Finding The Singing Spruce: Musical Instrument Makers and Appalachia’s Mountain Forests is the new book in the Sounding Appalachia series by Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth, who teaches folklore studies at the Ohio State University. Aaron Allen, coeditor of Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature, calls the book “a nuanced academic contribution to both human and environmental Appalachian studies” that’s also “a collection of accessible stories about people, places, and instruments.”

As we sat in his shop escaping the summer heat in 2014, electric bass specialist Roger Morillo and I tacked back and forth from English to Spanish as we talked about the similarities between his home community in the mountains of Táchira State in Andean Venezuela and his more recent home in St. Albans, West Virginia. He drew on his experiences living in mountain environments and attributed the uniqueness of wood craft in the mountains to his impression of the freedom that mountaineers have to create and find meaning from their material environment. “It’s the environment and traditions that we have,” he said, leaning back into his steel folding chair. “Remember, in the past, these people used to get into the woods. They would build their own house, especially with woodworking. Then they’re thinking, ‘I’m going to build my own kitchen cabinet’ and after that say, ‘I’m going to build my own banjo because I want to be happy sitting in the house that I built, on the chair that I already built, playing the instrument that I already built. I made everything by myself.’ ” For Roger, this was an expression of an essential characteristic of every mountaineer all over the world: “They want to be free.”Read More »