Almighty Dad | A stay at home dad blog

My wife, for some reason explainable only to her, likes renaissance fairs.  We go to one every year to eat a turkey leg and participate in all manner of non historical nonsense.  If you’ve ever been to one of these fairs, you can sympathize with the tendency I have to dismiss any product or idea espoused by anybody who sets up shop at a renaissance (or medieval) fair.  The hammered dulcimer is an instrument that, for me, up until two days ago, existed solely in the loin cloth/fairy wings/leather chaps and whips atmosphere of the geek fests known as renaissance fairs.  But, as rarely happens, I was mistaken.  I encountered a lady playing the hammered dulcimer in the New Bern, North Carolina, Museum of Colonial History who changed my opinion of the instrument.  Maybe it was the academic environment.  But, I think it was her enthusiasm for the instrument, her skill, and her deep knowledge of its history and relevance that brought out my appreciation for the instrument.      

Cindy Rhodes:      

The boys and I stood and listened to Cindy through several traditional compositions of hers.  My brother in law commented that one of the songs sounded a little like the intro of a Led Zeppelin song he knew (I don’t remember which one he said).  In response, she began banging away at a Zeppelin song that she had retooled for the hammered dulcimer and which she  had apparently been saving for an appreciative audience.  We were that audience, and that’s when I decided that I absolutely must write something about her – to promote a hammered dulcimer player that uses her instrument to play traditional (and beautiful) songs, but who isn’t so stuffy about it that she hasn’t also made the instrument relevant again with a little modernization.  She was playing her favorite hammered dulcimer, Persephone, a custom job from a maker here in North Carolina.  Her dulcimer is twice the size of a normal one, and registers sound that other hammered dulcimers can’t make.  Thus, her music can play virtually any style, Far Eastern styles to Persian to Western to whatever interesting combination she settles on.      

The boys and I learned a lot about colonial history; we toured the Tryon Palace (colonial seat of government for the Carolina Colony), we learned how to make turpentine and run an old fashioned printing press; we learned a lot of interesting things.  I was equally impressed by the dulcimer player though, and that was pretty surprising since I didn’t think that was possible.     

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