Research Continues...

So I am lacking inspiration on what to research next, but for today I'm going to cover another instrument in the bluegrass industry.  The Appalachian dulcimer is not that common today, but I remember going to the local Clifton Vining Music Festival as a little tyke and watching a girl about 8 or 10 years old playing this version of the dulcimer very well.  Another common name for it is a mountain dulcimer or a lap dulcimer.

The Appalachian dulcimer isn't on short supply necessarily, as I've seen many in stock in Branson, Missouri.  But that is a city built around music and located in the Ozarks; of course they will have dulcimers for sale.  This dulcimer is obviously named for where it sprouted from.  Though there was similar instruments in Europe at the time, this version in particular was first seen in the southern Appalachian region of the United States.  It actually is considered to be similar in tone to Middle Eastern and Asian instruments, but it can be played with a slide just like the dobro.  It can come in many shapes and can have as few as two strings to as many as 12, but the common amount seems to be four.

Loraine Wyman, an early dulcimer player.
This picture was in a 1917 issue of Vogue. [1]

Bristol Taylor was a dulcimer player, farmer, and poet. [1]

Though most aren't, some dulcimers have been made with 12 frets per octave to allow users to be able to play in any range without having to retune.  The idea of how the Appalachian dulcimer came around was the lack of tools and time to make violins in the mountains.  This is because the violin has many curves and is rounded.  This dulcimer is flat and has much less curvature to it.  In 1880, Edward Thomas from Kentucky started producing them.  Before that, there were just a few genuine dulcimers around.  No recordings were made with the instrument until about the 1930s.  Up until that point, it was used mainly for gatherings in homes because its sound does not project very far.  At this time a few makers of the Appalachian dulcimer were also scattered throughout "Appalachia", the southern cultural region of the Appalachian mountains from northern Mississippi up to the southern tip of New York.  

In the 1950s, musician Jean Ritchie from Kentucky introduced this instrument to the city of New York.  Her father was also a dulcimer player.  From this point, it became much more common and more people started producing it.  But it wasn't even until 1969 that it first became mass produced.  Although borrowed from similar instruments overseas just like the banjo, I am surprised that an American instrument like this lie in such a sleep from its development around 1880 to 1969.  No wonder I don't hear of it very often.

Jean Ritchie's 1950s album. [2]

From YouTube: Jean Ritchie playing the dulcimer in the 1990s.