Winder Slide continues

I could hear them playing it the moment I opened the doors of the Skellig to attend Alan Kaufman's old-time jam. "Winder Slide" embraced me at the door as an old friend. Joy was followed by the sinking realization that the tune would be over before I would have the chance to take out my fiddle, tune it, and attach the shoulder rest. I scampered past the circle of fiddles, guitars, banjos, and mandolins to the back foyer, where everyone leaves their instrument cases. The Winder gods were sympathetic to my cause, however, and Alan must have cycled through the tune a few more times than usual, because I made it back to the circle in time to play through three times.

Old-Time music is amazing. It is a distinctively American style that evolved in the Appalachian Mountains from the Irish, Scottish, and English immigrants, each having brought their own tunes and techniques from across the Atlantic. It has evolved over time as tunes have been passed along by ear. It is these jams, held on back porches overlooking Appalachian Mountains, at county fiddle contests, and now in Waltham's Irish pub, that keep the tradition alive and renewed.

After the jam concluded, a few fellow fiddlers and I stopped by an Indian/Hispanic grocery store next door for an evening snack. We picked up chicken sausages bursting with exotic flavors, almond-saffron cookies, Indian paratha, and Mexican queso a mano and headed to the river. The unlikely combinations of ethnic flavors blended together and created something that was greater than any of the parts had been on their own.