A friend recently asked me whether the North Country—northern New York State, where I grew up—has its own distinctive fiddle style. My immediate answer was: No—at least, not in the way Cape Breton or Quebecois styles are recognized as distinct musical dialects.

Even if I don’t have the authority to declare that definitively, the conclusion still holds up when we look at it objectively. If you take the elements that typically define a regional fiddle style—

• Bowing techniques
• Tempo and rhythmic feel
• Tuning and intonation
• Melodic structures and tune types
• Harmonic or ensemble practices
• Cultural context or dance associations

…the tradition that exists in the North Country fully aligns with Canadian Old Time fiddling.

That’s not a coincidence. Our proximity to Ontario and Quebec, and our deep cultural and genealogical ties to Canada, have profoundly shaped our musical identity. My own ancestors—like many in this region—were French Canadians or Irish immigrants who settled in Quebec and Upper Canada and later crossed into St. Lawrence County. In the 1830s, it was common for French Canadian families living in New York to bring their babies back across the river to their ancestral churches in Châteauguay to be baptized. The flow of people, traditions, and music between Canada and the North Country has always been active and alive.

Looking Back—and Forward

Based on Anne Lederman’s detailed and well-researched article on Canadian fiddling, we can trace the arc of our shared tradition clearly—at least from 1944, when Don Messer’s Jubilee first hit the airwaves. The founding of the North Country Fiddlers in the late 1970s lines up with the revival movement Lederman describes, and Don Woodcock’s detailed recollections of his father’s playing help extend our understanding back another generation or two.

Before that, things get hazier—but not unreasonably so. We know the North Country’s 19th-century population was filled with recent immigrants from Quebec, and before that, from Ireland and France. It’s not a stretch to assume that the same kinds of fiddle music being played in Ontario and Quebec were also being played here. It would have been far more common to have relatives visiting from across the St. Lawrence than from places like Appalachia or New England. The cultural commerce we had was northward, not southward—and so was the musical influence.

But understanding the past is only part of the work.

A Living Tradition

As a fiddler officially committed to preserving our local musical traditions, as the current president of the North Country Fiddlers, step one is knowing what we’re trying to preserve. Step two is actively preserving it by passing it on. But there’s a third step we may overlook: nurturing the creative spark that keeps it alive.

Yes, we honor the old tunes. Yes, we want to understand the stylistic fingerprints passed down through generations, but not to be limited by them. Fiddling has always been a living tradition. That means growing, adapting, learning new styles, serving new dancers and audiences, surprising people with new techniques, composing new tunes, and finding joy in experimentation.

This spirit of playfulness, creativity, and musical curiosity is just as much a part of the tradition as any bowing pattern or tune list. If we want young people to fall in love with fiddling, we have to model not just how to play old tunes but how to make the music their own.

That’s how we preserve fiddling in the North Country. Not by fossilizing it, but by welcoming evolution with the same warmth we give to heritage. Not by strictly adhering to what the tradition was, but by embracing what it can become—with all the energy, variety, and joy that fiddling has always invited.

📚 Postscript

The historical context in this post is informed by Anne Lederman’s excellent article “Fiddling in Canada”, published in The Canadian Encyclopedia of Music in Canada. Her work provides a thorough and insightful look at the development of Canadian fiddle styles and their regional revivals. Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in how fiddle traditions evolve and persist.
Read the full article (PDF)

🎻 Join the North Country Fiddlers

If you’re a fiddler, listener, dancer, or simply someone who loves the music—you’re welcome here. The North Country Fiddlers is always open to new members. Visit nocofiddlers.com or email me at ann.davey@gmail.com for more info.