Fiddler

Being a guitar player in the 1960's-70's was a big deal. Some of us were legends in our own minds. I managed to make a couple of LP record albums, plucking my guitar and gathering a little help from me friends. In Asheville, musicians would gather at Caesar's place and jam on old mountain tunes like Rocky Top or Soldiers' Joy. Now and then I would have the honor and pleasure of jamming with fiddlers like Fox Watson or Beth Youngblood. Long about the 1990's, I discovered baroque master musician Antonio Vilvaldi and his Four Seasons violin concerto. Being so amazed at the virtuosity of violin performers, I took up the instrument and learned to play it. After five or six years, I decided to leave that exquisite instrument up to the real performers, those who were trained to coax so much passion and perfect music out of a bow and four strings. Passion is a very important part of all great music and, in truth, of all great accomplishments in human history, all great projects. to establish life, liberty, happiness, justice, truth and beauty, for us all. The violin, or fiddle or whatever you call it, is the instrument best designed to sound out the passionate cry for life, liberty, happiness, justice, truth and beauty, for us all.

In Alex Haley's class historic series, Roots, Fiddler is an important character. His struggles, like all those enslaved folk of that era, is an epic tale of human endeavor that all of us who strive for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can relate to. Somewhere in this life sequence of mine, I went to see a hometown production of Fiddler on the Roof at Lees McRae College in Banner Elk. In the very first scene of the play, Tevya steps on stage, speaking profound truth:

" a Fiddler on the roof . . . sounds crazy, no?. . . you might say everyone of us is a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch a pleasant simple tune. . . without breaking our neck!" Now at age 74, I can relate. . . trying to stretch out a life. . . without the steep uphill slog of life breaking me! Glass half-Full