Rugs, Guitars, and Fiddling: Intensification and the Rich Modern Lives of Traditional Arts

Chris Goertzen's Rugs, Guitars, and Fiddling represents decades of dedicated fieldwork with traditional craftspeople and performers around the globe. Consistent with other seminal folkloristics studies, this expansive project constitutes the synthesis of Goertzen's numerous past academic endeavors, drawing on his lasting study of Mexican handicraft and fiddling practices in both Norway and the United States, and welcoming a novel interest in American luthiery. This book is relevant not just to scholars of traditional craft and musical performance, but also to those interested broadly in the study of material culture and cultural sustainability. Likewise, this text sits at the nexus of folklore studies, ethnomusicology (organology), and music theory, making claims across porous disciplinary boundaries.At the outset, Goertzen posits that select folklore genres spite the power of time for various reasons, which he aggregates under the umbrella of intensification, an under-theorized concept in the humanities. Goertzen does well to posit a conception of intensification as the types of change that traditional practices and products undergo, which specifically serve to reinvigorate the interest of existing audiences, generate new consumers by way of adapting traditional practices to modern sensibilities, and maintain discernable ties to their past versions. Within this broad category, three primary forms of intensification emerge: virtuosity, addition, and selection.Goertzen organizes Rugs, Guitars, and Fiddling into three case studies, with a much abbreviated fourth study serving as the introduction. Each of these focuses on an artistic practice that has been subject to intensification, located in one of Goertzen's past field sites. Not until the book's conclusion, however, does Goertzen address the perceived importance of studying these and other instances of intensification and its ultimate effect on and in communities of practice. Goertzen notes, “Once there is a rupture in a tradition, for a genre of folklore to continue to thrive, a critical mass of people need to find new reasons to remain interested in it or to first become inclined to savor the tradition” (p.166). Intensification, Goertzen argues, is how rug-making, competition fiddling, luthiery, and other folk traditions may be sustained in a modernity that is “increasingly constrained by computers and a pixelated abridgement of reality” (p.163).Goertzen's analysis of Norwegian competition fiddling stems from his fieldwork in the late 1980s, discussed elsewhere with a focus on nostalgia and the so-called revival of traditional performance practice (e.g., Goertzen's Fiddling for Norway: Revival and Identity, University of Chicago Press, 1997). Here, this discussion introduces the overarching analytical paradigm. By providing concrete examples of intensification associated with a perceived selection of repertoire and emphasis on virtuosic technique, Goertzen establishes a systematic analytical organization that he continues throughout the remaining case studies—introduction of the intensified practice through anecdotal discussion of the cultural context and his association with key interlocutors—and foreshadows his eventual analysis of the fiddling styles associated with old time fiddlers’ conventions and the Texas swing and hoedown styles.Like each of the other artistic practices in this study, Goertzen sees the intensification of Oaxacan rug making as a result of a rupture in tradition, or in this specific case, two ruptures: the adoption of weaving wool with the pedal loom in the nineteenth century and the arrival of the Pan-American Highway in Oaxaca in the late 1940s, which spawned a shift in the production of rugs for “local and regional use by the weavers’ socioeconomic peers” to the crafting of “area rugs for tourists and for export” (p. 20). Throughout the detailed analysis, each of the three categories of intensification receives attention; intensification by way of addition is recognized in the increased variety of dye colors, patterns, and design motifs, while intensification through selection, which often operates in tandem with the former, is seen in an artisan's choice to include less of the available variety of design elements in a single product. Likewise, throughout the vast array of examples discussed, Goertzen notes the artisans’ ever-increasing “considerable weaving skill” as an example of virtuosic intensification (p. 27).Like many texts discussing American luthiery, this publication offers a necessarily pithy discussion of the evolution of the American acoustic guitar from its earliest predecessors in Renaissance Spain and France and the socio-musical contexts within which the vihuela and lute thrived, to “the main story of the guitar in the United States beginning with Christian Frederick Martin,” a German immigrant who started the longest running guitar manufacturer in the United States, C. F. Martin & Company, founded in 1833 (pp. 73–4). Continuing the analysis of intensification, Goertzen sees as a primary cause (i.e., rupture) the increased desire for “personalization of luthier-made instruments” (p. 77) leading to two streams of intensification: the rise of independent luthiers and the eventual formation of “custom shops” under the auspices of the largest corporate builders (e.g., the Martin Custom Shop). In these contexts, one instance of intensification via selection occurs through tonewood chosen to meet contemporary philosophical and ethical motivations, including sustainably harvested or reclaimed traditional tonewoods or the use of unorthodox tonewoods.If a slight critique of Rugs, Guitars, and Fiddling is to be leveled, it is that Goertzen's analysis of American guitar luthiery, which he notes “is a new topic for me in terms of published scholarship” (p. 15), falls flat in comparison to the exceptionally thorough analysis of both rug making and competition fiddling. Goertzen's reliance on either single-builder shops—confusingly described as “small-shop” builders (p. 79)—or the largest corporate producers (e.g., C. F. Martin & Co. or Gibson, Inc.) to support his claims of intensification partially overlooks a resurgence of true small-shop companies producing exceptionally high-quality instruments such as Thompson Guitars (Sisters, Oregon) and Pre-War Guitars Co. (Hillsborough, North Carolina). Among numerous others, these companies maintain the skill and intimacy of single-luthier shops while benefitting from the labor division of larger entities. Further, Goertzen downplays the consumer's philosophical and ethical desire for the use of sustainable materials (well-documented on public forums such as the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum), associating these choices almost exclusively with the instrument builders.