As the sun set over a horse farm in eastern Ohio’s Columbiana County, Kerry Varble tuned her violin in front of a piano decorated with blue ribbons and trophies.
She plays violin in competitions all over the country, from Texas to Tennessee. But that evening she was preparing for a competition closer to home: the Ohio State Old Time Fiddlers Competition.
Varble nodded to her husband, who accompanied her on the guitar, and the two began to sing a rousing polka.
“I’ve actually never played that on this stage before,” she said, lowering her violin at the end of the song.
But that could change on Friday evening.
Varble will join dozens of fiddlers in Nelsonville to play rag polkas, waltzes, square dances and swing tunes in hopes of becoming the next Ohio State Old Time Fiddling Champion. Varble said she has friends from Alabama and Tennessee traveling to Nelsonville to compete.
The old violin tradition
“A lot of people think we play bluegrass,” Varble said. “But we don’t. Bluegrass is actually pretty new music. It was invented in the 1940s. Our music is much older.”
The old fiddle music came to America with the early settlers, she said, who brought the instruments across an ocean. Over time, their melodies evolved into what we know today as square dance music.
“It has to be perfectly straight so you can stop it at any time,” Varble said. “When the dance needs to end, you can stop.”
Erin Gottsacker
/
The Ohio Newsroom
Previous fiddlers played square dancing over and over again, she said.
“They got bored,” Varble said, so they started embellishing melodies and experimenting with different keys and octaves.
Experimentation gave way to competition.
At the beginning of the 20th century, violin competitions were held throughout the country, including in Ohio. Newspaper articles from the 1920s report on competitions that Crowds of hundreds in Cleveland and Toledo.
A Article from 1926 described in the Springfield Daily News an event that was so popular “that the hall was not large enough to accommodate all who tried to get in.”
The Ohio State Old Time Fiddlers Contest took place decades later. It was first held in the State Fair in Columbus in 1968at the request of then-Governor James Rhodes. Soon after, it moved to Nelsonville, just outside of Athens.
Violin playing in Ohio today
The Ohio State Old Time Fiddlers Contest is one of only two remaining contests in the state, according to Varble. The other is held in Wayne County Fair.
“It’s a dying art,” she said. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get children interested in playing the violin.”
For long-time violinists like her, the competitions are still an opportunity to keep the tradition alive.
When the show begins at 6 p.m. at the historic Stuart’s Opera House, contestants will each perform a square dance and a waltz. If they advance to the championship round, they must add a polka or swing tune.
Judges look for intonation and rhythm, but Varble said classical violin music is about more than just proper technique. With songs like “Clarinet Polka” and “Sally Goodin” under her belt, Varble hopes to get the audience dancing.
