Wonderful music has originated from here. In fact
ethnomusicologists have been wearing this patch of ground
out for years.
(singing: Wish I was an apple hanging in a tree.)
(singing: Everytime my Cindy pass she takes a bite out of me)
(singing: Get along home Cindy, get along home)
(singing: Get along home Cindy, I'll marry you someday)
So people were coming here and cataloging
the music of the mountains which
mainly came from Scotland and Ireland
and handed down orally from one generation to the next.
(singing: Cindy got religion, she heard it once before)
(singing: when she heard that banjo, she's the first one on the floor)
(singing: Get along home Cindy, get along home)
Appalachia was one of those places where
people had nothing else to do except play music.
You know recreationally, there was church
and you could do what was called a frolic
playing and dancing out on your porch.
That's where a lot of the music flourished
and people came looking for it you know wanting to
find the authentic.
Cecil Sharp was an ethnomusicologist from England.
He felt that the peasants who kept the traditions
were all going to the cities and that all the ballads and songs
and stories of their tradition would be lost.
He made a tour of the Appalachian region
and he started notating the music that he heard.
At that time 1903, there were two ladies
May Stone and Katherine Pettit.
They established the Hindman Settlement School
and it was a prestigious school for women
but they were very respectful for the traditions of the people
and with the music of the area
so story goes, they had the school.
A student with golden rods and Cecil Sharp entered the building
and he was allergic to golden rods so not a good start
but the young woman named Ada B. Smith played on her banjo
and it just floored them and Cecil Sharp
was just fired up to look for more these Anglo-Saxon
ballads that were preserved
but in fact there were actually communities of Black people here
when the settlers came. They're called Melungeons.
We think that they were African Portuguese people that
came here really, really early on.
The banjo is based on an African instrument
called the akonting which is basically a gourd with a stick
and a gut string on it.
There was another musicologist Josiah Combs.
He was from here and what he filled in where Cecil Sharpe did not
was the Black experience.
He identified certain tunes and songs that came from Africa.
He saw that their influence was huge in the music
of the region so it's pretty incredible times.
(singing: man shake could she, my little sugar shack)