8 minute read
The Songcatcher of Avery County
Derek & Aunt “Nicky” listening to a recording of Lena Turbyfill
The Songcatcher of Avery County
By Steve York
William Ritter performing with Derek in Ashe Civic Center
Mrs. Lena Bare Turbyfill
In 1909 Olive Dame Campbell began collecting local folk ballads while living with her missionary schoolteacher husband, John Campbell, amongst the peoples of the southern Appalachian mountains. In the process, she soon discovered how much those songs and melodies had obvious ties to and deep roots within age-old Scottish, Irish and English ballads.
Olive and John had recently moved to the area on a grant John had received to study the area’s social and cultural conditions. The grant was intended to help John’s missionary organization better understand and address the needs of remote Appalachian people who typically lived under very difficult conditions, far removed from even the simplest of modern amenities.
After John passed away, Olive went on to not only complete the work of her late husband and found the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, but to continue collecting songs; in 1917 she published English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, a collaboration with English folk song collector, Cecil Sharp.
It was this work that ultimately inspired the 2000 film entitled Songcatcher. Although a fictionalized version of Olive’s life, the film does capture the spirit of her music archiving and her passionate appreciation for the authentic folk ballads and culture of Appalachia.
That same spirit and passion is very much alive and well today in the folksong and ballad archiving of folklorist Derek Piotr. And his most recent fieldwork has taken up permanent residence right here in the small, historic community of Elk Park. A singer since age three, a professional musician since age 20 and, more recently, a dedicated folklorist, Derek hails from West Redding, Connecticut. His excavations to dig up original folk music have carried him up and down the mid-Atlantic states as well as across the Atlantic to North Yorkshire, England, and, most recently, to Avery County.
Fully fluent in the worlds of classical, folk, popular, alternative and experimental genres of music, Derek has always been equally intrigued by pure “sounds”—the sounds of nature, the unique sounds of the untrained, unsophisticated human voice— and how these elements may be woven together with limited, select instrumentation into original music compositions.
He also seems to have had a long fascination with ethnomusicology, a fancy word for the study of music from the cultural and social aspects of the people who make it. In particular he’s been drawn to the oral traditions of older stories and story-songs, especially the hauntingly beautiful and poignant songs born of struggle, hardship and longing, sung in raw authenticity by unpolished voices (“non-singers,” as Derek emphasizes) and free from modern instrumentation or recording technology. And, as he recalls, this fascination—and soon to become a life calling—began early on and within his own family.
“My grandmother, Dorothy Augusta Crofut, was born in 1919,” recalled Piotr. “In 2008, when I was 17 and she was 89, I used my first mobile phone to record a brief clip of her. Then, in 2010, she called our house phone. It went to voicemail and I picked up. Struck by the idea that I could record conversations and those moments with her, I slowly began recording her covertly when I would visit with her, making a few recordings on my mobile phone. She never knew about this, and actually never heard any of my recordings,” he explained.
“Those recordings spanned from 2008 to January 1, 2018. She passed away two months later at the age of 99. I had never thought I would use them and kept them mostly as a loose sort of journal for myself. But the moment she passed away I knew I had to memorialize her within my Avia album. It features only a few of these recordings, set to organ, string quartet, saxophone, and other sort of ‘chamber’ ensemble backdrops.”
So, what drew Piotr to settle in Elk Park? “Initially I was guided by recordings made for the Works Progress Administration in 1939 of Lena Bare Turbyfill,” Piotr noted. “Lena was recorded by Dr. Herbert Halpert as part of his Southern Folklife Expedition. Only two of Lena’s performances had been made commercially available before I came along. So, I made it my mission to excavate her and her family’s entire repertoire to curate and release these recordings. I also began working with Lena’s living descendants, mainly her grandchildren and, in particular, her last living daughter, Nicola ‘Aunt Nicky’ Pritchard.
“I first recorded her in Elk Park in July of 2020,” added Piotr. “Meeting Nicky in person was a magical experience. And being able to hear a version of an ancient Scottish ballad that had been remembered through pure oral tradition…now being sung in the 21st century in a little living room…next to iPhones and laptops…was a wonderment. My meetings with Aunt Nicky spurred on my fieldwork in a huge way, and Lena’s family eventually ended up ‘claiming me as their own’ due to the emotional nature of my work with them,” he recalled.
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SONGCATCHER: continued from previous page
Previous recordings from those meetings have been incorporated into Piotr’s albums entitled Last Wisps of the Old Ways: North Carolina Mountain Singing, and Ever Since We’ve Known It: More North Carolina Mountain Singing; both expand on the songs and stories of Lena Turbyfill and her daughter, “Aunt Nicky” Pritchard.
Much like Olive Campbell, Piotr also found that many of the songs he’s discovered were also derived—in whole or in part—from ancient Scottish, Irish and English ballads. But, as Piotr will note, the art of capturing these recordings takes a special sensitivity for the “very real” people who open up to share story-songs.
As he notes, they aren’t professional singers or storytellers, and they don’t typically perform publicly, except maybe at church or family gatherings. So, Piotr is careful to tread lightly and with respect in approaching his subjects, knowing that these age-old ballads and stories carry more than words and melodies. They also carry a personal history with deep roots in cherished family memories and cultural traditions.
Since 2020, Piotr’s archiving and published recordings have grown considerably with a variety of singers, story-tellers and musicians. His latest solo album entitled The Devil Knows How, culled primarily from the repertoire of Lena Bare Turbyfill and her kin, features narratives about the family’s singing tradition, with a variety of musical pieces, including contributions from locals Brandon J. Johnson, Ian Kirkpatrick, and William Ritter. Collections have also included Charlie and Shirley Glenn, Bobby McMillon and others. When you peruse some of Piotr’s recordings, you may hear a combination of spoken word-stories with a music background; unaccompanied a cappella ballads with multiple verses; and old tunes accompanied by guitar, banjo, fiddle or dulcimer. Beyond that, Piotr has recently announced the publishing of his Fieldwork-Archive. com collections, which are added to his website’s other recordings. The historical value of Piotr’s work will long endure in the world of folklorists far and wide. But the heartfelt personal legacies of those “real people with real stories” captured through age-old oral traditions
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AS SEEN ON PBS NC"NC WEEKEND" are and always will be priceless. If you’ve yet to come across Piotr or his works, you can check them out at www.derekpiotr. com. Or, catch Piotr live—he has recently performed at the Avery Heritage Festival in Newland, at the Revolve in Asheville, and on the air at Boone Area Community Radio. Either way, looks like Piotr has taken up the mantle as Avery County’s own folklorist and “Songcatcher.” And, if you, your friends or relatives have a story, song, fragment, recipe, memory, or adage to share, you can reach out to him at d@ derekpiotr.com.
Derek Piotr field recording with Shirley and Charlie Glenn in Banner Elk, NC
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48 — Autumn 2022 CAROLINA MOUNTAIN LIFE
