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A Revivalist Musical Tradition Thrives, "With A Vengeance"

Two women sing and tell stories in front of a small audience in a Bloomington backyard

Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Elizabeth LaPrelle make the rounds of the national folk circuit as Anna & Elizabeth.  From festival stages and fiddler's conventions to private parlors and backyards, the duowho are both in their late 20shave garnered attention and acclaim for their unique, yet traditional, music and storytelling.

"We sing ballads and harmony songs together, and Anna plays guitar, and fiddle and viola, and I play banjo," explains LaPrelle. Â "Anna also plays banjo. We also do visual art pieces that go with songs and stories, and most of our stories are from Virginia and Kentuckythe Appalachian mountains."

In late September, the duo came through Bloomington, Indiana to perform a house concert. It was a breezy late summer night when a few dozen or so people gathered in Sam Bartlett and Abby Ladin's backyard for the show. The crowd was made up mostly of families; children and parents gathered on a blue tarp near the performers or sat in camping chairs set up on the grass.

We play old music that was played in people's homes, music that was passed down from one person to the next person, music that's shared between people.


"In their material there's a big story because a lot of them are ballads so they're truly telling a story," one audience member, Tamara Loewenthal, said. "It's not just 'I love you, I love, you love me, you miss me.' It's more in-depth than that, and you have to follow along and hear that story."

The story-driven music that Anna & Elizabeth play is often described as Old Time, traditional, Appalachian, Mountain music, or, more simply, folk. Bartlett, the evening's host, also plays this music. He first fell in love with it as a kid, and he hasn't stopped playing since.

"The first instrument that I really loved was a five string banjo," Bartlett said. "Old time music is vernacular music from the 1920s, 1930s. It's rural southern music played on banjos, guitars, fiddles."

Music For Small Settings



"I think the more that we play this music, the less that we actually care about the differences between these subtle labels," Roberts-Gevalt said. "What we're talking about is folk music in a really broad sense. Â We play old music that was played in people's homes, music that was passed down from one person to the next person, music that's shared between people."

That's still the way this music is shared, in small, intimate settings like the one tonight. For the visual component of Anna & Elizabeth's performance, the intimacy of the venue is key.

"To top everything off about what they do, they do these things called Crankie shows," Bartlett said. "They make artwork on a scroll, and they crank the scroll past you sort of like the Torah, and they narrate while showing you this art . Â It's amazing to watch, there's nothing like it."

Sound And Light



Now after sunset, Anna & Elizabeth illuminate a handmade moving scroll and crank it through a couple of wooden spools. The panoramic scene may be portrayed on a quilt, or created by sewing paper cut-outs onto felt. Kids and old folk alike scoot up close to the Crankie as the performers tell the story of Miss Lella Todd, which was passed down to the duo from an elderly woman they would visit:

Miss Lella didn't have children of her own, but she kind of adopted our whole neighborhood of kids. We would run down to her house after school and she would always welcome us in and she would always fix us a snack. I remember she had a huge wood stove in her kitchen and she would pop popcorn for us, and fry hot griddle cakes right on the top of her stove. After a while we would go into her living room, and there she had this red velvet couch and on it she had all of her instruments. She could play anything with strings on it. And she would play for us. Miss Lella was in her first heaven playing music.


The audience responds with oohs and ahs, and one audience member explains why she felt especially touched

It's always been a way that people have used to connect themselves to the past - so it's kind of been a revival all along.


"It was clearly done by hand, and with a lot of love, and it was amazingly magical storytelling that went along with it. They're stories that they must've told a thousand times, or lived through, or heard told to them. It's such a rare thing nowadays to have these stories told to us."

Revivalist By Definition



But even a century ago, this music was about connecting to a bygone era, explains Brad Leftwich, another Old Time musician in the Bloomington scene

When you talk about old time music, it's like you're thinking about something that's in contrast to modern music, and it's something that looks back to the past. But the funny thing is, if you go back and you start looking at what was going on around the turn of the 20th century, they were still calling it old time music then. It's always been a way that people have used to connect themselves to the past, so it's kind of been a revival all along.


There are old time music festivals, fiddler's conventions, and a network of people, nationally and even globally, who put on house shows like this one. And there are people who devote their lives to reviving this art form.

Brad Leftwich said something special about Anna & Elizabeth is seeing how they're continuing to revive this culture. "It's great,"he said. "There was a time when we thought that we would be the last generation playing this music, and then all of a sudden at festivals and fiddlers' conventions we started seeing these teens and 20s and 30 somethings taking it up with a vengeance."

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