Wagnerd

“Fresh Oldtime String Band Music” was released in 1984, and included “Wagnerd” by the Horseflies, featuring fiddler Judy Hyman. 

“Wagnerd”:

edited excerpt of interview with Judy Hyman from http://www.brendantaaffe.com

“People get into this stuff in different ways. Some people get really attracted by the ancientness and the history of it, and all the stuff that goes along with that. I was really fascinated by the rhythm. I had always been fascinated by drumming and rhythm, but just happened to play the violin. I was never a reproductionist. I really liked the tunes, I really liked the rhythmic thing, and I always just did it pretty much how it came out. I figured the integrity to it was to try and get it to sound like fiddling and not like violin playing, and I was really interested in the southern repertoire.

I like to think of it as the whole thing being a rhythm bed, and the fiddle is in there with everything else.  I think that what we all see in it and what we’re all trying to communicate is something that makes you feel and enjoy rhythm, and that has a lot of float and a lot of interesting things poking out of it, but doesn’t have any one thing that’s driving it. And melody is not the main thing for us, and harmony certainly isn’t the main thing for us, although how the chords work is very important to us.

People who grew up with it and learned it from their ancestors, that was the natural thing for them to do. And what we ended up doing and have continued to do, if you put together all the pieces, is just exactly right and the natural thing for us to have done. I think a lot of people have thought we were disrespecting the music and trying to do all these oddball things. Not really.”