The Times-Tribune from Scranton, Pennsylvania • 21

WWW WWW fmH SCRANTON TIMES, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBEKB? 1980 21 'j 'to Jr encased in the bile Kirkhuff. unpolished nature, is a library nerica; a time hat allows us to re we came what we sound What it mind of ji fiddler ar tionaltre of early machine 1 knowwi from an ed like. ''V 4 a- tE. 4 a f- J. -JP-V, i 4 is as a musician tjiat he has made his mark.

But even in that latter role, he made no attempt to reach a major audience, preferring to serve as a conduit between the past; and future. Interestingly, (even many of the local residents are not aware of Jeltile and the contribution he is making to American fol'klore. They may be able to cite that in 1954, he won the i world championship of fiddle playing in Texas. But oilier than one or two appearances at a local event in ontrose over the past several years, he has become an enigmatic figure there. Susquehanna residents, presented with the name of Jehile Kirkhuff respond Oh, old Jehile.

I thought he was a piano player. jfj Honed His Knowledge Not Just Fiddlin' Around Hr 1 A Memories dije hard among old time residents. True, Jehile spent so me years as a pianist with country-style bands and hcined his knowledge of what folkloric music was all. about. But the musical sources found better outlet i a his fiddling, and it is this that escaped Northeastern Pennsylvanians while it was being acclaimed seveiral thousand miles away.

It was because of his fiddle playing that Jehile was visited several years ago by Bill Bonyun, a premier folk musician and researcher who delves into musical styles from the Civil War and the era of sailing ships. When I was 19 years old, Jehile recalls, I was the youngest in a. group. The oldest man was Charlie Dyer and he was bn his 70s at the time. Dyer was, to Jehile, one of his bseic sources for old-time music.

He refers to him often in his conversations and always with the respect now being shown to Jehile by the Berbaums and other novices in the folk music and oral tradition. To the city bom and bred, the collection of information from ptxiple like Jehile may mean little. The sense of morality, the distrust of technology and big government, and the down-home humor are, at best, acquired tast es for them. But to those living outside the orbits of f(he major metropolises, the Jehile's are buried gobj, particularly in a time when a large body of people have begun to seek a return to roots, to simpler lifle styles and are finding the last few people who can tell them them what it was like. The effort to capture as much as possible of Jehiles music an dl memories is similar to the work being done by folklorists in the Southern Appalachians and elsewhere, and which sometimes result in works like the five-volume Foxfire Books.

Despite the dislike that Jehile and others have to rapid technological advances (They should put a screeching halt on all of it, says) it is that very progress which both hastens the passing simpler lifestyles' and makes the recording and nottftion of them possible. making the torn with top country music groups. What is valuable about Jehile Kirkhuff to local music fans, as well as to those of the national scene, is that he is directly in the tradition of excellent Pennsyl-vania-style fiddlers, a style reconized by experts as distinct. Because of the nature of rural lifestyles in a previously agricultural society, groups of people got locked into small pockets where their particular heritage, the idiosyncrasies, the genious, the speech patterns and all other aspectf of their life became Jehiles fiddle playing committed to the archives of the Library of Congress, officials there have determined that there still is a large, unmined body of work to be preserved. Allen Jabore made the original tapes but responsibility for further recordings has been put in the hands of Ed and Gerry Berbaum, who moved to the South Montrose area about four years ago from New Jersey, and who have the musical backgrounds to oversee the balance of the project.

The Berbaums have been cast in the roles of apprentices to Jehiles guru. They spend hours sitting with the fiddler, taping conversations, musical lore and the peculiar accents of his voice since each of these things is disappearing. They are carrying on the tradition, as are two or three young men who, almost daily, make the trip to the Kirkhuff residence, take up their instruments, and by rote learn what old-time music rounds and feels like. Out of these sessions will come invaluable tape recordings of a lifestyle nearly disap- peared from the landscape. 'Im not interested in this local trick stuff that appeals to the startled glands.

I dont give a damn about that. What I want is what you want old-time music brought back. Were gonna do it. Jehile Kirkhuff is an old man older than his 73 years of life allow for. But when he talks about preserving the music, the legends and the sense of history of America, he does so in a strong, measured voice that would seem to come from someone half his age.

It is important to him. He is a missionary among the infidels who play phony folk music or who alter the fold-time stuff to dazzle their audiences. Because of his dedication to the cause of old-time music, and his single mindedness about passing it on to the next generation as purely as he can, Jehile has been taped by the Library of Congresss Folk Life Center. Those tapes constitute part of the irretrievable treasure of the American past. While the center has captured a full five hours of Jehile's output, it has barely nicked the surface of what the man has stored up.

By a conservative estimate of his own, the fiddler is able to re-create about L500 tunes that he learned over the course of his life. Physical disabilities like total blindness and advanced emphysema have kept Jehile bound to his modest home near Rush, Susquehanna County, for nearly 17 years, allowing only short trips into Montrose or other close communities. As with many people so restricted, he has a wealth of time to meditate and recall. And the recall is almost flawless. That Reflected Tradition Counts A lot of what I play, Jehile said, "is from Scotch, English and Irish background.

Despite the obvious German ring to his name, Jehile and his forebearers lived among a large number of non-Germans, and that is reflected in what they passed down to him. That is why, when Jehile tucks the fiddle under his chin and plays The Flowers of Edinboro, he observes "You can almost hear the bagpipes, because of the drone that is kept going under the main melody. The very nature of the tale-telling, itself, depicts an entire way of life, particularly the isolation of one community from another. When discussing the large number of fiddlers and musicians who once lived on Irish Hill, and they were good, Jehile was asked about the technique of a particular fiddler. He admitted that the fellow was pretty adept, "but, then, he lived further up on Irish Hill.

Even the particular spot of a given mountain had its own style and facility to boast about, compared to the standardized playing of today. Proper Perspective But it is Jehile who puts the whole matter in proper perspective. He, like Thoreau, believes in simplicity. There is only so much atmosphere you can stir up, he advisesrAnd his life has been lived on that principle. He spent some time working as a beekeeper, but it Genesis of Interest By DANIEL CUSICK Times FOCUS Writer Offhanded Remark It is just that kind of offhanded remark, of lore taken so much for granted, that makes Jehile both remarkable and valuable to folklorists and historians.

Though there already have been five hours of In thei folkloric tradition, it usually is not the names that count, but the tradition itself. My teachers, Jehile recounted, were Mike Hill, Herb Fargo and Arthur-Young. The names are of men who live only in the memory of Jahile and one or two others. But the music and lore from them will be carried on by young men like Tod Snover, who is one of the students of Kirkhuff. I learned an old cotillion from ntf grandfather, Jehile said, indicating that the piece was pretty old when his ancestor knew it.

Now, it is up to Tod, a vital, young Air Force veteran, to carry the tradition of that cotillion down to another generation. Th blindness that cut off much other outside activity fr Jehile ironically worked to everyone elses bent in forcing him to learn quickly and retain what he luid experienced. The precise inflections of voice and music are there from nearly 200 years ago. But the ailment also dictated that that same retentive mind would have other things to store up. So despite a seemingly isolated back country life, Jehile is akin to a character from Ray Bradburys Farenheit 451, where a post-holocaust society uses men as libraries.

It. is not unusual for him, when searching for a point of reference or comparison, to quote from Shakes-pejare, the Upinishads, the Koran, a bawdy song of the early 19th Century or Elvis Presley. long have been aware of the value of collecting the music, geneology, lore and tales from declining segments of society, but that practice has been only spotty in the U.S., gaining increased curren-, cy over the past several years. That is why the Berbaums felt it Incumbent on them to form the Jehile Old-Time Music Fund. Through the fund, they are collecting, cataloguing and storing information vital to the knowledge of ourselves.

It is people and talk and memories that matter most in life, Jehile offers. The whole family concept is going down the road to hell and without the families, and the things families do together, we will have no more history. 1 Jehile Kirkhuff Looks at Life On what matters: 'It is people and talk and memories that matter most irj 'i Part of those memories are about his grandfathers reaching this area by way of a covered wagon and, on reaching the region of Irish Hill, finding that illness precluded his going any farther. The Kirkhuffs have been in that area ever since. That grandfather also was the genesis of Jehiles interest in preserving the folk music til the past.

"He was the first one who let me hear the music, Jehile said. The years have been so long between that he cant even remember whether his grandfather was a good fiddler. But what the elder Kirkhuff did on the fiddle was irrevocably burned into the mind of his grandson. So, too, were the instructions and melodies and forms passed down from his father, his uncle Jehile and others who lived in the mountains around Rush over the past three generations. And there is the benefit of their memories that extend even to previous generations.

What is encased, then, in the mind of Jehile Kirkhuff, is a library of early America; a time machine that allows us to know where we came from and what we sounded like. Despite his is no faltering of the slender, elegant hands that pick up the burnished fiddle to recreate those old-time, down-home tunes. Instrument in hand, Jehile is transformed into the child who learned the pieces and his facility to make them resound is unhampered. And what do these dances and songs from the past round like in the hands of their latest practitioner? Many of the forms are familiar to most of us. There are Jigs, reels, schottisches, waltzes and laments.

But there is a difference about them, too. In the present era, it is the style to show off virtuoso techniques by speeding up tempi on the fiddles, following the updated bluegrass banjo fingering of the Lester Flatt-Earl Scruggs school and adding harmonies that would be unrecognizable to those who lived even two generations ago. life." On simplicity: There is only so much atmosphere you can stir up On the family: On his instrument: "A fiddle is not a violin Ttiewhc Research Is Crucial ole family concept is going down the road to hell and without families and the things families do to will have no more history." Generally Slower On technology: people have sacrificed their lives on the altar of automation and technology. Most of the better things have been crowded out." On progress; "They should put a screeching halt to it." gether, we Jehile, himself, sees that such research is crucial. It has great value, indeed, in the sense that people have sacrificed their lives on the altar of automation and technology.

Most of the better things have been crowded out. It would be great if this reminded them of what this country was, how it began and what was the reason for its greatness. An encounter with this old fiddler from mountains inalterably affects the visitor. The sound of laughter despite adversity, the tales of eccentric aunts, recollections of some monstrous affects of tippling and, basic to all of it, the people who fed the mainstream of grassroots culture, linger in the clear autumn air that presages the onset of winter. Jehile sits and plays his fiddle into a microphone, hoping that winter will not descend on the treasures of American cultural life.

The most noticable thing about Jehile's fiddling is that it is generally slower, but without any loss of the tension in the musical line. It also is more related to the vocal style since, when they were current, the pieces were sung and played rather than just being used for astounding a concert audience. A fiddle is not a violin," Jehile points out, so his playing is slower than many of the current fiddlers -u.