Art is Long, Life is Short, Friendship Endures

By Steve Senderoff

I couldn’t change from an A chord to an E chord.

Damn, I thought. Gibson made this neck from a baseball bat. Randy’s eyebrows flicked upward as I changed from guitar to fretless banjo. I smiled back. It was the first of many exciting sessions at the 1996 Appalachian String Band Festival. I returned to Clifftop every year.

At the 2001 Festival, I was lying in a comfortable reclining chair just outside the circle of an exciting session. The session included people who had become treasured friends in the ensuing five years. I was not playing an instrument. During the ensuing five years, the muscles of my hands, arms, and upper body had slowly wasted away, along with my ability to play guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, dulcimer, Autoharp, and finally, banjo-ukulele. Randy’s eyebrows flicked upward, and I sang, “John Brown’s Dream…John Brown’s Dream, the devil is dead!”

After playing classical and traditional music for more than forty years, my musical gifts inexplicably disappeared. They were an essential component of my identity, much like a body part or a personal philosophy. I had to determine what was left.

My personal integration of life and music is not unique among members of Old-Time Music community, and the loss of the physical ability to play music will become a common occurrence as we age. However, my loss occurred rapidly and completely, at an age when most people still enjoy physical vitality. Therefore, I obtained a unique perspective of the 2001 Clifftop Festival. It is the perspective of a non-musician, someone who does not play music during most of his waking hours for five days in August at an idyllic West Virginia camp. By presenting my alternative perspective, I hope to demonstrate in this article that a festival, and by analogy, our “musical” community consists of much more than achieving the trance-like epiphany that the thirty-first repetition of Candy Girl brings.

A jam session may be viewed as a piece of kinetic sculpture. I have watched banjo players’ hands for years, attempting to decipher the intricacies of the “Round Peak” style. I watched Maxine’s hands during a late night porch session. Instead of trying to determine to which string the thumb dropped, I noted the striking economy of motion displayed by her right hand and the seeming disconnection of its motion from the beautiful diatonic, liquid cascade of sound it produced. Suddenly, the light caught a ring on her third finger, and I watched a sparkling point describe a series of arcs, cursive letters, and flickering abstract patterns that scintillated in time to the gentle chucks and pops we associate with this banjo style. All thoughts of frustration at my inability to join the session faded. I watched the slight movements of the musicians’ mouths. They were sub-vocalizing, singing the melody of a John Salyer tune while playing. It was a way of transferring the tune from the mind’s ear to the hands by way of the heart. I realized that after playing Old-Time Music for twenty years, I had never really seen it being played. I closed my eyes. Suddenly, with striking intensity, the feeling of playing “Sal’s Got Mud Between Her Toes” in two-D tuning on a phantom banjo rushed into my hands and arms. My body disappeared, and I joined the session. Freed from the burden of my instrument, I realized that after playing Old-Time Music for twenty years, I had never really felt myself playing it.

When you observe the construction and use of a modern festival campsite, you may hear a faint echo of peoples’ timeless, primitive desire to stay dry and comfortable while eating, sleeping, and playing music. Indeed, at Kerry’s campsite, I overheard, “Og primitive. Og play primitive tunes like Old Joe Clark. That make Og happy.” Ignoring for the moment the incongruous decorative juxtaposition of pink flamingoes, paper pineapples, and Buddhist prayer flags, this campsite, and many other Clifftop campsites were anything but primitive. Our site was protected by more than 1000 square feet of tarpage, had a four burner U-shaped kitchen, a children’s play area, and a live groundhog for a mascot. Never before had I accompanied the campsite supply crew to the local shopping center, and was quickly drafted. I watched a small army of slightly disheveled, colorfully dressed people wearing blue and red wristbands systematically fill carts with provisions, camping equipment, and whimsical novelties. Animated discussions erupted over the characteristics of various olive oils, desirability of canned clams, or ice prices. A scientific experiment was formulated dealing with the perceived decadence of generic versus jet-puffed marshmallow fluff. This high intensity activity resulted in a week of communal gourmet cooking by Linda, Trish, Kellie, and Pete that fueled endless high quality sessions. Randy fed groundhog liquefied sweet potatoes. A Thursday morning walk through the campground revealed ingenious variations on the luxury campsite theme. Although vintage stringband music could be heard, Camp Washington-Carver had not been transformed into a 1930’s Hooverville. The transformation was to a vision of Hooterville filtered through a Charlie Poole song. Certainly, this activity constitutes a festival within a festival.

For me, the spiritual center of a festival is the fellowship of family and friends from near and far, the opportunity to make new friends, and the chance to glimpse the vibrantly colored social fabric of a subculture that when described to nearly everyone else in my life elicits a confused “Huh?” It was easy to wander around the campground without the weight of an instrument case. I re-connected with old friends, put faces to the names on CDs I reviewed, enjoyed the fascinating company of new acquaintances (Steve, is this 5-string banjo worth anything? It says Kalamazoo on it and it was made in the 1930’s…Folk Singers

‘Round Harvard Square? My dad produced that album! Do you have a copy of it, Steve?), and luxuriated in the opportunity to start conversations with total strangers based on our common interests and shared experiences. I greedily ingested gossip (...tried him…she’s a new one…pregnant!!??) and witnessed how a tightly woven community takes care of its own. The tragic death of a talented fiddler shocked and saddened everyone, from his close friends to people who knew him only by reputation. A child’s broken arm quickly transformed musicians into their alter egos of doctors, caregivers, and logisticians, allowing Greg and Palmer to care for their son and strike a complex campsite as a prelude to a multi-state medical odyssey. I discussed my situation with several former musical partners, and was assured I was “part of the family”, banjo or not. I watched Ray and Jackie selflessly create a child-friendly haven in Hobo Pie land, and witnessed a row of angelic young faces glowing in lantern light, waiting in eager anticipation of sweets.

David mused, “If I lost my music would it be the end...no, I’d realize that I had a full, rich life and many friends.” Paradoxically, for many of us, it was the music and community that catalyzed the transformation of our lives to the state of rich and full.

It’s your music. Cherish it. It’s simultaneously “awfully tough” and fragile.

Steve Senderoff began playing classical music in 1958. He bought a banjo in 1981, and has been attending the Clifftop Festival since 1993. Photography by Trish Vierling.