Ole Hendricks was an immigrant both representative and exceptional--a
true artistic talent who nevertheless lived a familiar immigrant
experience. By day, he was a farmer. But at night, his fiddle lit up
dance halls, bringing together all manner of neighbors in rural
Minnesota. Each tune in his repertoire of waltzes, reels, polkas,
quadrilles, and more were copied neatly into his commonplace book.
Such tunebooks, popular during the nineteenth century, rarely survive
and are often overlooked by folk scholars in favor of commercially
produced recordings, published sheet music, or oral tradition. Based on
extensive historical and genealogical research, Amy Shaw presents a
grounded picture of a musician, his family, and his community in the
Upper Midwest, revealing much about music and dance in the area. This
notable contribution to regional music and folklore includes more than
one hundred of Ole's dance tunes, transcribed into modern musical
notation for the first time. Ole Hendricks and His Tunebook will be
valuable to readers and scholars interested in ethnomusicology and the
Norwegian American immigrant experience.