Corn stalk fiddle gets its moment: History and music meet this weekend for ‘Corn Stalk Fiddles: Soundscape & Place in 19th Century Hadley’

Daily Hampshire Gazette | by Paige Hanson

Published: 06-27-2024 2:11 PM

Alan Weinberg, co-president of the Hadley Historical Society, holds a chorus book from the 1800s. PHOTO BY PAIGE HANSON

Today and tomorrow, June 28 and 29, in the Hadley Public Library at 7:30 p.m., the Hadley Historical Society and the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum will be presenting “Corn Stalk Fiddles: Soundscape & Place in 19th Century Hadley.”

The show will be performed by The Red Skies Music Ensemble, a musical group that is dedicated to blending music and history to present stories that any audience can connect with. This show will also feature theatrical performances, archival images and interpretive narration.

“It’s important to show the role of music, especially in rural communities, like Hadley. It was so important to social life before television and social media,” said Alan Weinberg, co-president of the Hadley Historical Society. “Music was one of the primary ways of entertaining and passing the time. People shared the music, regardless of their status in the community. The show is going to highlight the music and the types of music that were played.”

The story begins in Hadley in the late 1800s when a young woman named Fanny Allen wrote a letter to her father, Elam Allen, who was in Ohio at the time. In the letter, Fanny told her father that her brother Otis was making a corn stalk fiddle.

This letter was inherited by Fanny from her father and was given to the Hadley Historical Society, and was lost in their collection for decades … until just a couple years ago. 

Trudy Williams, director of the Red Skies Music Ensemble, discovered the missing letter and decided that the story would make a great musical performance.

“The show itself will be kind of a combination of old-time music, theatrical vignettes, narration and archival photographs,” said Weinberg. “As we continued the research, we read a lot of the diaries of people from the 19th century, men and women talked about going to singing school, dances, listening to music, going to the Lyceum, and being entertained. So it was a thread that ran through the whole community.”

It’s important to note that corn stalk fiddles were considered more like children’s toy instruments, yet Weinberg says they played a prominent role in the musical landscape of Hadley.

One of the highlights of the show will be a reading of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “The Corn-Stalk Fiddle,” which will be put to music and sung by the Corn Stalk Fiddle Children’s Choir, directed by Cindy Naughton.

Weinberg says that while the Hadley Historical Society typically produces smaller-scale productions, this performance will be unlike any other event they have put on before. Grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and donations from the Hadley Cultural Council made the production possible.

“We hope people will be entertained and informed by the show, it should be very entertaining musically,” said Weinberg. “It’ll provide a window on the rural social life in and around Hadley in the 19th century that people may not be aware of, and it will also connect them with the music. It should be lots of fun.”

The Hadley Public Library is located at 50 Middle St., and there is a $15 suggested donation for the performance.

UMass Amherst journalism student Paige Hanson is Arts & Features intern for the Gazette and Recorder.