Three musicians are creating a digital map about the history of clawhammer banjo players of Southwest Virginia.
Mac Traynham is a banjo player from Floyd County. He learned tunes from another musician from this area, named Dent Wimmer, who passed away in the 70s. The musicians Wimmer learned from are gone too, but their stories have been passed down and are being documented in a new digital project, called the Masters of Southwest Virginia Clawhammer banjo map.
Malcolm Smith is the project’s director. “The real meat of Appalachian music is banjo and fiddle playing together in this ancient archaic beautiful sound.”
That ancient sound, Smith said, has its roots in Africa. The first people to play the banjo were slaves, who learned on similar instruments in their home countries.
“Black individuals brought it. White individuals saw it,” Smith said. “They played together sometimes. Played separately, learned from each other.”
This music also draws on influences from Native Americans, said Smith. Clawhammer banjo playing is different from the style of banjo in bluegrass music.
“And what makes it unique is it’s that down stroke,” Smith said. “It’s got a hard rhythm beat because it’s going down all the time. Bluegrass banjo is up picking style.”
Clawhammer banjo is also older than bluegrass. It was born in the Blue Ridge mountains of Southwest Virginia. Here, there can be different styles as you travel. They converge in places along the New River, where musicians gathered and still do today.
“Like in Galax, for example, there’s probably 13 different styles and influences of clawhammer, right in that city,” Smith said.
This music grew out of informal dance parties in living rooms and porches. Groups of friends and family across Southwest Virginia still keep these traditions alive, said Jason Phillips, a fiddle player from Carroll County.
“And we’d bring instruments and food. That’s something that they did in the old days. That’s something that’s always gonna continue,” said Phillips, who in addition to being a musician is also a computer programmer. He’s designing the web site for the banjo map. He said during the pandemic, many of these in-person jams went away.
And as more people go online to learn, they often don’t get the stories and context behind the music they’re playing,” said Smith. “And what we’re finding is that people, particularly young people, can go on see a video of someone teaching third or fourth hand, a clawhammer tune, learn it technically perfectly, but not learn any of the history, or the what I call the lore behind the tune.”
“And they’re not really playing it the way the old timers played it locally,” Phillips explained.
“We just want to give them another tool to use and to say, ‘yeah you’re on the right track, but now learn the stories. So you can tell the stories.’ And that’s when the music becomes powerful,” Smith said.
They received a grant from The Mid Atlantic Arts Organization, based in Baltimore, Maryland, to build the website.
“We feel very humble by receiving this money,” Smith said. “And it’s hard to find right now. But it’s crucial I think to the survival of this way of music and this way of life.”
Smith notes there are fewer grants for folklorists and artists these days, with so many federal cuts to the arts. Still, Phillips said, this music, and the stories around it, survived the pandemic, and hundreds of years of American history.
“There’s so many kids playing it these days,” Phillips said. “And it’s something you can’t kill off.”
Traynham is the project's folklore consultant. Holding a banjo he made by hand, he said these instruments are made to offer joy, even in difficult times.
“Yeah, it’s all about the party,” Traynham said. “If you can get someone dancing and laughins, or whatever. It’s always good to have a good time with it.”
They plan to have a version of their map online by December, to start bringing it to libraries and other sites in Southwest Virginia to get feedback and help share it with kids, folklorists, and anyone interested in the stories of clawhammer musicians.
After a year, Smith said they plan to offer their website to an established nonprofit organization to host and maintain. With further funding, they would like to expand the map to include other instruments and other regions.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
