Date: July 25th 2010

(You have received this message as you have previously joined or requested to join our mailing list. Information, including unsubscription instructions and our physical mailing address and phone number are located at the bottom of this message) I wrote on this subject and thought i had mailed it out, but i cannot find it in any folder/archive. If i have already sent anything out like this i will appologize. Trying to deal with this newsletter is really hard for me; dont know much what i am doing. What dawned some many years ago probably in the mid 1970's is that a person cannot tell a lie with the "music she or he is trying to play"> Listen long enough and you will be able to discern if it is a fake, an imitation or that the person has spent some time or actually a lot of time in the learning process. Now in this old music I am not talking about "speed, 'correct intonation', lots of 'fancy' stuff hoping to impress other people. I am talking about spending some on technique and then moving out onto 4-5 tunes and spend a year or so with them without.trying to add to that number,is the smartest move.. especially now, there has been in past 40-50 years by many who grew up on side walks to :learn tune after tune after nune and never really learn to play one of them. there is great pressure on those who read the magazines, etc ,etc to keep working on more and more. IE: there is story about a group of the many thousands who tramped thru tommy jarrell's house who were showing off for him. after they left, he sadly said "they know a thousand fiddle tunes and cant play one of them"!! So a major problem has arisen from people who write "tab books" and are really pushing them, are not warning the buyers to avoid thinking that one more book is going to help that person learn to get good on banjo or on fiddle. that is an impossibility BTW."tab books are at home over in the analytical, intellecvtual part of the brain WHICH CAN NEVER LEARN TO PLAY THE MUSIC"> WHEN the student finally switches over to th ecreative, intuitive part of the brain and permits itself to be finally taught by the Source of Revelation, then music will come gushing out. Thus the human "soul" [intellect, emotions, will] must finally give up it's stubborness and be moved out of the way. OR the music will stay "soulish" forever. No real life or depth; gimmicks and flashy melody will be all it can ever do. BTW, i have found that the closer one can stay to the 19th cwnruey source, the better. The commercial music that came along in late 'teens was the beginning of the end. the end of the depths; it became shallow. there is story about sampson in the OLD TESTAMENT and he was a "set apart nazarite" = never to cut his hair, touch dead bodies, etc etc etc. he grew up "spoiled and would throw a tantrum" if he did not get what he wanted. after he grew up a bit, he was fulfilling the job he was called to do: "JUDGE ISRAEL" and for a number of years he did relativelly well but he began "backsliding and indulging in what he had orders not to do" he was hanging out with a certain philistine woman [breaking direct orders from the Lord]. she was wondering where was source of this strength. If she had checked it out with any Jew, they could have told her "Sampson is a Nazarite" and these are the orders he has to live under. take note: when the Spirit of the Lord would come over him, he was strong enougjh to do amazing things like carry off the big gates of the city, etc etc. so she kept on and on and on and he got tired of it and told her finally -- cut off my hair and i will be just like like every other man. somewhere it reads "THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD HAD LEFT HIM AND HE DIDNT EVEN KNOW IT" so it wasnt the hair that had never been cut; it was the Lord just gave up because Sampson had presumed on Him for too long, sinned against Him.--. go read the rest of the story if interested. POINT: after the turn of the century; after about 1910-1920 the attitude toward the old music was turning toward the commercial influence. the old music was/is a paradox: it was/is "extremely powerful but it was extremely fragile" this is why one of the certain "band contests at clifftop is a terrible insult on the Old Music" so diring those years i just mentioned, "the SPIRIT OF THE OLD MOUNTAIN MUSIC LEFT AND ALMOST NO ONE EVEN NOTICED". it was the idea about the millions and millions acres of virgin timber that was covering these mountains and from what i can hear, everyone believed cutting timber would just go on forever. however, after about 35-40yr most of it was almost all cut down and shipped out or burnt up and nohing put back in its place. The coal barons have done the same thing; they have just been doing it longer and raping and pillaging in a far more destructive way. But one might say "that was then; this is now. We have all the ducks lined up in a row and nothing like that will ever take place within the music and culture of the middle of the southern Appalachians". AS Dr Christiane Balangee Morris wrote in her PhD dissertation at Penn State Univ, in recent years the main thing in the rape and pillaging, taking it out and putting nothing back is the "Traditional Culture of the indiginous people". So it has been "West Virginia: the "Third World Country' within the United States". That goes back at least as far as Geo Washington in 1750s-1760s surveying for Lord Farfax.. And it is still most all WVa is owned and operated by outside interests who care nothing for it. In my years of working as a pastor as well as a banjo teacher, I had call to be in rooms where folks were dying. There is something called "the Death Rattle" that shows up sometimes. Within the Old Time Traditional West VirginiaMountain Music, the true old music has been slowly smothering; hardly able to catch it's breath; Back in the lat 1960s when i went in search,tThere were a handfull of folks who still remembered the old stories, the old songs, the old banjo tunes, and the old fiddle tuns. [All solo} I was blessed with visiting my neighbors here in Pocahontas county and east central WVa. My neighbors, the Hammons were direct decendents of the last literal "frontiersmen" who had gone into the "FRONTIER" in the 1700s and stay in the wilderness into the 20th century. they were "old" but still remember it all with clear mindes and were able to get around well in 1968 and following. This project we are working on - we plan to do a first shortened release called: "BEST OF 'ACROSS THE YEW PINES". IT will have a lot of material in it and be about 1/3rd of the whole that we have available. we are not too far from "BEST OF......" being finished. folks will have to be really "HARD CORE" to want the monster. as it is at present, i think the "BEST OF........" WILL BE CLOSE TO ONE HOUR Iwill try to send newslettesr more often remember, anyone can learn this old music; it just takes a lot of work - listening 5x as much as playing. problem is -- this music is alien to almost everyone's tongue who starts otu trying learn it. thus, have to get the dialect of the old music. if gonna learn Irish music -- get a grasp of how the dialect goes" delta blue, then beginniing with how the dialect goes. if like "round peak" then get a grasp of that dialect; if like kentucky music, get dialect of that region. dont say "this is the way tommy jarrell played ______" until you have spent many long years trying to learn without "cloning" wilson douglas said "it takes abotu ten years just to START TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY THE FIDDLE" [OR BANJO OR OLD TIME WVA MUSIC. so dont get in a hurry; it ii sfrom a people from another time; another place; and outlook on life, and whether you like or approve of them, it will take a lot to catch a grasp if you dont. blessings diller ! -- The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following: Yew Pine Mountain Music / Dwight Diller Email Newsletter Using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by clicking on the following link (URL): DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW UNLESS YOU WANT TO UNSUBSCRIBE http://www.dwightdiller.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/newsletter/ DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE UNLESS YOU WANT TO UNSUBSCRIBE If the above link (URL) is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. 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