From a small mountain town in West Virginia, elder fiddler Melvin Wine
has influenced musicians and music enthusiasts far beyond his homeplace.
Music, community, and tradition permeate all aspects of life in this
rural region. Fiddling Way Out Yonder: The Life and Music of Melvin Wine
shows how in Wine's playing and teaching all three have created a vital
and enduring legacy. As a musician, Wine has been honored nationally for
his musical skills and his leadership role in an American musical
tradition. A farmer, a coal miner, a father of ten children, and a
deeply religious man, he has played music influenced by the hard lessons
of his own experience and shaped a musical tradition even while passing
it on to others. Fiddling Way Out Yonder examines the fiddler, his
music, and its context from a variety of perspectives. Many rousing
fiddlers came from isolated mountain regions like Wine's home stomp. The
book makes a point to address the broad historical issues related both
to North American fiddling and to Wine's personal history. Wine (b.
1909) has spent almost all of his life in rural Braxton County, an area
where the fiddle and dance traditions that were strong during his
childhood and early adult life continue to be active today. Utilizing
models from folklore studies and ethnomusicology, Fiddling Way Out
Yonder discusses how community life and educational environment have
affected Wine's music and his approaches to performance. Such a unique
fiddler deserves close stylistic scrutiny. The book reveals Wine's
particular tunings, his ways of holding the instrument, his licks, his
bowing techniques and patterns, his tune categories, and his favorite
keys. The book includes transcriptions and analyses of ten of Wine's
tunes, some of which are linked to minstrelsy, ballad singing
traditions, and gospel music. Narratives discuss the background of each
tune and how it has fit into Wine's life. This biography heralds a
musician who wants both to communicate the spirit of his mountains and
to sway an audience into having an old-fashioned good time. Drew
Beisswenger is a music librarian at Southwest Missouri State University.
