By Ana Diaz —
On the evening of November 16, the Appalachian Studies department hosted a screening of The Mountain Minor, a movie about the music that binds together generations of those with Appalachian history or ancestry. Before gathering in the screening room, the large group socialized in the main hall of the Harry T. Wilkes Conference Center. Light refreshments were served and a couple individuals were playing music, perched by a booth where they were selling CDs and other merchandise. The notes wafted through the big room, sweet and Southern-sounding, proof that music can draw people together from many different backgrounds.
The movie, based on a true story, follows Charlie Abner, an Eastern Kentucky native whose family moved near Cincinnati, Ohio in the 1930s when he was a child in search of work. Now, a generation later, Charlie is yearning for his home in the mountains, remembering fondly the music he played with his family on the porch of their farmhouse. He even remembered the hard farm labor well. As an old man, he felt he needed to return to his roots.
However, Charlie was struggling with leaving the life he and his wife had built for themselves by then in Cincinnati. He struggled to leave his grandchildren, highlighting the conflicting meanings of home and belonging that lived inside Charlie.
Family can mean many different things to different people. One meaning it had to Charlie was his violin, and playing bluegrass music. Throughout the movie, Charlie flashed back to songs he played as a child, and he even played some for his adult children in the present-day. Charlie’s son played along with him. When Charlie asked his son how he’d learned to play, his son said through instructional videos. Of course, when Charlie was a kid in the 1930s, they didn’t have such videos. “You just sort of listened and learned,” Charlie said when his son asked him how he’d learned without any videos. At the time, he had his great-grandchild in his lap, still an infant, but still surrounded by his family as someone played music.
No matter how they learned, and no matter when, music still had that undeniable pull on everyone in Charlie’s family. “It’s just a feeling I can’t explain,” Charlie’s son said at one point in the movie. This is true of all kinds of music, across all different peoples and cultures. In Charlie’s case, the Southern sound of bluegrass music is one connection he has to home. As he and his wife start the last chapter of their lives in the old farmhouse Charlie had grown up in, music was one way in which he kept his childhood memories alive, and was a way for him to connect to his own parents, long since dead. Additionally, passing on his skills to his children is a way to ensure the tradition and magic of the music stay alive.
Would you like to hear some authentic Appalachian music? The Appalachian Studies department is hosting the Hop River Band downtown next month, December 5. Please come by and enjoy being part of the family!