by Siah Klootchman

Created on: February 15, 2009   Last Updated: February 28, 2009

The genealogy hobby brought me to the fiddle at age 46.

It wasn't my first encounter with the ancient and respected violin family of instruments. There had been a few years playing cello in the school orchestra. A junior-year switch to string bass led to weekend gigs in bluegrass bands. Connections in the music community then led to thirty years of playing electric bass in variety of working bands. Wherever people gather to celebrate, there must be food, drink and music. Human culture worldwide has always had a need for musicians. My own path eventually left the working-class bars and eventually included original projects, college radio play and small regional tours. Professional burnout and new creative interests eventually relegated those experiences to a scrapbook on a shelf and the occasional check from iTunes.

As many people often do at midlife, i became newly interested in family history and heritage, asking questions and making connections with the past and future. It was time for a trip back to the source, the family homeland. As I visited scores of cultural sites during the Midwest genealogy trip, I noticed that nearly every historic museum had some sort of violin in its collection. No matter if the main focus of the museum was railroads, immigration, war or farming, the fiddle was there, playing an integral part in the daily life of the people. In a familiar example, Pa Ingalls' fiddle is often mentioned in the Laura Ingalls Wilder "Little House on the Prairie" series of books set in the American pioneer days of the 1870's. In one scene, Pa speaks to Ma before a long dangerous wintertime walk to find paying work. "Take good care of the old fiddle Caroline. It puts heart into a man." What would Pa think of museum fiddles lay quietly inside dusty glass cases, string-less and broken, tagged like extinct birds? Others are perched on velvet sofas, looking as if they could still be picked up and played. They reminded me of faithful old dogs, eagerly awaiting the touch of a rosined bow and the beloved sound of a master's voice to call out the steps to waiting dancers.

A newly researched obituary mentions that one of my great-great-grandfather had fine skills as a caller and fiddler at country dances. Other relatives are also discovered to have been fiddlers, or banjo players, or remembered as handy with a guitar. Standing out in a field after a day indoors perusing dusty archives, I thought of Pa and Ma dancing to homegrown music decades before electricity

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