The Don Messer Anthology Of Favorite Fiddle Tunes

This Anthology contains fiddle tunes from Way Down Easy Fiddlin' Tunes, Barndance Breakdowns and Canadian Hoedowns, Fiddlin' Favorites, and Centennial Folio. They represent Don Messer’s favorite and most requested tunes in his long career as Canad’s best-known country fiddler.

Canadian fiddle music receives the credit and recognition it deserves in this lively collection of tunes from virtually every province and ethnic group in Canada. Originally published in 1990, this project is the result of generous donations by numerous fiddlers and fans of fiddle music. In addition to the preservation and popularization of this folk music form, the contributors shared these common goals in this endeavor: composer recognition, folk music revitalization in Canada and abroad, acknowledgement of the violin and its own origins in the development of fiddle music and its place in Canadian society, note reading and chording, and to pay tribute to many great fiddlers. This revised edition features contributions of 200 of the best tunes from the first printing as well as 200 new tunes. They consist of hornpipes, strathspeys, polkas, waltzes, calypsos, reels, clogs, two-steps, jigs, airs, breakdowns, schottishes, marches, rags, and laments. A bibliography and the background of each composer is included.

North American Fiddle Music: A Research and Information Guide is the first large-scale annotated bibliography and research guide on the fiddle traditions of the United States and Canada. These countries, both of which have large immigrant populations as well as Native populations, have maintained fiddle traditions that, while sometimes faithful to old-world or Native styles, often feature blended elements from various traditions. Therefore, researchers of the fiddle traditions in these two countries can not only explore elements of fiddling practices drawn from various regions of the world, but also look at how different fiddle traditions can interact and change. In addition to including short essays and listings of resources about the full range of fiddle traditions in those two countries, it also discusses selected resources about fiddle traditions in other countries that have influenced the traditions in the United States and Canada.

The two southern most counties in Ireland, Cork and Kerry, have legendary music and dance traditions. on the border of these two counties, a rural area called Sliabh Luachra is especially well-known for its fiddle tunes and itinerant fiddle teachers. When speaking of this area's fiddle music, some describe a special lilt or backbeat, or they talk about the special role of set dances, but the most often expressed quality relates to the frequent use of slides and polkas. This book features transcriptions of 107 tunes as played by three of the region's most distinguished fiddlers: Pádraig O'Keeffe, Denis Murphy, and Connie O'Connell. Each fiddler is profiled, followed by a collection of meticulously transcribed tunes and annotations. an accompanying CD includes 30 of these tunes played solo by Connie O'Connell.

The Ottawa Valley is a region of Canada straddling the Ottawa River in Ontario and Québec that is well known for its rich singing, storytelling, fiddling and step dancing traditions. Settled largely by the Irish, Scots and the French over the past two hundred years, it had largest concentration of people of Irish origin in Canada by the late 19th century. Travelling through the Valley one gets the sense of coming face to face with the past. While its dramatic history is filled with incidents of extreme hardship and tragedy, the overriding impression is of a triumphant survivalism associated with its strong men of the past; the voyageurs, the coureurs du bois and the lumbermen. The legacy of this unique heritage—from fiddling and step dancing to tales of priests, lumberman, and Orange and Green rivalries—is explored in this book through the voices of Valley people themselves. The author reveals the importance of place and history in the transmission of this vibrant regional culture down to the present day.

A unique collection of 66 fiddle tunes illustrating the major regional styles found across America and Canada. This book contains rare vintage photographs, player's biographical profiles, historical and performance notes, bowing indications, and information on cross-tunings and the American institution of fiddle contests. the authors have collaborated brilliantly on this labor of love to produce a definitive volume of tunes transcribed from recordings by many of the best fiddlers in North America. Exemplary tunes are included from the Northeast, Southeast and Western regions, plus various widespread ethnic styles including Cajun, Irish, Scandinavian, Klezmer, and Eastern European styles.

Musical Intimacies and Indigenous Imaginaries explores several styles performed in the vital aboriginal musical scene in the western Canadian province of Manitoba, focusing on fiddling, country music, Christian hymnody, and step dancing. In considering these genres and the contexts in which they are performed, author Byron Dueck outlines a compelling theory of musical publics, examines the complex, overlapping social orientations of contemporary musicians, and shows how music and dance play a central role in a distinctive indigenous public culture. Dueck considers a wide range of contemporary aboriginal performances and venues--urban and rural, secular and sacred, large and small. Such gatherings create opportunities for the expression of distinctive modes of northern Algonquian sociability and for the creative extension of indigenous publicness. In examining these interstitial sites--at once places of intimate interaction and spaces oriented to imagined audiences--this volume considers how Manitoban aboriginal musicians engage with audiences both immediate and unknown; how they negotiate the possibilities mass mediation affords; and how, in doing so, they extend and elaborate indigenous sociability. Musical Intimacies brings theories of public culture from anthropology and literary criticism into musicological and ethnomusicological discussions while introducing productive new ways of understanding North American indigenous engagement with mass mediation. It is a unique work that will appeal to students and scholars of popular music, musicology, music theory, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies. It will be necessary reading for students of American ethnomusicology, First Nations and Native American studies, and Canadian music studies.

In this generous collection, Nova Scotian fiddler Bill Guest presents standard notation of easy to intermediate-level traditional tunes, some of his own more complex original compositions plus works by twenty-one of his Canadian fiddling contemporaries. The collection offers approximately 120 dance tunes including: waltzes, hornpipes, jigs, polkas, two-steps, airs, breakdowns, reels, swing tunes, and a few 4/4 melodies for slow dancers. “The Irish Washerwoman” is presented in 3 versions with different time signatures, and five selections are arranged as duets. The salient feature of this book, however, is the enjoyment and multifaceted musical perspective gained from playing the work of so many fiddlers from across the vast commonwealth of Canada.

One hundred great fiddle solos and duets on reels, waltzes, jigs, hornpipes, two-steps, breakdowns, clogs, and schottisches by well-known Canadian fiddle Bill Guest. This book was compiled mainly for the violin student who is interested in learning to play old-time fiddle music. Suggested bowings are marked in some tunes. Chord symbols are included for accompaniment.