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96-610: The contest began 71 years ago in 1953 as the Northwest Mountain Fiddlers' Contest, organized by Blaine Stubblefield , secretary of the Weiser Chamber of Commerce. The contest increased in size each year, and competitors came from farther away. The name was changed to the Northwest Oldtime Fiddling Championships in 1956, when a regional division was added for out-of-area fiddlers. In 1963,

192-482: A chuigushou . Ensembles consisting of mouth organs ( sheng ), shawms ( suona ), flutes ( dizi ) and percussion instruments (especially yunluo gongs ) are popular in northern villages; their music is descended from the imperial temple music of Beijing, Xi'an , Wutai shan and Tianjin . Xi'an drum music, consisting of wind and percussive instruments, is popular around Xi'an, and has received some commercial popularity outside of China. Another important instrument

288-430: A melody , often with repeating sections , and usually played a number of times. A collection of tunes with structural similarities is known as a tune-family . America's Musical Landscape says "the most common form for tunes in folk music is AABB, also known as binary form ." In some traditions, tunes may be strung together in medleys or " sets ." Throughout most of human history, listening to recorded music

384-605: A pipa , as well as other traditional instruments. The music is generally sorrowful and typically deals with love-stricken people. Further south, in Shantou , Hakka and Chaozhou , zheng ensembles are popular. Sizhu ensembles use flutes and bowed or plucked string instruments to make harmonious and melodious music that has become popular in the West among some listeners. These are popular in Nanjing and Hangzhou , as well as elsewhere along

480-512: A "Traditional music" category that subsequently evolved into others. The term "folk", by the start of the 21st century, could cover singer-songwriters, such as Donovan from Scotland and American Bob Dylan , who emerged in the 1960s and much more. This completed a process to where "folk music" no longer meant only traditional folk music. Traditional folk music often includes sung words , although folk instrumental music occurs commonly in dance music traditions. Narrative verse looms large in

576-402: A $ 500 minimum (equivalent to $ 4000 in 2010 dollars) for one or two passengers with $ 200 for each additional passenger. This was for a full week's cruise—side trips were possible—and included food, refreshments, and a trip back to Weiser by car or airplane. Stubblefield's operation provided some cargo service for prospectors, ranchers and miners at remote spots along the way, but the tourist trade

672-401: A class dynamic to popular understandings of American folk music. This was the final element of the foundation upon which the early folk music revivalists constructed their own view of Americanism. Sandburg's working-class Americans joined with the ethnically , racially , and regionally diverse citizens that other scholars, public intellectuals, and folklorists celebrated their own definitions of

768-419: A cultural dichotomy , the other side of which is found not only in the lower layers of feudal, capitalist and some oriental societies but also in 'primitive' societies and in parts of 'popular cultures'". One widely used definition is simply "Folk music is what the people sing." For Scholes, as well as for Cecil Sharp and Béla Bartók , there was a sense of the music of the country as distinct from that of

864-579: A great body of English rural traditional song, music and dance, under the aegis of what became and remains the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). Sharp campaigned with some success to have English traditional songs (in his own heavily edited and expurgated versions) to be taught to school children in hopes of reviving and prolonging the popularity of those songs. Throughout the 1960s and early to mid-1970s, American scholar Bertrand Harris Bronson published an exhaustive four-volume collection of

960-656: A headquarters for his campaign in Spokane, Washington. In October 1925, Blaine wrote about a trip through Idaho along the newly completed U.S. Highway 95 in Western Highways Builder magazine, full of historical references and colorful descriptions of the landscapes. Blaine took an advanced degree in Journalism at the University of Washington in 1927. During 1927 and 1928, Blaine wrote a weekly aviation-related column in

1056-399: A lower class" in culturally and socially stratified societies. In these terms, folk music may be seen as part of a "schema comprising four musical types: 'primitive' or 'tribal'; 'elite' or 'art'; 'folk'; and 'popular'." Music in this genre is also often called traditional music. Although the term is usually only descriptive, in some cases people use it as the name of a genre. For example,

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1152-404: A particular interest in folklore. Carl Sandburg often traveled the U.S. as a writer and a poet. He also collected songs in his travels and, in 1927, published them in the book The American Songbag . Rachel Donaldson, a historian who worked for Vanderbilt, later stated this about The American Songbird in her analysis of the folk music revival. "In his collections of folk songs, Sandburg added

1248-401: A people's folklore , or music performed by custom over a long period of time. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles . The term originated in the 19th century, but folk music extends beyond that. Starting in the mid-20th century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached

1344-673: A possible better system, through the lens of the Great Depression. Woody Guthrie exemplifies songwriters and artists with such an outlook. Folk music festivals proliferated during the 1930s. President Franklin Roosevelt was a fan of folk music, hosted folk concerts at the White House , and often patronized folk festivals. One prominent festival was Sarah Gertrude Knott 's National Folk Festival , established in St. Louis, Missouri in 1934. Under

1440-597: A reference to beautiful women, while in the past they were notorious for their erotic content. The village "mountain songs" ( shan'ge ) of Jiangsu province were also well known for their amorous themes. Other regional song traditions include the "strummed lyrics" ( tanci ) of the Lower Yangtze Delta, the Cantonese Wooden Fish tradition ( muyu or muk-yu ) and the Drum Songs ( guci ) of north China. In

1536-537: A revolutionary tool to preserve vanishing musical forms. The earliest American folk music scholars were with the American Folklore Society (AFS), which emerged in the late 1800s. Their studies expanded to include Native American music , but still treated folk music as a historical item preserved in isolated societies as well. In North America, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Library of Congress worked through

1632-567: A traditional song would undergo a process of improvement akin to biological natural selection : only those new variants that were the most appealing to ordinary singers would be picked up by others and transmitted onward in time. Thus, over time we would expect each traditional song to become more aesthetically appealing, due to incremental community improvement. Literary interest in the popular ballad form dates back at least to Thomas Percy and William Wordsworth . English Elizabethan and Stuart composers had often evolved their music from folk themes,

1728-434: A tragic or regretful nature, prominently figures in many folk traditions. Nursery rhymes , children's songs and nonsense verse used to amuse or quiet children also are frequent subjects of traditional songs. Music transmitted by word of mouth through a community, in time, develops many variants, since this transmission cannot produce word-for-word and note-for-note accuracy. In addition, folk singers may choose to modify

1824-541: A writer, Blaine wrote several short stories and unpublished novels and radio scripts. Blaine Stubblefield attended President Franklin D. Roosevelt 's Inaugural Ball as a press corps member . On July 17, 1946, President Harry S. Truman met with Stubblefield and other editors and executives of the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company in Washington DC for a two-day meeting. Blaine's father Mickle played

1920-464: A zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is sometimes called contemporary folk music or folk revival music to distinguish it from earlier folk forms. Smaller, similar revivals have occurred elsewhere in the world at other times, but the term folk music has typically not been applied to the new music created during those revivals. This type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock , folk metal , and others. While contemporary folk music

2016-494: Is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival . Some types of folk music may be called world music . Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers, music that is played on traditional instruments, music about cultural or national identity, music that changes between generations (folk process), music associated with

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2112-660: Is a daughter of Blaine's brother Seth William ("Bill") Stubblefield. Blaine Stubblefield died in the Veterans Administration Hospital in Boise, Idaho on December 18, 1960, of cancer. He is buried in Weiser, Idaho . After his death, his widow Helen remarried, becoming Helen Stubblefield Elliott. In 2010, Helen donated Blaine's papers to the Idaho State Historical Society . A "Memorial to Blaine Stubblefield"

2208-502: Is a genre generally distinct from traditional folk music, in U.S. English it shares the same name, and it often shares the same performers and venues as traditional folk music. The terms folk music , folk song , and folk dance are comparatively recent expressions. They are extensions of the term folklore , which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe "the traditions, customs, and superstitions of

2304-564: Is a time limit of four minutes for rounds one through three, five minutes for rounds four and five, and no time limit for the final round of the Grand Champion division. All contestants must use the microphone provided. No sheet music is allowed on stage and there is no "trick" or "fancy fiddling", nor can there be any cross tuning on stage. Anyone may enter the contest. The judging criteria are: oldtime fiddling style, danceability, rhythm and timing, and tone quality. A simple tune, played well,

2400-408: Is an ancient folk song from India, a country of Asia, of Meiteis of Manipur , that is an example of Asian folk music, and how they put it into its own genre. Archaeological discoveries date Chinese folk music back 7000 years; it is largely based on the pentatonic scale . Han traditional weddings and funerals usually include a form of oboe called a suona , and apercussive ensembles called

2496-494: Is decided before the contest starts. In all divisions, only five fiddlers compete in the final round of competition and scores are cumulative throughout the contest. The contest is divided into seven divisions: Small Fry , for contestants 8 years of age and younger; Junior-Junior , for contestants 12 years of age and younger; Junior , for contestants less than 18 years of age; Young Adult , for ages 18–36; Adult , ages 37–59; Senior , ages 60 and above; and Grand Champion , which

2592-576: Is found on the 1997 Rounder CD 1508, Railroad Songs and Ballads , The Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture. A 30-second snippet of this recording of Way Out in Idaho (the complete song is 3 minutes 13 seconds in length) is available for free listening on a number of webpages, including this one Newspaper files report fiddling contests that were held in Weiser, Idaho from 1914 to World War I. The mid-20th Century resurrection of fiddling contests in Weiser

2688-515: Is generally no "authoritative" version of song. Researchers in traditional songs have encountered countless versions of the Barbara Allen ballad throughout the English-speaking world, and these versions often differ greatly from each other. The original is not known; many versions can lay an equal claim to authenticity. Influential folklorist Cecil Sharp felt that these competing variants of

2784-608: Is open to competitors of any age. No competitor may enter more than one of these divisions. There is no competition between divisions. There are three rounds of competition for the Small Fry and Junior-Junior divisions, four for the Junior, Young Adult, Adult, and Senior divisions, and six for the Grand Championship. If a contestant wins an age specific division three times, they can no longer compete in that division, but they may play in

2880-596: Is recorded on a reel-to-reel magnetic tape in Folk Collection 35b of the Barre Toelken Sound Recording Collection at Utah State University . The same tape contains recordings of several folk songs sung by Blaine, a Chamber of Commerce Commercial, a poem about Blaine Stubblefield; and Blaine tells a story . The tape was given to Barre Toelken by Helen Stubblefield Elliott and/or the Weiser Chamber of Commerce. Folk music Folk music

2976-408: Is scored higher than a difficult tune that is played poorly. There are five judges and each gives up to a maximum score of 100 for each tune a fiddler plays. The highest and lowest scores for the round are thrown out, leaving the middle three round scores to be added to a player's cumulative total (a perfect score for one round is 900). The judges are often fiddlers who have won the Grand Championship in

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3072-402: Is the sheng , a type of Chinese pipe , an ancient instrument that is ancestor of all Western free reed instruments, such as the accordion . Parades led by Western-type brass bands are common, often competing in volume with a shawm/chuigushou band. In southern Fujian and Taiwan , Nanyin or Nanguan is a genre of traditional ballads. They are sung by a woman accompanied by a xiao and

3168-655: Is the earliest known English-language recording of Idaho songs (some Nez Perce recordings predate the Stubblefield recording). Way Out in Idaho lightheartedly tells of the trials and tribulations of laborers building the Oregon Short Line Railroad from Pocatello, Idaho to Ontario, Oregon in 1882. Stubblefield's track originally was released in the series "Folk Music of the United States", Library of Congress Recording Laboratory, AFS L6, 1968. The track also

3264-652: Is the provenance of the American Folklife Center" at the library of Congress. Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical traditions. The music of North Africa for the most part has a different history from Sub-Saharan African music traditions . The music and dance forms of the African diaspora , including African American music and many Caribbean genres like soca , calypso and Zouk ; and Latin American music genres like

3360-461: The Grammy Award previously used the terms "traditional music" and "traditional folk" for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. Folk music may include most indigenous music . From a historical perspective, traditional folk music had these characteristics: As a side-effect, the following characteristics are sometimes present: In folk music, a tune is a short instrumental piece ,

3456-466: The Great Depression . Regionalism and cultural pluralism grew as influences and themes. During this time folk music began to become enmeshed with political and social activism themes and movements. Two related developments were the U.S. Communist Party's interest in folk music as a way to reach and influence Americans, and politically active prominent folk musicians and scholars seeing communism as

3552-745: The PRC . Folk songs have been recorded since ancient times in China. The term Yuefu was used for a broad range of songs such as ballads, laments, folk songs, love songs, and songs performed at court. China is a vast country, with a multiplicity of linguistic and geographic regions. Folk songs are categorized by geographic region, language type, ethnicity, social function (e.g. work song, ritual song, courting song) and musical type. Modern anthologies collected by Chinese folklorists distinguish between traditional songs, revolutionary songs, and newly invented songs. The songs of northwest China are known as "flower songs" ( hua'er ),

3648-651: The San Francisco News Letter under the byline "Lieutenant Blaine Stubblefield". He resided in the San Francisco area during this period. In 1927, Blaine broadcast weekly airplane flying lessons over San Francisco radio station KFRC . Also in 1927, Blaine took on an additional job: Boeing Air Transport publicity manager. He later moved to the east coast and worked as an editor of McGraw-Hill aviation magazines in New York and Washington, DC. In his life as

3744-475: The Traditional 18 Dances display the dancing of birds and animals. For example: Musical types include: The classical Sinhalese orchestra consists of five categories of instruments, but among the percussion instruments, the drum is essential for dance. The vibrant beat of the rhythm of the drums form the basic of the dance. The dancers' feet bounce off the floor and they leap and swirl in patterns that reflect

3840-539: The United States Air Force ) in 1917 and was a Flying Cadet at Kelly Field , San Antonio, Texas . Graduates of the Army flight school at Kelly Field include Charles Lindbergh and Curtis E. LeMay . Major General Claire Chennault of World War II " Flying Tiger " fame taught at the school. Completing Flying School, Blaine was commissioned as a Lieutenant , was recommended for pursuit pilot (single hand combat), and

3936-561: The fiddle . In his youth in the Snake River country, Blaine learned to play guitar and fiddle and took an interest in folksongs, which he picked up from miners, cattlemen, pioneers, sheepherders, and traveling medicine men. Blaine also got songs from his father. Mickle typed some songs out on his typewriter. Blaine became an enthusiastic folksong collector and singer. While editor of McGraw-Hill's Aviation magazine in Washington, DC, Blaine

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4032-439: The samba , Cuban rumba , salsa ; and other clave (rhythm) -based genres, were founded to varying degrees on the music of enslaved Africans , which has in turn influenced African popular music . Many Asian civilizations distinguish between art /court/classical styles and "folk" music. For example, the late Alam Lohar is an example of a South Asian singer who was classified as a folk singer. Khunung Eshei/Khuland Eshei

4128-432: The American folk, definitions that the folk revivalists used in constructing their own understanding of American folk music, and an overarching American identity". Prior to the 1930s, the study of folk music was primarily the province of scholars and collectors. The 1930s saw the beginnings of larger scale themes, commonalities, and linkages in folk music developing in the populace and practitioners as well, often related to

4224-560: The Association for Cultural Equity, is "distinct from the thousands of earlier recordings on acetate and aluminum discs he made from 1933 to 1942 under the auspices of the Library of Congress. This earlier collection—which includes the famous Jelly Roll Morton, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Muddy Waters sessions, as well as Lomax's prodigious collections made in Haiti and Eastern Kentucky (1937) —

4320-569: The Idaho Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress. Fourteen songs sung by Blaine were recorded in 1938. In 1939 and 1942, five songs sung by Blaine were recorded and five songs sung by Blaine and Frank A. Melton were recorded. Blaine accompanied himself on guitar. The words and music of four songs sung by Blaine in 1938, Way Out in Idaho , If He'd Be a Buckaroo , The Low-Down, Lonesome Low , and Brennan on

4416-524: The Moor , (see also Willy Brennan ) were printed in Our Singing Country and are available online. Other folksongs sung by Blaine in the Library of Congress recordings include Bryan O'Lynn , Poor Miner , The Farmer's Curst Wife , and The Golden Vanity . Some folk songs recorded by Stubblefield for the Library of Congress and designated as "by Blaine Stubblefield" were not authored by him. Several of

4512-458: The classical suite was based upon stylised folk-dances, and Joseph Haydn 's use of folk melodies is noted. But the emergence of the term "folk" coincided with an "outburst of national feeling all over Europe" that was particularly strong at the edges of Europe, where national identity was most asserted. Nationalist composers emerged in Central Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain and Britain:

4608-513: The contest during intermissions of the Fifth Annual Weiser Square Dance Festival. Prize money was underwritten by two individuals and the first official fiddling event came to life on April 18, 1953. It was billed as the Northwest Mountain Fiddlers' Contest and was a huge success. The name was changed to the Northwest Oldtime Fiddling Championships in 1956 when a regional division was added for out-of-area fiddlers. Today,

4704-634: The contest is known as the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest & Festival and is held in June of each year, attracting musicians from throughout the nation, especially the West and Midwest. The event lasts a full seven days (it's also called "Fiddle Week") and is packed with activities, especially each night. On Saturday, there is a parade. During "Fiddle Week" during the 1950s, Elnora Ford and Blaine Stubblefield would set up their pianos on separate corners in downtown Weiser and lead shoppers in song as

4800-421: The contest stage between rounds of competition, where the fiddling styles range from swing to bluegrass to Celtic . Each fiddler plays a set (or 'round') of three tunes, which must include a hoedown , a waltz , and a tune of choice, which can neither be a waltz nor a hoedown. The fiddlers with the highest scores move on to the next round of competition. The number of fiddlers that get to play in each round

4896-541: The elements of nature, and have been enjoyed and developed in the Buddhist environment. The music is of several types and uses only a few types of instruments. The folk songs and poems were used in social gatherings to work together. The Indian influenced classical music has grown to be unique. The traditional drama, music and songs of Sinhala Light Music are typically Sri Lankan. The temple paintings and carvings feature birds, elephants, wild animals, flowers, and trees, and

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4992-475: The end of the 1930s these and others had turned American folk music into a social movement. Sometimes folk musicians became scholars and advocates themselves. For example, Jean Ritchie (1922–2015) was the youngest child of a large family from Viper, Kentucky that had preserved many of the old Appalachian traditional songs. Ritchie, living in a time when the Appalachians had opened up to outside influence,

5088-412: The folk songs contributed by Stubblefield to the Library of Congress had been gotten by Blaine from his father Mickle. The well-known song Way Out in Idaho (songwriter unknown, early 1880s) -- arguably Idaho's greatest folk song—is notable in many regards. In 1938, Alan Lomax at the U. S. Library of Congress recorded eight verses sung by Blaine Stubblefield accompanied by his guitar (AFS 1634 B1). This

5184-399: The laborers who sing them to coordinate their efforts in accordance with the rhythms of the songs. They are frequently, but not invariably, composed. In the American armed forces , a lively oral tradition preserves jody calls ("Duckworth chants") which are sung while soldiers are on the march. Professional sailors made similar use of a large body of sea shanties . Love poetry , often of

5280-556: The last 20 years of his life working on an Interactive Multimedia educational computer project he called the Global Jukebox , which included 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes , and 5,000 photographs. As of March 2012, this has been accomplished. Approximately 17,400 of Lomax's recordings from 1946 and later have been made available free online. This material from Alan Lomax's independent archive, begun in 1946, which has been digitized and offered by

5376-408: The loss of traditional music is slowed in nations or regions where traditional folk music is a badge of cultural or national identity. Much of what is known about folk music prior to the development of audio recording technology in the 19th century comes from fieldwork and writings of scholars, collectors and proponents. Starting in the 19th century, academics and amateur scholars, taking note of

5472-454: The modern movie Songcatcher . One strong theme amongst folk scholars in the early decades of the 20th century was regionalism , the analysis of the diversity of folk music (and related cultures) based on regions of the US rather than based on a given song's historical roots. Later, a dynamic of class and circumstances was added to this. The most prominent regionalists were literary figures with

5568-567: The music of Dvořák , Smetana , Grieg , Rimsky-Korsakov , Brahms , Liszt , de Falla , Wagner , Sibelius , Vaughan Williams , Bartók , and many others drew upon folk melodies. While the loss of traditional folk music in the face of the rise of popular music is a worldwide phenomenon, it is not one occurring at a uniform rate throughout the world. The process is most advanced "where industrialization and commercialisation of culture are most advanced" but also occurs more gradually even in settings of lower technological advancement. However,

5664-572: The musical traditions being lost, initiated various efforts to preserve the music of the people. One such effort was the collection by Francis James Child in the late 19th century of the texts of over three hundred ballads in the English and Scots traditions (called the Child Ballads ), some of which predated the 16th century. Contemporaneously with Child, the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould and later Cecil Sharp worked to preserve

5760-419: The news staff of The University Argonaut and a staff member of The Blue Bucket was Ruth Muriel Aspray of Spokane, Washington , whom Blaine married. In 1925-1926, Blaine was a Senior and he continued in many of the same activities as in his Junior year. In 1925, Blaine was promoting completion of U.S. Highway 95 (Idaho's north-south highway) and promoting tourism along its route. In July 1925, he set up

5856-478: The next most competitive division the next year (Small Fry and Junior-Junior move up to the next age group, all other ages move up to the Grand Championship). If a fiddler wins the Grand Championship three years, they are asked to sit out a year, and are invited to judge the contest instead of competing. Contestants may perform with up to three accompanists, and no contestant may play the same tune twice. There

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5952-408: The offices of traditional music collectors Robert Winslow Gordon , Alan Lomax and others to capture as much North American field material as possible. John Lomax (the father of Alan Lomax) was the first prominent scholar to study distinctly American folk music such as that of cowboys and southern blacks. His first major published work was in 1911, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads . and

6048-700: The other. In the proliferation of popular music genres, some traditional folk music became also referred to as " World music " or "Roots music". The English term " folklore ", to describe traditional folk music and dance, entered the vocabulary of many continental European nations, each of which had its folk-song collectors and revivalists. The distinction between "authentic" folk and national and popular song in general has always been loose, particularly in America and Germany – for example, popular songwriters such as Stephen Foster could be termed "folk" in America. The International Folk Music Council definition allows that

6144-794: The outcomes of battles or lament tragedies or natural disasters . Sometimes, as in the triumphant Song of Deborah found in the Biblical Book of Judges , these songs celebrate victory. Laments for lost battles and wars, and the lives lost in them, are equally prominent in many traditions; these laments keep alive the cause for which the battle was fought. The narratives of traditional songs often also remember folk heroes such as John Henry or Robin Hood . Some traditional song narratives recall supernatural events or mysterious deaths. Hymns and other forms of religious music are often of traditional and unknown origin. Western musical notation

6240-449: The pace of many activities such as planting , weeding , reaping , threshing , weaving , and milling . In leisure time , singing and playing musical instruments were common forms of entertainment and history-telling—even more common than today when electrically enabled technologies and widespread literacy make other forms of entertainment and information-sharing competitive. Some believe that folk music originated as art music that

6336-608: The past, or fiddlers who are well known in other styles of fiddle music. To reduce bias, judging is done from a room away from the competition area; judges only hear the number of the competitor and the performance, but this does not prevent judges from recognizing fiddlers by their style. The exception is the final round of the Grand Championship, with the judges in the front row, next to the stage. 44°15′40″N 116°58′44″W  /  44.261°N 116.979°W  / 44.261; -116.979 Blaine Stubblefield Blaine Stubblefield (January 26, 1896 – December 18, 1960)

6432-420: The present National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest was inaugurated. The contest has continued to grow since then, and now sets the standard for fiddling competitions across the nation. The dominant style of fiddling that is played in the competition is Texas Contest Style , although there are many other fiddling styles which are played during jam sessions that last well into the night. There are also performances on

6528-400: The preservation of songs as artifacts of deceased cultures. "Functional" folklorists (e.g. Botkin and Alan Lomax) maintained that songs only retain relevance when used by those cultures which retain the traditions which birthed those songs. "Left-wing" folk revivalists (e.g. Charles Seeger and Lawrence Gellert) emphasized music's role "in 'people's' struggles for social and political rights". By

6624-630: The shoppers went from store to store. Elnora wrote many songs, including "It's Wiser to Live in Weiser" and "I'm a Farm Wife and I've Got Ants in My Pants". As a boy, Stubblefield used to ride mail boats on the Snake River . From 1949 to 1953, Stubblefield ran short boat trips for tourists on the Snake River in Hells Canyon from Homestead, Oregon downstream to the Kinney Creek rapids and back again. It

6720-471: The songs they hear. For example, around 1970 the song Mullā Mohammed Jān spread from Herat to the rest of Afghanistan , and Iran where it was recorded. Due to its repetitive refrain and the predictability of the second half of each verse, it allowed for both its popularization, and for each singer to create their own version of the song without being overly-concerned for a melody or restrictive poetic rhythm. Because variants proliferate naturally, there

6816-492: The southern Yangtze area. Jiangnan Sizhu (silk and bamboo music from Jiangnan ) is a style of instrumental music, often played by amateur musicians in tea houses in Shanghai. Guangdong Music or Cantonese Music is instrumental music from Guangzhou and surrounding areas. The music from this region influenced Yueju (Cantonese Opera) music, which would later grow popular during the self-described "Golden Age" of China under

6912-577: The sponsorship of the Washington Post , the festival was held in Washington, DC at Constitution Hall from 1937 to 1942. The folk music movement, festivals, and the wartime effort were seen as forces for social goods such as democracy, cultural pluralism, and the removal of culture and race-based barriers. The American folk music revivalists of the 1930s approached folk music in different ways. Three primary schools of thought emerged: "Traditionalists" (e.g. Sarah Gertrude Knott and John Lomax ) emphasized

7008-558: The term "folk music": newly composed songs, fixed in form and by known authors, which imitated some form of traditional music. The popularity of "contemporary folk" recordings caused the appearance of the category "Folk" in the Grammy Awards of 1959; in 1970 the term was dropped in favor of "Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording (including Traditional Blues)", while 1987 brought a distinction between "Best Traditional Folk Recording" and "Best Contemporary Folk Recording". After that, they had

7104-485: The term can also apply to music that, "...has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten, living tradition of a community. But the term does not cover a song, dance, or tune that has been taken over ready-made and remains unchanged." The post– World War II folk revival in America and in Britain started a new genre, Contemporary Folk Music , and brought an additional meaning to

7200-602: The term folk music should be used. Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of "old songs, with no known composers," another is that of music that has been submitted to an evolutionary "process of oral transmission ... the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character." Such definitions depend upon "(cultural) processes rather than abstract musical types...", upon " continuity and oral transmission ...seen as characterizing one side of

7296-933: The texts of 217,996 Latvian folk songs, the Latvju dainas . In Norway the work of collectors such as Ludvig Mathias Lindeman was extensively used by Edvard Grieg in his Lyric Pieces for piano and in other works, which became immensely popular. Around this time, composers of classical music developed a strong interest in collecting traditional songs, and a number of composers carried out their own field work on traditional music. These included Percy Grainger and Ralph Vaughan Williams in England and Béla Bartók in Hungary. These composers, like many of their predecessors, both made arrangements of folk songs and incorporated traditional material into original classical compositions. The advent of audio recording technology provided folklorists with

7392-520: The then-known variations of both the texts and tunes associated with what came to be known as the Child Canon. He also advanced some significant theories concerning the workings of oral-aural tradition. Similar activity was also under way in other countries. One of the most extensive was perhaps the work done in Riga by Krisjanis Barons , who between the years 1894 and 1915 published six volumes that included

7488-477: The town. Folk music was already, "...seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now past or about to disappear (or in some cases, to be preserved or somehow revived)," particularly in "a community uninfluenced by art music" and by commercial and printed song. Lloyd rejected this in favor of a simple distinction of economic class yet for him, true folk music was, in Charles Seeger 's words, "associated with

7584-478: The traditional folk music of many cultures. This encompasses such forms as traditional epic poetry , much of which was meant originally for oral performance, sometimes accompanied by instruments. Many epic poems of various cultures were pieced together from shorter pieces of traditional narrative verse, which explains their episodic structure, repetitive elements, and their frequent in medias res plot developments. Other forms of traditional narrative verse relate

7680-491: The true burial site of Chief Joseph . Blaine attended and graduated from the University of Idaho , and obtained an advanced degree in Journalism from the University of Washington . In the later part of his life, Blaine lived in Weiser; documents on folk music often refer to him as "Blaine Stubblefield of Weiser, Idaho". During World War I , Blaine joined the United States Army Air Service (forerunner of

7776-635: The twenty-first century many cherished Chinese folk songs have been inscribed in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity . In the process, songs once seen as vulgar are now being reconstructed as romantic courtship songs. Regional song competitions, popular in many communities, have promoted professional folk singing as a career, with some individual folk singers having gained national prominence. The art, music and dance of Sri Lanka derive from

7872-514: The uncultured classes". The term further derives from the German expression Volk , in the sense of "the people as a whole" as applied to popular and national music by Johann Gottfried Herder and the German Romantics over half a century earlier. Though it is understood that folk music is the music of the people, observers find a more precise definition to be elusive. Some do not even agree that

7968-558: Was Junior Class President for First Semester. That same year, he was also a member of the news staff of The University Argonaut (the official newspaper of the University of Idaho), a member of The Press Club, a member of Phi Gamma Delta , an associate editor of The Blue Bucket (the official Literary Magazine of the University), and was an officer of Winged Helmet (honorary literary fraternity). Another officer of Winged Helmet and member of

8064-400: Was a 32-mile round trip. In 1953, Stubblefield instituted an operation running passenger boats downstream through Hells Canyon. He used a 31-foot, twin-propeller boat called Chief Joseph at first, then upgraded to several 33-foot converted Army bridge pontoon boats with 25-horsepower outboard engines. The boat trips began at Homestead and ended at Lewiston, Idaho —a trip of 150 miles. This

8160-529: Was arguably the most prominent US folk music scholar of his time, notably during the beginnings of the folk music revival in the 1930s and early 1940s. Cecil Sharp also worked in America, recording the traditional songs of the Appalachian Mountains in 1916–1918 in collaboration with Maud Karpeles and Olive Dame Campbell and is considered the first major scholar covering American folk music. Campbell and Sharp are represented under other names by actors in

8256-469: Was asked by a local radio station to run a weekly program of folk music. In this way he attracted the interest of ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress . Blaine worked with Alan Lomax to record folk songs at the Archive of Folk Culture of the Library of Congress in Washington DC. The songs were recorded on 12-inch phonograph records or reel-to-reel magnetic tape and are available in

8352-424: Was changed and probably debased by oral transmission while reflecting the character of the society that produced it. In many societies, especially preliterate ones, the cultural transmission of folk music requires learning by ear , although notation has evolved in some cultures. Different cultures may have different notions concerning a division between "folk" music on the one hand and of "art" and "court" music on

8448-454: Was due to efforts led by Blaine Stubblefield who was Secretary of Weiser's Chamber of Commerce from 1948 until his death in December 1960. Both Blaine and his father Mickle were fiddlers. Blaine's interest in country fiddling music led him to ask the Weiser Chamber of Commerce Directors to allocate $ 175 for a fiddle contest. Nothing happened until January 1953, when the idea was proposed to hold

8544-405: Was not possible. Music was made by common people during both their work and leisure, as well as during religious activities. The work of economic production was often manual and communal. Manual labor often included singing by the workers, which served several practical purposes. It reduced the boredom of repetitive tasks, it kept the rhythm during synchronized pushes and pulls, and it set

8640-411: Was originally created to preserve the lines of Gregorian chant , which before its invention was taught as an oral tradition in monastic communities. Traditional songs such as Green grow the rushes, O present religious lore in a mnemonic form, as do Western Christmas carols and similar traditional songs. Work songs frequently feature call and response structures and are designed to enable

8736-571: Was sent to Brooks Field (also in San Antonio) to take the flying instructors' course. He then served as a flying instructor at Brooks Field for the remainder of his military service. Three letters written by Blaine during this period were printed by the Enterprise Record Chieftain newspaper ( Enterprise, Oregon ). Blaine attended the University of Idaho in the 1924-1925 and 1925-1926 academic years, and he graduated. In 1924-1925 he

8832-421: Was the eldest of seven children born to William Kirkham Stubblefield and his fifth wife Josephine Loomis Stubblefield. Mickle's wife, the former Edith Belle Davis, had come to Wallowa County, Oregon with her family from Iowa . Mickle Stubblefield was a passionate historian who shared his family history with his children and expanded his use of the written word through an avid letter-writing campaign to explain

8928-402: Was the first operation to regularly provide passenger tours through Hells Canyon, and operated six months each year. The trip took from three days to a week. Passengers brought along camping equipment and set up camp on shore each night. Upon reaching Lewiston, the boats were trucked back to their starting point. It was impossible to go all the way back upstream on the river. The asking price was

9024-459: Was the founder of the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest held annually in Weiser, Idaho , an archiver of American folk songs , the originator of regular passenger boat tours down the Hells Canyon of the Snake River , a writer, and a magazine editor. Blaine was born in Enterprise, Oregon . and was the eldest of ten children born to Mickle and Edith Stubblefield. Blaine's father Mickle

9120-492: Was the major part of Stubblefield's business. Blaine Stubblefield was married three times: (1) to Ruth Muriel Aspray (born April 4, 1906, died October 21, 1994); (2) to Verna Alice Henning Stubblefield (born June 16, 1908, died December 13, 1956) who died, and then (3) to Helen Buie. Stubblefield has a stepson, Bill Buie, a son of Helen from her earlier marriage. Bill, his wife Leona Jean Buie, and their three children and grandchildren live in Idaho and New Mexico. Leona Jean Buie

9216-489: Was university educated and ultimately moved to New York City, where she made a number of classic recordings of the family repertoire and published an important compilation of these songs. In January 2012, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress , with the Association for Cultural Equity, announced that they would release Lomax's vast archive of 1946 and later recording in digital form. Lomax spent

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