David Holt: The joyful tradition of Mountain Music

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David Holt: The Joyful Tradition of Mountain Music

Summary:

     The joy of Music is a powerful force. It can bring people together, and keep them going through hard times. In this talk, David Holt told several stories from his life and from the Appalachian musical culture that demonstrated this point. 

     Holt’s love of music started on a hot summer day in 1954 in Gatesville Texas. His brother, mother, and him were driving in the car, and the boys were furious with their mom. She didn’t let them get the jar of Ovaltine they wanted at the grocery store, which had a toy attached. Their mom was scolding them, telling them how ungrateful they were and how “money doesn’t grow on trees”. Determined to teach her sons some work ethic, she pulled the car over to one of the cotton fields they had  been driving past. She told the foreman: “I've got these two little boys, never worked a day in their lives.” So she asked the foreman to put them to work picking cotton and filling up a ten foot sack, alongside the hundred black workers in the field. He did as he was asked, and the boys worked all day picking the prickly, painful plants. At first they cried to their mother, who watched with an uncompromising gaze. Trying to ease their discomfort, the foreman snuck up behind them and began to sing an uplifting tune: “good news good news, a chariot’s a comin’”. The field of workers joined in, and the boys stop complaining as they were surrounded by these beautiful songs. This showed how music can make hard work a bit easier, and how it can bring a group of people together, in a unique way.

     About 15 years later, while attending the University of California at Santa Barbara, Holt attended a concert by Ralph Stanley, a famous banjo player. After seeing it in action, Holt fell in love with the African claw-hammer banjo technique. He sought out Stanley after the concert and asked how he could be involved with that kind of music, and Stanley told him to go to Asheville, Clinch Mountain, or anywhere where there is a lot of music. There will be old people still playing that style. So he went, and fell in love with the culture and people. He met people living with no electricity or running water, but who carried on the traditions of Appalachia through their storytelling and music. 

     One such person was Aunt Zip, from Sodom, North Carolina. She was 105 when he met her, and together, they sang a song that she had written. She didn’t have much energy left, so he led her in the call: “Hey Hey” and she would give the response: “Black-eyed Susie”. On her small farm, her grandson was tilling the fields with the mule, and Holt and Aunt Zip sang together. People like this embodied the persistent joy that comes from this music of the mountains. When he came back home, he finished his two degrees in biology and art, and told his parents he wanted to be a banjo player.

     Later on, this same joy from music saved Holt’s life. 15 years ago, he and his wife lost their daughter, Sarah Jane, in a car accident. After this immense loss, Holt was just barely hanging on. He was staring into the abyss, and desperately searching for reasons not to jump in. He started making lists of reasons to stay in this world. He started with the big things: his son, wife, and parents. But after this, only seemingly insignificant details were added to his list. Things like seeing the daffodils bloom in the spring, the touch of a baby’s hand, and finally, the sound of the steel guitar. This was the only instrument that could fully convey the emotion he was feeling. A blues tune on his steel guitar arose from his sadness, and it was the music he immersed himself in that got him through this hard time.

     Holt closed out his talk by talking about the lighthearted things of his life; childhood stories, experiments, and games. He finished his speech by showing the audience a device he had made with the advent of drum triggers. He took a full body suit and sewed in 12 different pressure sensitive drum triggers. He played ancient hambone rhythms on this unique, hilarious looking instrument, slapping his thighs, arms and chest to create an immersive sound. The talk ended with this “thunder-suit” solo, and the audience’s laughter and cheers.

Analysis:

Purpose:

     Although this TED talk wasn’t necessarily meant to do anything more than inform and entertain the audience, for the purpose of this analysis, I will view the tactics used in Holt’s talk as tools to persuade the audience to see the power of music. This was likely an underlying motivation, but it was never explicitly stated.

Ethos:

     David Holt is a four time Grammy-winning musician, who plays ten acoustic instruments and hosts radio and television shows on early American folk tales and music. These amazing credentials give Holt more than enough authority to talk about the subject of mountain music. However, these are not explicitly stated in his talk, so Holt finds other ways to establish credibility. He does this primarily by demonstrating the music connected to his stories throughout his speech. He treats the audience to several songs, playing the steel guitar, harmonica, banjo, and singing beautifully. By interjecting real snippets of the Mountain Music he is talking about, he establishes his expertise on the subject of Appalachian music. His personal examples and stories also display his proximity to and in-depth understanding of the effect of music on people. You can talk about the beauty and influence of music until the cows come home, but if you don’t have a lick of musical ability, it’ll be far more difficult to establish authority on the subject.

Logos:

     The main purpose of these stories was to show how music can get people through hard times and bring people together. Consequently, an emotional appeal will be used the most often to prove this point. However, throughout his speech, Holt uses a few logical approaches to further his argument. This is found mostly in the use of specific examples. As in any argument, it is important to back up theoretical ideas with specific real world examples. Holt does this by displaying the positive power of music by telling tales of the effect of music on his childhood, in his adult life, and in the lives of Appalachian people. However, the majority of the examples were experienced by him personally, a professional musician, and therefore interpreted through a pro-music lens. Holt’s argument might've been enhanced by a brief historical exploration of the effect of music on the culture of Appalachia, or the biological effects of exposure to music.

Pathos:

     Music is inherently emotional, triggering the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine throughout the brain, which causes an visceral emotional response. Therefore, an emotional appeal was the most common appeal used by Holt in his stories. He played music throughout the talk to display the emotional effect of music. But he also used emotional examples  to convince the audience of music’s positive effects. From humorous stories of his childhood to the sadness he experienced following the death of his daughter, Holt shows the influence of music on the wide range of human emotion.

My Connection: 

     I chose this talk because I have always enjoyed bluegrass music. This interest in the music of the Appalachian mountains started at my grandparent’s house. Every Friday night that we stay at their house in Warrensville, NC, we go down to Phipps Store to listen to some of the best local pickers. Not nose pickers, but pickers of the mandolin, banjo, dulcimer, etc. We sit in the small crowd listening to the impromptu jam sessions, and watching people clogging to the beat. The culture found in these old, rolling mountains is fascinating, and has given birth to one of the most  popular America genres of music, bluegrass. Originally played on makeshift fiddles and banjos, this music has offered people living in the mountains an escape and creative outlet for centuries. I love Holt’s professional mission: to preserve this musical tradition; it was an influential chapter in America’s musical history, and it deserves recognition and appreciation.