Who is to say that “I Wonder As I Wander,” a carol with a known composer, is more “authentic” than a lullaby recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, one of the first songs I ever knew-written by an unnamed slave woman?īut I quickly discovered that there’s a lot more to Wayfaring Strangers than just one line of musical history. One of the key things I learned from this book was that the lines are blurred. By “folk” I mean traditional music, but also the many permutations of it, such as the folk revival in popular music in the early 1960s. I bought Wayfaring Strangers because I was born and raised in the southern Appalachian region, and I’m a lifelong fan of folk music. If there is anything I love as much as travel and books, it is music. As the title suggests, it is about travel-the migration of music, and the people who sang and played it, from one country to the next (and back). This is a book that is going to stay with The Discreet Traveler for a long time. In the pages of this book, tv viewers will enjoy re-visiting the people and places they loved on screen.

In 2017, noted Scottish musician Phil Cunningham followed this musical migration for the acclaimed BBC tv series 'Wayfaring Stranger' to which the authors contributed. Enriched by the insights of key contributors to the living tradition on both sides of the Atlantic, this abundantly illustrated volume includes a CD featuring 20 songs by musicians profiled in the book, including Dolly Parton, Dougie MacLean, Cara Dillon, John Doyle, Pete Seeger, Sheila Kay Adams, Jean Ritchie, Doc Watson, David Holt, Anais Mitchell, Al Petteway, and Amy White. In Wayfaring Strangers, Fiona Ritchie and Doug Orr guide readers on a musical voyage across oceans, linking people and songs through centuries of adaptation and change.įrom ancient ballads at the heart of the tradition to instruments that express this dynamic music, Ritchie and Orr chronicle the details of an epic journey. Their enduring legacy of music flows today from Appalachia back to Ireland and Scotland and around the globe. They brought with them a wealth of traditional ballads and tunes from the British Isles and Ireland, a carrying stream that merged with sounds and songs of English, German, Welsh, African American, French, and Cherokee origin.

Many of these Scots-Irish immigrants made their way into the mountains of the southern Appalachian region. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a steady stream of Scots migrated to Ulster and eventually onward across the Atlantic to resettle in the United States.

Wayfaring Strangers by Dolly Parton