The Tunes Between Dark and Dawn

Forest, a banjo player at last night's session told me about a player from Appalachia, one of the older fellows who explained the use of modal tunes.  It had to be a poem.

 

The Tunes Between Dark and Dawn

 

I have always loved

the modal tunes,

neither sunny, warm major,

nor cold, winter night minor,

bitter sweet, between

 

Notes climbing the scale, beginning in different places,

on the second or fifth or sixth step,

of the rough-hewn, uneven staircase of the scale.

twisting a melody

into some different pathway

to another land

A startling full step to a natural,

not the expected, predictable half.

 

The fiddler,

 taking the unexpected leap,

turning the awkward distance between notes

into something graceful,

haunting,

 

When I asked him what these tunes were for,

his face lit up with a smile.

 

"These were the tunes we played

Only 

in the hour before dawn,

between night and day.

When everything waits."

 

I picture a man

sitting in the door of a cabin,

with a candle, perhaps,

pale, tiny light among

ancient trees

and more ancient mountains.

He cradles a fiddle, wrapped carefully, like a child,

in cloth.

 

Before the day begins

of work, building, hunting, growing

crops or children, he sits

alone in candle light.

 

The cloth he unwraps tenderly

has kept away

the sullen drizzle of Scotland,

the salt water on the deck of a voyaging ship,

the damp heat of the southern mountain summer.

The wood of the fiddle, dark with generations of age,

the bow hair yellowed,

 

And then, the notes, touched by

Scotland, Africa,

and Cherokee voices

with their grace, and bitter sweet surprise

rise

to greet the morning star,

and then

the sun.