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Mountain Born: The Jean Ritchie Story
Thanks to Deborah DJ Hamouris for sharing this video in The Dulcimer Community—mastering the art of dulcimer.
By Russ Farmer.
I built my first mountain dulcimer in Columbus, Ohio in 1980 and took it with me to work at a church camp in Michigan (1982); then to Chicago where I worked at a church in the shadow of Wrigley Field on Addison Street (1982-83); then to the inner city Westside of Denver on Colfax Avenue (1983-84). When I returned to my seminary graduate school the fall of 1984 I had …
Sandouri (Greek Hammered Dulcimer)
Thanks to Jim Frye for finding this rare treasure!
Panayiotis Sousamlis (Karkougous) was the Santouri player for the soundtrack of the early 1960s movie Zorba the Greek
Nikos Theodosakis found this video with commentary of him playing.
Santuri from Nikos Theodosakis on Vimeo.
"Found footage of Panayiotis Sousamlis (Karkougous) playing the santuri, that I recorded in 1982 in his shop in the village of Agiasos, Lesbos.
With some thoughts.
It was that scene in the movie Zorba the Greek that…
New Fiddle Lesson by Vi Wickam
by Steve Eulberg
The Arkansas Traveler is one of Vi's favorite old-time tunes, and crosses several different genres from old-timey Ozark style to Texas style, and even to bluegrass.
The version in this lesson is on the beginner level. This is also a tune that was featured on Fiddle Whamdiddle's Not My Monkey recording.
Vi has taught a brand-new lesson on this tune for DulcimerCrossing.com here.
Subscribe to and get access to all of the …
Dulcimer Articles Archive
Since appearing on the cover of Dulcimer Players News in 2002 (see above), Steve has been writing articles to share what he has learned with the dulcimer community.
Dulcimersessions.com was a website hosted by Mel Bay Publications and was coordinated and edited by Lois Hornbostel. Sadly, the website is no longer hosted and all of the resources published there are lost to the bits and bytes of time in the internet age.
Dulcimer Players News is a quarterly magazine for enthusiasts o…
Tam Kearney Dulcimers
I was picking through my photo archives and was so delighted to uncover these photos!
Tam Kearney, co-founder of Toronto's Fiddler's Green and dulcimer-builderTam Kearney was a mainstay in the Toronto folk music scene after growing up in Glasgow and then moving to Canada in the 1960s. Unfortunately for us, he passed in 2013. (Read Ian Robb's eulogy in SingOut! Magazine here.)
I was on tour in Toronto in March of 2017 and was able to play a house concert for Lynn Westerhout, Tam'…
Historic Dulcimers in England
I was honored to be the American mountain dulcimer tutor for the Nonsuch Dulcimer Club's Fall Festival in Malvern, England last month.
Thanks to Geoff Reeve-Black, I was also able to see some historic mountain dulcimers from his collection that I am pleased to show to you here:
This one was built by Edd Presnell from North Carolina. Some people find the traditional wooden tuning pegs to be a challenge (and a chore!) but these operated smoothly, AND accurately, even though I was co…
Habits Announcement (Ends 9/30/18)
"Hi, this is Steve Eulberg with another Habit for Your....
....well, it's not exactly a Habit, it's an announcement: For people who are developing their Habits for a Healthy Music Habitat. My patrons, on Patreon, have been able to support me so that I can finish this collection in a digitized fashion. Southern Harmony shape-note tunes arranged for Mountain Dulcimer Trios. 
And what I'm excited about is they were able to do that, and THAT let's me get to work on the NEXT one, which is shap…
Mountain Dulcimer Sighting!
by Steve Eulberg It is always exciting to uncover or bump into another dulcimer sighting, in the course of one's daily life (and/or internet searching!) In this video there is a visual and audio sighting of Frank Profitt playing and singing the ballad Barbara Allen from 8:46-11:09.
His part of the video footage is from the Alan Lomax Collection The Theme: The Cultures of the Scots-Irish in the New world, the role that music plays on both sides of the Atlantic, during the passage across the s…
Frank Proffitt
by Steve Eulberg In Pete Seeger's television series, Rainbow Quest, Episode 26, he hosted folklorist Frank Warner. At about 26:27 they begin discussing Frank Proffitt, including some film of him playing his banjo at the Newport Folk Festival (begins at 40:09) Frank is most well-known for preserving the song Tom Dooley, [UNFORTUNATELY THIS YOUTUBE ACCOUNT HAS BEEN TERMINATED.] Earlier in their conversation, Pete relates an exchange of letters between Howie Mitchell and Frank Proffitt about dulci…
Mimi and Richard Fariña
by Steve Eulberg What a time in which to live! The archive of so many treasures is available with a few clicks or keystrokes. Pete Seeger hosted a television series in 1965-66 that had a very limited audience in the New York and New Jersey areas, called Rainbow Quest. There was no studio audience yet Pete interacts with the camera as if it is an actual audience as he told stories and sang. He had many guests and in this episode he hosted Mimi and Richard Fariña having met and heard them play an…
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