That old-time music lives on

When Scottish, English and Irish immigrants set sail for a new world in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, they were leaving behind much of what they had known. Gone were the sights and smells of home and the spell of a particular piece of ground, along with the feelings they left buried in it.

But at least one piece of their old lives was not gone: the music. The immigrants scattered fiddle notes on the waves as they sailed. After that long journey, the old-time music, as it is affectionately called today, was planted firmly in the mountain soil of places like Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia and...