Turtle Island, a tract of land in the Appalachian wilderness, after living for 17 years in a teepee and roaming about as he hunted for food. As a boy, he grieved as he saw houses and roads replace the trees and grass that delighted him. Wanting to be in touch with a part of life that he missed, he decided to spend his adult years homesteading--building his own tools and shelter, growing his own food and making his own clothes.

In Homestead Living, Eustace introduces us to activities nearly forgotten by most people, activities that are part of his everyday life. Building a shelter, blacksmithing, raising horses and gardening take us back to a time before refrigerators were even a concept and department stores were available. Younger people who train on Eustace's farm stay for a year and find an inner strength that teaches them about their environment and gives them an appreciation for the land around them.

A little over 130 years ago in a small rural North Carolina town in Wilkes County, a young girl of meager means left home to meet her fiancé in the woods. She had hidden her special dress under her house clothes and had packed her belongings in a trundle bag, ready for her new life. She sat in the woods and waited for her beloved, and someone met her there--someone who hated her enough to kill her and drag her to a small grave that the person had dug the evening before. A few months later, her fiancé was captured and tried for the crime. After one appeal, he was condemned for her murder and hanged.

The story of Tom Dula and his unfortunate fiancée Laura Foster made the headlines in 1866, from as far away as New York. The Civil War had ended and the Reconstruction of the South had begun, but not without bitter feelings on both sides. So a murder of a poor, uneducated girl by an equally poor boy sparked a legend in the South and a headline story in the North. Some time after Tom Dula was executed, someone wrote a ballad, put it to music, and the legend of Tom Dula was born.

On the first weekend in June every year, men and women, young and old, gather together in Mount Airy, North Carolina for the annual Old Time Fiddlers Convention. The competition draws people from nearly every state in the U.S., and there are even a few people from overseas who venture to the small town in quaint Surry County. On Folkways' Old Time Fiddlers Convention, David Holt introduces us to some of the people who bring their fiddles, banjos, guitars, or bass. Mike Seeger, a musician who has collected and performed old time music for over 40 years, accompanies David on the Jaw Harp. Ralph Blizzard from eastern Tennessee shows off his long bow style of fiddle playing.

Far from being a typical conference or competition, the participants of the Fiddlers Convention come for the fun. While groups perform on stage to be judged, other groups practice backstage, creating a cacophony of squeals and strums from fiddles and banjos playing a wide variety of traditional tunes. While other groups play music under their tents, adults and children clog and dance on some of the wooden stages set on the grass. Musicians from Bologna, Italy, and Raleigh, North Carolina show that the western North Carolina mountain area is not the only home for these favorite melodies. David talks to some pre-teens who play old-time music because it's fun, and who will develop their own styles and pass them down, keeping the music of the hills alive in North Carolina for a long time to come.