ABSTRACT
Using fiddle-based old-time music and dance in the United States as the case study, the main purpose in this chapter is to analyze the participatory nature of these traditions and the multiple ways that they articulate with locality, music industry production, and struggles over authenticity that are often connected to particular locales and social groups—the South, Appalachia, and “The Folk.” Participatory performances are, by nature, shaped at the micro-level of locality, but old-time music and dance, and notions of authenticity, are also linked to locality at a variety of geographic scales, from the nation-state to specific regions and communities where old-time has been performed for generations. After 1960, “revivalist” old-time cohorts emerged, and unsurprisingly, it is amongst them that struggles and angst over issues of authenticity tend to be more pronounced. Thus, this chapter proposes an approach to thinking about authenticity that may solve some of the problems that relative newcomers to the style may face.
