A Tribute to David Brose (1951-2021)

David Brose died in January. I didn't know the man personally, but he had a significant impact on my journey into learning old-time music. Through his work as a folklorist, Brose was responsible for the bulk of the available recordings of Ward Jarvis, a fiddler and banjo player who lived in Athens County, Ohio.

While I was introduced to Ward Jarvis through the Field Recorders' Collective, the world of his fiddling and banjo playing really opened up to me when I received a copy of Brose's field recordings made in the mid- to late 1970s. Brose went on to produce two albums released in 1979 that featured Jarvis for Ohio Folklife and the Ohio Arts Council, Rats Won't Stay Where There's Music with his sons and Traditional Music Music From Central Ohio with a variety of other musicians from the region.

Thanks to these recordings, I was able to learn tunes like "Icy Mountain," "Tomahawk," "Pretty Little Indian" and others as part of my Year of Ward Jarvis and Second Year of Ward Jarvis project.

Brose also wrote the liner notes for Folk Music of Ohio: 1938 Through 1940 released in 1978 by Ohio Folklife and compiled from recordings by Alan and Elizabeth Lomax.

It turns out Ohio Folklife Inc. was a non-profit organization that Brose founded after completing his studies at Ohio State University, where he majored in folklore. Ohio Folklife projects were funded through grants from the Ohio Arts Council.

Brose was born in Columbus, Ohio, on May 17, 1951, and started to play the banjo in 1958. In 1982, he earned his master's degree in Ethnomusicology from Indiana University. He served as the folklorist for the John C. Campbell Folk School from 1991 to 2019.

I "friended" Brose on Facebook a couple years ago, and I enjoyed his posts on music, politics and life in general. I always meant to reach out to him to see if I could interview him and just let him know the impact his work has had on me. Unfortunately, I missed my opportunity.

I'm not sure what else to say, other than it's clear from the outpouring of appreciation on his Facebook page that Brose was very loved and will be missed. As an Ohio native, his life and work are invaluable to my appreciation of folk music from the Buckeye State.

There's a wonderful tribute to Brose from the Clay County Progress, a newspaper based in Hayesville, North Carolina, which helped inform what I've written here.

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The Glory-Beaming Banjo

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