Santa Barbara Old Time Fiddlers’ Convention, UCEN Lawn, UCSB, 1973<\/p><\/div>\n

By 1972, I had been performing in Southern California for ten years, and had come to the realization that very few people in the state had a very clear idea of what old time fiddling, folk, old time, blues, and bluegrass musics — what is now somewhat condescendingly called “roots music” — were all about. \u00a0This event seemed to me a way to help educate folks about their own musical heritage, and I began to tailor the Convention to meet this goal. First of all, though the Fiddlers’ Convention was prima facie a “contest”, I realized that there were not enough experienced musicians in the area to create a sustainable mass of contestants. \u00a0I therefore established the categories “beginner”, “intermediate”, and “advanced” to level the playing field and encourage as many people as possible to participate in the event. \u00a0The intent was to emphasize the sharing of music among all attendees. By 1972, the “Folk Revival”, welling up in the 1950s and early 1960s, had matured into an ongoing movement, including fans, “preservationists” and scholars, as well as those who built on the music to create a thriving newgrass, rock and pop music world. \u00a0To further instill interest in more traditional forms of the music, I decided to feature a prominent performer, group, or musical sub-style as a theme for each years’ convention. \u00a0Underlining this effort, we used early country music photos as components of our graphics: newspaper ads, posters, T-shirts, postcards, and buttons — which were handed out to all attendees. \u00a0We combined Sunday’s convention with a Friday or Saturday night concert which featured that year’s musical theme. \u00a0For example, the 1977 event was dedicated to the “Celtic Tradition”, featuring a Saturday evening concert by the Boys Of The Lough<\/em><\/strong>. \u00a0Saturday afternoons, we added a lecture\/workshop on the theme, all in an effort to educate our audience and build new friends for the music through a better understanding of the significance of its traditions.<\/p>\n