Fiddling Way Out Yonder is a sociological study of the West Virginia fiddler Melvin Wine. Melvin is an acclaimed "old-time music" fiddler, 90 years old when the book was published (in 2001). The author is a local music librarian and folklorist.
The book is a work of academic sociology with a thin veneer of narrative added to entice a more general audience. It gives a biography of Melvin and a portrait of mid-century life in rural West Virginia, but Beisswenger is compelled to explicitly put every point into proper academic context: historical population data for Braxton County, Appalachian barn styles, moonshining, and lots of references to other studies of Appalachian culture.
The saving grace was generous quotations from Melvin himself. His voice comes through loud and clear in transcripts from interviews.
I liked the descriptions of West Virginia life best. Melvin's biography, which takes up the first chapters, is much more interesting than the musical chapters, which primarily offer a detailed catalogue of features (keys, time signatures, bowing direction, and so on) without any analysis of how Melvin's style compares to other fiddlers or other styles.
The book is a work of academic sociology with a thin veneer of narrative added to entice a more general audience. It gives a biography of Melvin and a portrait of mid-century life in rural West Virginia, but Beisswenger is compelled to explicitly put every point into proper academic context: historical population data for Braxton County, Appalachian barn styles, moonshining, and lots of references to other studies of Appalachian culture.
The saving grace was generous quotations from Melvin himself. His voice comes through loud and clear in transcripts from interviews.
I liked the descriptions of West Virginia life best. Melvin's biography, which takes up the first chapters, is much more interesting than the musical chapters, which primarily offer a detailed catalogue of features (keys, time signatures, bowing direction, and so on) without any analysis of how Melvin's style compares to other fiddlers or other styles.
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