[folk music]
*
- Doug Naselroad: Appalachia is a region
where people have succeeded and survived
in some pretty rugged country for generations.
*
Wonderful music has originated from here.
- * When the days are rolling on *
- And the craftsmanship is some of the best in the world.
- * I live here by and by
- We like to use the word Appalachian as a superlative
to indicate the value of a job well done.
*
The musical instrument we call the dulcimer
was born here in Knott County, Kentucky.
*
The dulcimer was spun out of other instruments
that the pioneers brought through in early 1800s
coming through the Cumberland Gap.
- Randy Wilson: We're not sure how it evolved.
Could have been from the Swedish instrument
called Hummel,
and there's a German instrument called Scheitholt.
But it wasn't a high-culture instrument.
It was played by peasants and it was kind of, you know,
just a piece of wood.
* Hey Johnson boys think they are sassy *
* Johnson boys think they are men *
* They comb their hair and wash their faces *
* Don't look bad for the shape they're in *
[laughter]
- People had been making these dulcimers
for generations,
but the hourglass form originated in 1871
by James Edward Thomas.
Everyone around here called him Uncle Ed.
Uncle Ed made 1,200 or 1,300 of these instruments.
- He had a little cart.
If there's a good road, he'd sell them off his cart
for $8 and take them in installments,
a dollar a month.
- And that included lessons.
*
Whee-ooh.
[laughter]
- About ten years ago, I was asked to come down
to the Appalachian Artisan Center here
and start a school of luthiery.
We wanted to see people coming here to study
and support the local economy.
[router whirring]
- Yeah, we got it. - Whoops.
- This is a fretboard for a dulcimer.
- Paul Williams: And she's routing out the slot
for where the saddle is going to sit.
It needs to be flat and equal across.
Just try to hold it level.
I really do like showing what I know to other people.
I think I got super powers of sorts,
'cause I can take old dead wood and make it sing.
[twangy music]
- Appalachia is one of the richest repositories
of musical wood in the world.
- A little bit more.
- Stradivarius would have used all this wood
if he could have.
- This particular instrument
is built from a bunch of different
local hardwood species.
We have an oak back.
We have black walnut sides and a headstock,
and then we have a butternut top and an oak fretboard
with a walnut bridge on either end.
Pretty cool.
[upbeat dulcimer music]
- This is a community with some really deep
musical roots.
- * Goodbye girls, I'm going to Boston *
* Goodbye girls, I'm going to Boston *
* Early in the morning.
- In the 1960s,
Jean Richie became a key figure of the folk revival,
as they call it.
- * Won't we look pretty in the ballroom? *
* Won't we look pretty in the ballroom? *
- Jon Pickow: Mom is credited with bringing the dulcimer
to national attention.
She was born in 1922 and grew up here.
She went to University of Kentucky.
She studied social work, and she went to New York City
to intern at the Henry Street Settlement
in the Lower East Side of Manhattan,
met my father and fell in love and stayed in New York
the rest of her life.
- * Won't we look pretty in the morning? *
- She was authentic.
She sang like an angel, made hearts melt.
[applause]
And she along with Pete Seeger and several others
was one of the founders of the Newport Folk Festival.
[dulcimer music]
Oh, this instrument, by the way,
was the one that Mom took all over the world.
This is her concert instrument, her favorite one.
It was made by my Uncle Morris Pickow
and my father.
They used to make them in a little shop
in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, underneath the bridge.
[folk music]
My father grew up in Brooklyn, and my mother,
being from Kentucky, it was kind of a strange mix.
*
Dad took pictures of some of the great
musicians of our time.
He also shot a lot of album covers,
and because of Mom,
he got to go where a lot of New York photographers
would not have been welcome.
He took pictures of baptisms and church services.
And a lot of folklorists really look
to those pictures today,
because he got some really rare things
the way they were back then.
*
- This is one of the most beautiful places on Earth,
but for years, an impossible place to live.
[somber music]
The Appalachian people have been battered,
because the downturn of the coal industry
has just ravaged this area.
And then the one-two punch of the opioid epidemic.
- So press it down on this corner right here
and then work your way from this side to that side.
- The Culture of Recovery program
is bringing people in recovery from addiction
into the Appalachian School of Luthiery.
- Not too bad. - No.
- Musical instrument making requires your attention,
your concentration, and your dedication to a goal.
They've proven it clinically,
having something that pulls you into it
is a really effective way of healing.
[folk music]
- Tabatha Mosley: This is my first dulcimer.
I'm actually gluing the fretboard on right now.
This is a really good program.
I didn't think it would be such a large part of my life
or my recovery, but this place really means a lot to me.
- Ready? - Uh-huh.
Make sure you center that one down there at that end.
Are you centered down now?
- Yes, I am.
- It looks good.
- We're trying to develop alternatives
to the extractive economy
that's let Appalachia almost die.
The old Hindman High School is now serving
as the Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Company.
*
We put people to work here who we had graduated
from our Culture of Recovery program at the Luthiery.
- We're bending sides for the dulcimer,
like wet the wood, put it in parchment paper
to keep the wood from getting burnt.
And then we place it in the bender
and wait for it to heat up for about two minutes.
That way it forms the shape of the side.
I was born with what they call scoliosis
and spina bifida.
So my doctors had put me on pain pills,
and that led it to a opioid dependency.
And then that led into buying methamphetamine,
because it was much cheaper.
Then, of course, that led me
to getting in trouble with the law,
in and out of jail for about four years.
- If you've been convicted of a drug-related felony
in a place where there are no jobs to begin with,
your chances of getting gainful employment are pretty bleak.
- I worked in the coal mines.
I was on my knees all the time.
Very seldom could I stand up.
When I started having back problems,
that's what got me into, you know,
pills and just different things.
You know, I had been in active addiction
for 25 years.
It's been a struggle, but this has helped me a whole lot.
The stuff that I've learned, just handcrafting everything,
I never imagined doing anything like that before.
It showed me that I can.
[twangy guitar music]
- These guys, they've done the really brave work
piecing their lives together after they've hit bottom.
It's pretty heroic.
*
- Building my own instrument was liberating and gratifying.
And then by working here,
I was able to get my own apartment.
So it gave me an independence to stand up
on my own two feet and take care of myself.
*
[machine whirring]
[folk music]
*
[both singing indistinctly]
- This is the first factory to ever its doors
in Knott County, Kentucky.
Even though we're small,
we want to use the hardwoods of Appalachia
and the people of Appalachia to make life better.
*
[laughter]