Sounds of Appalachia come alive at Prickett's Fort's Traditional Music Day
Sep. 11—FAIRMONT — Prickett's Fort wooden stockades were the backdrop for several jam sessions that formed on the lawn of the park's grounds for Traditional Music Day.
Musicians skilled in the fiddle, banjo and guitar joined mandolins, dulcimers and mountain dusters made traditional music Saturday that harkened back to colonial times.
"It's Appalachia, not just West Virginia," Bob Snyder, one of the musicians with the Porch Time Pickers, said. "This music was very strong, Pennsylvania was a big area for it. All of West Virginia, the western side of Virginia, and then you get into the mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina and Kentucky. This is still very popular music in this area."
Snyder said the music descends out of the lineage that Scottish and Irish immigrants brought with them when they immigrated to the United States.
The park also had more formal concerts play throughout the day inside the visitor's center. However, anyone seeking an encore more than likely could find one of the musicians who played inside later jamming with different groups of musicians.
"Traditional Music Day gives local musicians an opportunity to come out here and play," Greg Bray, executive director of the Prickett's Fort Memorial Foundation, said. "This is Old Time music, music that was coming from Scotland and Ireland, in variations of that over here in the colonies, and that is what we call traditional music today."
Old Time is not to be confused with Bluegrass, Snyder said. The main difference is that Bluegrass is more of a vocal performance genre, while Old Time is more instrumental.
Ebony McGill plays upright bass as well as a variety of other instruments. She has been playing at the park for around 4 or 5 years. She enjoys having an outlet to share music with her fellow musicians.
Old Time music also has a deep personal connection to McGill.
"It goes back in my family roots a lot, my mother played, a lot of my family played, so I grew up around it," she said. "It was always a feel good moment for us to come to things like this, to just enjoy the music and fellowship with other musicians. It blows you away to see the talent that a lot of these musicians have."
The music itself also has its own provenance.
Sarah Sink, who plays with a band named Emerald Hills along with her husband, said that many of the pieces they play often have their own stories that accompany them.
"It's nice to know that we can play tunes that were played when the Americans were fighting their revolutionary war," she said. "Some of the Irish tunes go back a thousand years, so it's nice to know something our ancestors did."
Reach Esteban at efernandez@timeswv.com
