Fiddlers’ Festival: Music for All… and All Time
David Bragger hadn’t had much exposure to old time music before 1999, instead spending his time as an itinerant street magician, collector of South Asian folk tales and filmmaker after graduating from UCSB with a Religious Studies degree. But then he inherited his great uncle’s fiddle and began exploring the genre that dates back centuries to the mountains and back porches of rural America.
“I got obsessed with learning this stuff,” Bragger recalled over the phone from his Los Angeles home. “I couldn’t get enough of listening to, meeting and eventually studying with some of the great living old-time musicians around.”
Over the ensuing 25 years, Bragger has become something of a go-to-guru for learning old-time fiddle, banjo and mandolin. Co-founder and curator of Tiki Parlour Recordings and, more recently, the Festival Director of the Santa Barbara Old-Time Fiddlers’ Festival (née Convention), Bragger has taken his great-uncle’s gift and made a home around it. Now produced by the Goleta Valley Historical Society at Rancho La Patera & Stow House, the 58th annual event takes place Saturday, October 5.
Since taking over almost a decade ago, Bragger has not only brought the fest back to what was a winning formula launched by founder Peter Feldmann more than half a century ago, but also augmented the activities without straying far from the festival’s original principles of putting nearly all of the emphasis on music that’s at least 75 years old.
Bragger brought back the focus on the instrumental contests, which have returned to the main stage, reinvigorated the workshops – and has added hosted, themed jam sessions to the impromptu ones that pop up all over the expansive grounds at the Stow House site.
“I wanted to restore the importance of the contests, which are the backbone of the festival, but had been sidelined off to an area that nobody wanted to go to,” he said. “It can be very inspiring to non-musicians to see someone their age who may have just started learning how to play the banjo or the fiddle, or for that matter, guitar, mandolin or old-time singing. Every year I hear about people who took up lessons after coming to the festival. And our contest is different from most festivals in that it’s not built around competition and winning but more about showing your stuff to people just for fun and connection. Also, people who are new to the genre really love the hosted jams as an entry point to playing in this musical style.”
An instrumental “petting zoo” also lets visitors experience playing one of the instruments, possibly for the first time.
Through his research, curating, and record company, Bragger also has deep connections with “just about everybody in old time music,” which let him call in favors for this year’s performer and workshop lineup, broadening the roster far beyond the original locals-only approach. Most notably, the fest will feature the debut of Japanese fiddler Bosco Takaki, who learned the old-time craft from Appalachian Masters in the early 1980s but returned to Japan.
“He’s been living in this time capsule playing the music that he learned directly from the people that so many of us worshiped,” Bragger said. “Getting him out here is a real big deal.”
The list also includes Canadian fiddler Scott Prouty, Kansas guitar duo Spencer & Rains, Alabama fiddler Jimmy Triplett, and a whole host of California musicians.
For true purists, however, nothing compares to wandering around the festival and joining or just listening to the jam session, the closest one can come to the anachronistic atmosphere of simple folks just playing their instruments, with whoever shows up and without amplification.
“That’s what old time music is,” Bragger said. “This is the music people played at home with their friends.”
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