Welcome to the Arthritis Brothers Web site. We play old time music.     Music that was popular in the late 1880's and early 1900's.       Music that postdated the minstrel era and preceded bluegrass. Old-time music is traditional music that developed in rural and often isolated areas of the Appalachian and other regions before radio, record players, and other modern inventions. The two main strains of the music come from the banjo brought with many of its common playing styles from Africa by Africans, and from the fiddle, which came from western Europe, particularly Germany, Scotland and Ireland. The fiddle and banjo were played separately and together, particularly for dancing, in the nineteenth century when music was used for house raisings, husking bees and community entertainment.  It was played by persons with ordinary jobs for their own entertainment. Songs and ballads, many imported from the British Isles and many written on these shores, are also an important part of old-time music.          The Arthritis Brothers String Band  learns their tunes by aural transmission from our predecessors.  We also occasionally get tunes from book and sheet music of traditional public domain tunes and from early recordings.  Web sites such at the Library of Congress  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html  are particularly usefull.  Fascinating even!   The Arthritis Brothers String Band performs traditional and folk music that is free of Copyright and in the Public Domain.   Check our schedule page at |Schedule |   for times and places.