Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 6, 1993 TAG: 9306030120
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MOUNT ROGERS LENGTH: Long
Twaaang.
As he warmed up, the others straggled in.
Bass player Melissa Mimm wrestled her bulky instrument into place beside Cone.
Another guitarist, some flatfooters, a banjo player followed. Behind them trailed the fiddle player, more dancers, a handful of singers.
Twenty-three players in all -- ages 10 to 18 years.
Meet the Mount Rogers School Band.
YeeeeeeyyHaaaaahhhh!!!!
No clashing cymbals here, folks. No trumpets. No trombones. Not a tuba in sight.
No ho-hum renditions of the National Anthem squeal through Mount Rogers' one tiny hallway on band practice day.
Just some good ol' foot-stomping, old-time mountain music.
YeeeeeeyyHaaaaahhhh!!!!
"We always do everything differently," Principal Wilma Testerman said, as the band gathered in a circle to play.
Do they ever.
The 80 kindergarten through 12th-grade students who study on top of Whitetop Mountain, not far from the Tennessee and North Carolina borders, didn't even have a band until Albert Hash decided they ought to 11 years ago.
They didn't have one because they couldn't afford one. Mount Rogers is one of the state's smallest -- and poorest -- schools.
But Hash and Testerman believed they were also one of the richest, sitting atop a mother lode of talent and tradition.
So they asked the School Board in 1982 for approval to start a small string band. A couple of guitars. A bass. Maybe a fiddle or two.
Something that would keep the heart of old-time music thumping in Mount Rogers, where tunes written hundreds of years ago in England and Ireland survive at the mercy of each fresh generation.
"It was Grandad's dream, for them to have a band," said Beth Absher, one of the first banjo players and now an assistant band director. "It came to life for him. He'd be really proud of these kids."
Hash directed the band for its first year, then he died unexpectedly of a heart attack. His daughter, Audrey Ham, took over as director.
She stepped into another family tradition as well, picking up her father's trade as a violin maker. She crafts about four of the delicate instruments every year in her mountainside home.
"There's very few female violin makers," she said. "I'm a weirdo."
Carrying on family traditions is not that unusual at Mount Rogers. Tenth-grader Crystal Mahaffey grew up watching her grandfather fiddle and pick the banjo. One day she decided to try it herself.
"I picked up his banjo and started playing the banjo first," she said.
The fiddle came later.
Today, Mahaffey ticks off the awards she's won on both instruments. First place at the Fiddler's Convention in Tennessee last year. First place on the banjo in North Carolina. Tenth place at the 1992 Galax Fiddler's Convention. Fourth place this year on the fiddle in another contest near Galax.
"Winning's not really important to me," she hastens to add. "Just sounding good and playing good. If you take the fun out of music, it's nothing."
Nobody's taking the fun out of music at Mount Rogers.
Certainly not dance teacher Frieda Roten.
Never mind that most of her female dancers lost interest when the only high school boy in the group moved away. She just recruited a new bunch -- from the elementary grades.
"Maybe we'll have these a little longer," she said.
But she's not taking any chances. She quickly secured a new boy, 11-year-old Mikey Greer.
"He volunteered," she said. "Sorta. With my encouragement."
Mikey doesn't mind. He's in it for the square dancing, he said.
Others prefer the "Cotton-eyed Joe," while some seem to be naturals at flatfootin'.
None of them -- not even the recruits -- appears to have a tough time mastering the steps or the music.
"A lot of the people in this area, it just seemed to be a talent, a gift that they inherited," Testerman said. "It just comes natural."
Whether they want it or not. nn
Mimm never thought about playing the bass, an instrument donated to the school several years ago.
She took it up, she said, because "the girl that was playing it graduated."
She depended on other band members to show her the chords, which she proudly demonstrates. Just don't ask her about that fat string on the end.
"I don't use it much," she said.
Why not?
"I don't know what it is."
Never mind. Nobody seems to notice.
Certainly not the 250 people who bought copies of a tape the band made to raise $500 in scholarship money for one of the singers.
People have written to ask for copies from as far away as Texas, Ham said. She has no idea how they heard about them.
Maybe they heard the band on the local radio station while visiting friends or relatives, she guesses. Maybe they stopped at one of the local campgrounds, where they played last summer for $250 a show.
Ham said she divided the cash among the kids.
"It's pocket money," she said.
Every little bit counts. Except for the donated bass, the school can't provide any instruments. The kids buy their own, or inherit them.
But they know how to raise money when they have to.
In 1987, the band raised $10,000 to send its members to an international high school band conference in Florida, Ham said.
They sold donuts. They held fund-raising dinners.
"We raffled off everything that wasn't tied down," she said.
Ham donated a dulcimer she made for the occasion. And the community came through with the cash.
"The kids didn't realize they were going until the bus pulled away," she said.
When they did, they got nervous. They were the only string band there.
"As far as I know, this is the only string band existing," Testerman said. "School band, that is."
And she's proud of it.
The kids are proud, too. Of the band, of their heritage, and of their home.
While hesitant to share stories about themselves with strangers, all mouths open wide for what they know simply as "The Whitetop Mountain Song":
When it's springtime in that mountain
When the moon is shining bright
I'll be back to Whitetop Mountain
And I'll settle down for life.
YeeeeeeyyHaaaaahhhh!!!!
by CNB