Description
Date: June 14, 2025
9 am – 4 pm
Skill Level: Students should have at least an intermediate level of proficiency on fiddle, accordion, banjo, guitar, or a comparable instrument.
Class Registration Fee: Early bird (by May 26, 2025): $90
After May 26, 2025: $100
The farms, lumber camps, small towns, and urban centers of Wisconsin and the surrounding region have long been a meeting places for cultures and their musics, from Norwegians, Irish, and Germans to Finns, Ojibwe, and Poles. Taught by fiddler and ethnomusicologist Jason Busniewski, this class introduces the region’s multi-ethnic old-time music. Student musicians will learn to play dance tunes from this unique style of music, as well as learning about its cultural and historical context. Music will be taught primarily by ear, but sheet music will also be made available. Students will come away with a basic repertoire of regional tunes and ways of learning they can use as a basis to continue their journey into deeper engagement with the musical and cultural environment around them.
Materials fee: (Paid directly to instructor during class): none
Students need to bring the following supplies: a musical instrument of their choice, preferably fiddle, banjo, accordion, or mandolin
Jason Busniewski is a fiddler and ethnomusicologist with over a decade of experience studying and playing Upper Midwestern old-time music. He is currently working with the music of Wisconsin fiddler Otto Rindlisbacher as the recipient of an American-Scandinavian Foundation Folk Arts and Cultural Traditions Fellowship.