cover image Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia

Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia

Fiona Ritchie and Doug Orr. Univ. of North Carolina, $39.95 (368p) ISBN 978-1-4696-1822-7

Ritchie, founder and producer of NPR’s the Thistle & Shamrock, and Orr, founder of the Swannanoa Gathering music workshops, strike all the right chords in this pleasantly tuneful survey of the history of the evolution of Scottish music in Appalachia. The authors allow musicians and storytellers—ranging from Appalachian singer and dulcimer player Jean Ritchie and North Carolina storyteller Sheila Kay Adams to Doc Watson and former Carolina Chocolate Drops member Dom Flemons—to chronicle the tales of this rich tradition in their own words; thus, Ritchie, known as “The Mother of Folk” shares her story of growing up in eastern Kentucky singing the ballads she learned from her community and her family and bringing insight into the centuries-old ballad tradition through her own insights into the music. Chock-full of photographs, 60 black and white and 64 color, Ritchie and Orr take us on a journey from the rich musical traditions in various regions of Scotland to the voyage of the music from Scotland to Ulster and then across the ocean, where music permeates the daily lives of the wayfarers, and finally to the migrations and settlement in a new land, where the immigrants’ music meets and mingles with other traditions. (Sept.)