     | 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
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for
times and places.
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