The West Virginia University Press will release Erynn L. Marshall’sMusic in the Air Somewhere: The Shifting Borders of West Virginia’s Fiddle and Song TraditionsMarch 1.

The work illuminates the importance of fiddle music and folk traditions in West Virginia through oral histories taken from lifelong West Virginia musicians to demonstrate the uniqueness of the art.

Alan Jabbour, founding director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, comments that the new book offers a happy combination of breadth and depth of vision, looking at a number of West Virginia fiddlers as it does and finding broad themes, issues and threads to highlight that might not have revealed themselves with a focus on just a single fiddler.

Through the studies of the musicians’lives and the analysis of musical genres within the context of their lives, Marshall shows how the instrumental and vocal traditions have merged and transformed over time, blurring present boundaries and perceptions of the art.

In this excellent study designed for both the scholar of traditional music and the aficionado, Erynn Marshall has assembled a meticulous body of ethnographic information about West Virginia’s traditional musicians and their music,Gerald Milnes, Augusta Heritage Center Folk Art coordinator, writes, adding that”Music in the Air Somewhere’is likely to become a classic in the field to roots and folk music.

Four musical pieces are analyzed and contrasted through instrumental and vocal interpretation. Characteristics such as rhythmic elaboration, melodic variation, increased ornamentation, reduced fluctuation in key and tempo, the imitation of vocal”dwells,”and the addition of”ending tags”are all discussed to explain how the fiddle and song traditions converge.

Marshall also explores gender issues in fiddle music. Due to social restrictions and cultural codes, many skilled female fiddlers in the 20th century were involved with music, but in a different way than men. These differences reveal significant aspects concerning the history of mountain women, their music and their connection to fiddle song.

Erynn Marshall is also right to highlight the importance of women fiddlers in the tradition and to explore ways in which women fiddlers differed in both repertory and performance preferences from men fiddlers, both historically and today,Jabbour further remarked.

Included with the text is a CD of Marshall’s field and archival recordings of West Virginia musicians Warren Cronin, Rita Emerson, Lela Gerkins, Leland Hall, Phyllis Marks, Lester and Linda McCumbers, William and Woody Simmons, Melvin Wine, and the Sandy Valley Boys.

‘Music in the Air Somewhere’is a major addition to our Sound Archive series because, for the first time, we have a full study of the subject. This kind of scholarship cannot be developed in a traditional CD booklet,said Patrick Conner, director of the WVU Press. While previous titles in the collection include a CD and a booklet,Music in the Air Somewhereis the first full-sized book in the series.

Current titles in the series includeThe Edden Hammons Collection, vol. 1 and 2; John Johnson’sStrange Creek Fiddling”;Work and Pray: Historic Negro Spiritual and Work Songs from West Virginia”;Wondrous Love: Appalachian Chamber Music”; andJohn L. Handcox: Songs, Poems, and Stories of the Southern Tenant Farmers’Union.

For more information on these or any other WVU Press titles, visitwww.wvupress.comor call 1-866-WVUPRESS.