Old-Time Music in the Driftless: Honoring the Past to Nurture the Future from Vesterheim, Vol. 20, No. 2, 2022
This article by Anna Rue with contributions from Beth Hoven Rotto gives the history and current culture of old time music in the Driftless region.
Norwegian-American old-time dance music has existed in the Upper Midwest since Norwegian Americans first settled in the area. For generations, old-time music and dance were central to the social fabric of the Driftless.
In the spring of 2022, Hoven Rotto, fiddler of Decorah-based band Foot-Notes, accepted a Musician-in-Residence position at the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Throughout the semester, she improved archived music collections and made old-time dance music more accessible to musicians, as well as connecting a community of current players.
She spent months listening to hundreds of hours of old-time music recordings from all over the Driftless Area, compiling meticulous notes for corrections and providing additions to collection records from decades of her own research and experience as a musician in the area. She also transcribed tunes that are not generally accessible to the public.
Hoven Rotto’s residency was aided by several archived music collections held at the Mills Music Library at UWMadison (Mills) – Arnold Munkel Collection, Leonard Finset Collection, LeRoy Larson Collection, Robert Andresen Collection, and Down Home Dairyland Collection.
The stories of the individuals included in this article featured heavily in Hoven Rotto’s residency research and are all recorded within the Arnold Munkel Collection at Mills Music Library, portions of which have been digitized and are available for streaming online. Many of the recordings created by Munkel were made at Decorah’s Nordic Fest during the musical programs sponsored by Vesterheim and organized by former director, Dr. Marion J. Nelson. Hoven Rotto selected a tune to transcribe for each musician and includes descriptions of the tunes and links to online audio recordings. Scan the QR codes (and click “open in browser”), or type the links into your website browser to listen to the recordings. Enjoy learning about these wonderful musicians and hearing them perform! We hope you’ll pick up your instrument, whistle a tune, or dance along.
Vesterheim is excited to present a new exhibit, guest curated by Hoven Rotto, that expands on her research and highlights fiddles in the Vesterheim collection. Hand Me Down the Fiddle: Norwegian Fiddlers, Fiddles, and Fiddle Tunes in the Upper Midwest will be open from August 15, 2024 to May 18, 2025, and include many special programs with fiddlers from the United States and Norway. Check out exhibition and program information here.