I was 7 when I first encountered fiddle tunes. My parents had taken my sister and me to Death Valley, California to attend the town’s annual ‘49er commemoration to experience the ardors of 19th-century pioneers traveling west in search of gold. Amongst people dressed in period clothing, day-in-the-life-of demonstrations, the shrill whistles of mule-driven flap jack races, and bumpy rides in covered wagons, a fiddle contest took center stage. As the fiddle tunes danced through the air and the rosin dust from the fiddler’s fiery bow filled my lungs, the music entered my soul. My path was set: I would become a contest fiddle player. As fate would have it, our 83-year-old neighbor Slim, happened to be an old-time fiddler who had come to California in a covered wagon in 1893. Slim didn’t read music, so he taught me note-for-note in the aural tradition—the way tunes had been passed for centuries. Within a year, I was traveling back-country roads to compete in fiddle contests and learning more tunes from other old-timers.

Although I later left fiddling to pursue other dreams, as I shared these stories with my children, my initial impulse was to lament leaving my fiddle adventures behind. Now I realize that each experience living abroad, every language learned, and every chapter of history explored broadened my perspective allowing me to share this brief encounter with a bygone era.​ Even today, when I play my fiddle, I am on a journey through time and terrain, each tune a link to people and places, past and present. While fiddle tunes may sound simple, peeling back the layers left over time reveals a complex tapestry woven from diverse cultural traditions over generations. As we explore together each of the five musical regions, I hope you will hear fiddle tunes in a new way and witness their communal power.