Thursday, February 4, 2021

Coronavirus in rural America (Part CXXII): Folk music traditions being lost in the Ozarks because musicians can't get together

Jennifer Moore reports for the New York Times today out of McClurg, Missouri in the Missouri, Ozarks.  Here's an excerpt: 

In an abandoned general store along a nearly deserted country road, Alvie Dooms, 90, and Gordon McCann, 89, played rhythm guitar. Nearly a dozen more musicians, many of them also older adults, joined in on fiddle, mandolin, banjo and upright bass. Their tunes had names like “Last Train Home,” “Pig Ankle Rag” and “Arkansas Traveler.”

The old-time dance music — merry and sweet, or slower and wistful — evoked the lively jigs and reels of the Scots-Irish pioneers who settled in these rugged hills generations ago. A precursor to bluegrass, their sound was unique to this particular corner of Missouri.

The McClurg jam, as the Monday night music and potluck fest was known, endured for decades, the last gathering of its kind in the rural Ozarks. But the coronavirus pandemic has silenced the instruments, at least temporarily. And the suspension has led to worry: What will become of this singular musical tradition?

McClurg is not even a Census Designated Place and no population is provided on wikipedia, which does note that it is part of the Branson Micropolitan Statistical Area.  McClurg is in far northeastern Taney County, population 51,000.  That happens to be where "Winter's Bone," the 2010 indie breakout film took place, and I was reminded of that film when reading this story because the film featured a music party or jam of the sort featured in this story.  Read more about "Winter's Bone" in myriad posts here.  Another story about the importance of old-time music --including its importance to rural economies--is here. A related story out of Mountain View, Arkansas, also in the Ozarks, is here

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