×

Blennerhassett Museum explores sounds, history of Appalachian culture

Photo by Brett Dunlap Kendra Ward and Bob Bence presented “Appalachian Trail of Music” as the third presentation Sunday in the 2017 Blennerhassett Winter Lecture Series at the Blennerhassett Museum of Regional History in downtown Parkersburg.

PARKERSBURG –Music in Appalachia has many strong ties to families and family life, a couple told a gathering in Parkersburg on Sunday.

Kendra Ward and Bob Bence presented “Appalachian Trail of Music” as the third presentation in the 2017 Blennerhassett Winter Lecture Series at the Blennerhassett Museum of Regional History in downtown Parkersburg.

Ward is a champion dulcimer player, musician, author, teacher and composer while Bence is an award-winning guitarist. Together they presented a history of Appalachian music and history. The couple have been married over 31 years.

Ward, who grew up in Gallia County, Ohio, has played the dulcimer since she was 4 years old, being taught primarily by her father and grandmother. She was surrounded by music all of her life as her family would regularly get together and play. She also heard a lot and learned from the leading artists in Appalachian music.

The couple played a number of well-know songs as well as many of their own compositions during Sunday’s program. Early in the presentation they were having some sound equipment problems.

“Don’t you just love how many wires it takes to make acoustic music sound acoustic,” Bence joked.

The couple talked about a number of dulcimers used throughout the Appalachian region, showing off several instruments made by Ward’s family. Ward started playing a hammered dulcimer.

“The instrument dates back 3,000 years to Biblical times,” she said.

Bence added the instrument originated in the Persian Empire, the modern Middle East.

“Because of that central origin, you can find instruments similar to this in most regions around the world,” he said. “You can find Asian variations, eastern European and so on.

“They migrated to North America as early as the first decade in the 1600s.”

Until the piano became popular, the hammered dulcimer was a very popular parlor instrument up until the early 1900s when the piano took its place.

“They are actually like the inside of a piano as the hammers hit the string,” Ward said.

A lot of Appalachian music is based in faith.

“Hymns are very important and people really loved them,” Ward said before they played “I’ll Fly Away.”

Ward grew up with her parents and grandparents playing music from dulcimers to fiddles and more.

“She grew up surrounded by this music,” Bence said. “The primary form of entertainment for her family was playing music and every weekend they would gather at some relative’s house and they would all play.

“She grew up surround by instruments, music and not remembering a time when she wasn’t playing.”

When someone got tired and would put their instrument down, Ward would get it and worked at figuring it out, Bence said.

“She was playing accordions, fiddles, dulcimers and whatever anyone put down,” he said.

She was teaching an uncle how to play the dulcimer before she was in kindergarten.

Her father was very particular about his fiddle bow and wouldn’t let anyone use it, instead giving her a used one that was not always in the best of shape. It has been a number of years since her father passed away and she is still hesitant about using his bow, Ward said.

“I still can’t touch it,” she said with a laugh.

Even as relatives got older they still enjoyed listening to the music and playing along when they could, the couple said.

They talked about the changes to the instrument over the years as more people have adapted playing a chord style arrangement, like on a guitar.

The couple played the first song Ward wrote for the dulcimer when she was a child. It was inspired by a peach tree her grandmother had planted and nurtured over the years.

The whole song involved repeating the line “The Peach Tree Song,” over and over. They performed it and had the audience join along.

The couple live on the farm where her family lived in Gallia County, Ohio.

The two recounted a story how Ward’s father was almost killed by his first wife and a boyfriend, before he met her mother. Her father had been attacked and beaten about the head and put in a sack to be dumped off in a strip mine. However, a storm came and his wife and her boyfriend couldn’t make it to the strip mines because the roads were washed out so they just dumped him over a nearby hillside. He came to and cut his way out of the bag with a pocket knife, he made it somewhere he could get help and eventually divorced his first wife.

“He always had an affinity for storms after that,” Bence said. “If it wasn’t for that storm he wouldn’t be around.”

The couple was inspired and wrote a song, “Storm on the Mountain” that they performed.

The influences of Appalachian music come from many different sources.

“Appalachian music is basically a combination of a number of different things,” Bence said. “The English ballad tradition, the predominately Celtic (Irish and Scottish) fiddle music and there is a lot of African-American influence in it with a bluesy element in it.”

Next week will be the final presentation in the 2017 Blennerhassett Winter Lecture Series as Joe and Cheryl Lycan will present “Frontier Living with Daniel and Rebecca Boone” at 2 p.m. Feb. 26 at the museum.

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *

Starting at $4.62/week.

Subscribe Today