Santa Barbara Fiddlers' Festival "Alonzo Janes" Stage Dedication

Описание: The Alonzo Janes Stage Dedication at the 48th Santa Barbara Old-Time Fiddlers' Festival 2019
presented by David Bragger and special guest Dr. Gerald Jaynes
with musicians Susan Platz and Christopher Berry

Known in his family as "Uncle Jimmy," Alonzo Janes was born in Paris, Tennessee. His father's name was Peter, though sadly his mother's name is lost to history. They lived in a small brick farmhouse that his parents helped build, along with the extended families of the farm, both black and white. Family myth holds that Alonzo often travelled alongside his enslaver, sometimes on riverboats down the Mississippi. In New Orleans, where he was sometimes left alone, he considered running away, but was told by an elder not to worry, that soon they would all be free. He had thought it was a psychic prediction, but more likely, his advisor was simply reading the newspaper and knew of the coming war that would indeed liberate his people from bondage. After slavery, he moved with his wife, Mary Magdalene Wright, and their children to Moscow, Kentucky, and finally to southern Illinois. They initially resided in the small town of Onarga and then the slightly larger Pontiac. There he met the musical Durham family while working as a cooper. During this period he shared his fiddle tunes with the Durhams. Two of these tunes, “Over the Mountain” and “Alonzo Janes,” were passed down to fiddler Mel Durham (1914-2008) who relocated to Southern California just after World War II. Mel shared Alonzo’s tunes with several generations of fiddlers in California. When David Bragger first learned these tunes from Mel, he became obsessed with playing them and learning more about their origin. For the last 15 years David has been teaching Alonzo’s tunes around the world at festivals and workshops without much historical information about their source. However, a few years ago with the help of fiddler/genealogist Cynthia Richardson, David was miraculously connected with Alonzo Janes’ descendants. The family was able to hear their patriarch’s music for the very first time – they also provided photographs! It is with great pleasure that we are honoring fiddler Alonzo Janes as well as the folk process through which his tunes came to us (Janes to Durham to Bragger) by renaming our main stage “The Alonzo Janes Performance Stage.”

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