Dozens of competitive fiddlers Saturday morning drew bows across strings in a makeshift practice hall at the National Western Complex right next to a display of fowl.
The cacophony of sweet music was accompanied by the quack of ducks, the cluck of chickens and the occasional rooster’s cock-a-doodle at the National Western Stock Show & Rodeo.
Livestock and strings is much the way authentic cowboy music has been performed in the American West for a century and a half, historians say.
In the movies, cowpokes croon and strum guitars, but in the real West, they played fiddles on the farms and danced up a storm.
“Fiddle music is cowboy music,” said David Jackman, one of the organizers with the Colorado Old Time Fiddlers Association competition.
The competition drew hundreds of fiddlers from eight to 80 from across the country.
“When the cowboys came out West, they brought their fiddles with them,” Jackman said.
The competition began Saturday morning at 9 and continues until the awards ceremony at 5 p.m. today.
All of the events are in the Beef Palace Auction Arena and are free with a general admission to the stock show.
The fiddle competition was added five years ago because of music’s rich heritage in the West.
“Every American frontier was opened with the fiddle,” said Guy Logsdon, a retired University of Tulsa professor and cowboy folklore author of books and scholarly articles on the topic.
The fiddle was an old country instrument, small enough to transport easily, yet able to deliver a rich sound that would soothe livestock or light up a barn dance. The guitar, meanwhile, was neither popular nor practical in the 19th-century American West, Logsdon said.
“It’s real simple: The fiddle was the only instrument the cowboy had,” said Logsdon, whose family has fiddled for four generations. “If the nation had an official folklore instrument designated by Congress, it would have to be the fiddle.”
The suggestion that Old West cowboys commonly serenaded the cattle makes Logsdon laugh. He has interviewed hundreds of working cowboys during 30 years of research.
“Most of the cowboys I’ve talked to don’t have good voices,” he said. “They would start a stampede, not stop it.”
Saturday morning, 10-year-old Macy Blatter of Englewood drew the honor of being the first youth performer. Though she was a little nervous, she confessed later, she delivered a near-flawless rendition of “San Antonio Rose.”
Her history of the fiddle goes back to first grade, when a classical troupe came to the Cherry Hills Village Elementary and accompanied a telling of “The Tortoise and the Hare.”
“I always wanted to play the fiddle after that,” she said.
Last year, she finished fifth, but she’s not in it for prizes, she said.
“It’s just really fun, and if you mess up,” she said, chickens in the background of her tiny voice, “nobody cares.”
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-523-7786 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
