Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife

Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife: Instrumental Folk Tunes in Pennsylvania is a comprehensive collection of traditional American fiddle and fife music compiled by folklorist Samuel P. Bayard. The book presents 651 tunes that Bayard and his colleagues documented during fieldwork spanning from 1928 to 1963 in southwestern Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia. These melodies represent musical traditions brought to America by early settlers from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Germany, preserved in relatively isolated mountain communities where they remained largely unchanged for generations.

The collection organizes tunes by their traditional functions—whether used for dancing, marching, or other social occasions—and includes detailed notes about each tune’s source, collection date, and performer. Bayard’s work stands out for its focus on melody and musical structure rather than just lyrics, introducing concepts like “melodic families” to trace relationships between tunes. The book also connects Pennsylvania variants to related melodies found across other regions and traces many American fiddle tunes back to their British Isles origins, making it an invaluable resource for understanding the development of Anglo-Celtic traditional music in America.