THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 20, 1994 TAG: 9411180104
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: RANDOM RAMBLES
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
I know stereotypes are bad, so shame on me, but I had these images of dulcimer players. I thought they were either mountain grandpas picking out a tune while the mash burbled in their moonshine stills or young women in granny dresses playing where they served coffee and poetry in alternate doses.
Blam went the stereotype when I met Bert Berry. He's a grandpa, all right, but he's a good Baptist choir member, so he doesn't cotton to any whiskey stills. What he does cotton to is the dulcimer. He not only plays them; he makes them.
More properly, they are called mountain dulcimers. If you have never seen one, they are wooden gadgets about three feet long with four strings stretched along the frame. They come in either a tear-drop shape or an hour-glass shape. You pluck or strum them with your fingers or with a pick. The sound is sweet and silvery. Listen to one and you quickly conjure up merry mental pictures of mountain folk dancing and dipping and stepping light.
Apparently, dulcimers are descendants of ancient ancestors. They're mentioned, for instance, in Chapter 3, Verse 10, of the biblical Book of Daniel. But the type of mountain dulcimer Berry builds is more a child of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Its popularity died out but revived when people got hooked on folk music in the 1950s. A standard explanation for the name ``dulcimer'' is that it comes from Latin words meaning ``sweet song.''
Berry, who lives in Deep Creek, was a computer programs analyst until he retired about three years ago. A Norfolk County native, he says he's always enjoyed working with wood. That goes all the way back to the days when he was a kid playing with whittled wooden boats in rain-filled ditches.
He and dulcimers met and matched in 1976 when the Chesapeake Parks and Recreation Department gave a class in making the instruments. He decided to give it a shot, a shot that turned into a bull's-eye. Now it's 103 Berry-built dulcimers later.
He makes them from mahogany, cherry or walnut, forming the curved sides out of thin strips heated and bent into shape. He uses a homemade bending iron. It's a 200-watt light bulb inside a metal cylinder. He soaks the wood in water and that, in combination with the heat of the light bulb, makes the resin in the cells of the wood soften. Then it's ready to bend against the curves of the hot cylinder. When the wood cools, the resin hardens, and the wood holds the shape that Berry gave it.
Ask him if he's ever messed one up and the precision of the ex-computer guy's mind kicks in. ``Number 30,'' he says. ``The sides weren't true.''
Berry spends 20 to 25 hours on each one, working in his backyard shop with a cat named Tom in close attendance and dulcimer music rollicking on a tape player. ``Tom's my partner,'' Berry says.
Don't expect him to get poetical about the creative process. He's more concerned about the critical measurements and careful concentration that produce a good instrument.
But, then, he never knows if it actually is a good instrument until he gets to the last step - ``giving it voice.'' That means stringing it and, finally, testing the sound and feel and response.
``Giving it voice is an exciting time,'' Berry says. ``Every one is different. Every piece of wood is different. Wood is what it is. There's no pretense about it. You can't use it if it's knotted or flawed. You need a good, firm, solid straight-grain piece.''
So good wood is sort of like good people?
``That's right,'' Berry said. ``Yes, sir.''
When he has done well, Berry told me, his dulcimers look right and feel right and sound right. ``One like that, you sometimes feel like it could play itself,'' he says.
Then he grins and lays a dulcimer he's made across his lap. He tells me he's going to play a tune called ``Mississippi Sawyer.'' Odd name, he agrees, but there's an explanation. It's a song about how the bottom of the Mississippi River is full of snags and catches that can saw the bottom of an unwary river navigator's boat. Explanation over, it's time for the tune.
His sturdy fingers skip over the strings like his hands were dancing to the music. One work-booted foot taps along to the lilting rhythm. When the tune is finished, Berry talks about how he and his neighbor, guitar-player Ralph Stewart, will get together sometimes to pick their way through the traditional music of the mountains. Tom the cat is their respectful and apparently approving audience. In case you were worried about Tom, the strings of a dulcimer are not cat gut. They're steel.
I met Berry at the recent Albemarle Craft Fair in Elizabeth City, N.C. He had just sold one of his dulcimers - number 100 - to a friend of mine who lives in Chesapeake. ``That number 100 was a good one,'' Berry said, ``one of my best.
``I'm glad it's staying in Chesapeake. A part of me goes into every one that I make.'' by CNB