VOA标准英语2014--Park Ranger Saves Tennessee Mountain Music

 

Park Ranger¹ Saves Tennessee Mountain Music

MURFREESBORO, TENNESSEE— 

Today you can find almost any obscure song or historical recording² online, but that wasn’t always the case.

Traditional American music - bluegrass, Country, folk songs, blues³ - was being lost when the performers who knew the oldest songs died.. This loss prompted Congress to pass the American Folklife Preservation⁴ Act in 1976.

One of the first to take up the challenge of preserving old songs from the hills and remote Appalachian communities was a young Tennessee park ranger named Bobby Fulcher.  

The thousands of recordings⁵, photographs and lyric⁶ sheets he assembled now comprise the Tennessee Folklife Collection. They are stored in a temperature and humidity-controlled vault⁷ in Nashville. Stacked atop each other, the materials in the collection would reach the height of a 14-story building.

Fulcher is a child of the folk-music era who grew up listening to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, but the tunes⁸ he heard as a young ranger traveling the Tennessee hills seemed somehow more compelling.

“There’s a difference between hearing someone sing a song that doesn’t really believe that there are ghosts and [lost souls] and ghost lovers, and someone who believes they’re real,” Fulcher said as he played a song about murdered lovers. “It sounds different to me when I hear them sing it.”

Fulcher began spending all his spare time tracking down folk artists and recording their songs. One of his biggest finds was a man named Dee Hicks, who had committed more than 100 centuries-old songs to memory. But getting to him wasn’t easy.

“I had my banjo in my hand,” he said. “So, when I walked up to the door, oh, there were dogs chained up, and it was good that they were chained, you know. They were pulling on the chain and snarling”.

But that didn't stop him.

“I knocked on the door and they let me in and we started talking about music and I recorded some banjo tunes right there.”

Each folk artist Fulcher met introduced him to still more musicians he wanted to record. To get to them faster, Fulcher hired graduate students using federal arts grants.

Betsey Patterson was one of those early interns⁹. She says Fulcher taught her that to connect with hill people, you have to move at their pace.

“You have to learn to sort of step back and wait for the other individual to reveal themselves and reveal what they want to tell you,” she said.

Peterson, now director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, sees Fulcher's collection as a work of love.

"He did fall in love with the people,” she said. “He loves being around people, he loves just hearing what they have to say and drawing out the best in people. He's very good at that."

One of the artists Fulcher got closest to is fiddler Clyde Davenport, who was named a national treasure by the National Endowment for the Arts. Davenport is now in his 90s. His fiddling¹⁰ has slowed and he sometimes forgets how a song starts, but once on the bow, his fingers come alive.

Seeing the end of his Park Service career on the horizon, Fulcher is now focused on sharing the music that’s become his passion. He helped launch a record label to ensure Tennessee’s traditional music reaches a wider audience.

SandRockRecordings.com has released nine albums of traditional music so far. Six more are in the works. Fulcher now manages one of Tennessee’s newest state parks and continues to add to the Folklife collection.

1 ranger   

n.国家公园管理员，护林员；骑兵巡逻队员

参考例句：

• He was the head ranger of the national park.他曾是国家公园的首席看守员。
• He loved working as a ranger.他喜欢做护林人。

2 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

3 blues   

n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐

参考例句：

• She was in the back of a smoky bar singing the blues.她在烟雾弥漫的酒吧深处唱着布鲁斯歌曲。
• He was in the blues on account of his failure in business.他因事业失败而意志消沉。

4 preservation   

n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持

参考例句：

• The police are responsible for the preservation of law and order.警察负责维持法律与秩序。
• The picture is in an excellent state of preservation.这幅画保存得极为完好。

5 recordings   

n.记录( recording的名词复数 )；录音；录像；唱片

参考例句：

• a boxed set of original recordings 一套盒装原声录音带
• old jazz recordings reissued on CD 以激光唱片重新发行的老爵士乐

6 lyric   

n.抒情诗，歌词；adj.抒情的

参考例句：

• This is a good example of Shelley's lyric poetry.这首诗是雪莱抒情诗的范例。
• His earlier work announced a lyric talent of the first order.他的早期作品显露了一流的抒情才华。

7 vault   

n.拱形圆顶，地窖，地下室

参考例句：

• The vault of this cathedral is very high.这座天主教堂的拱顶非常高。
• The old patrician was buried in the family vault.这位老贵族埋在家族的墓地里。

8 tunes   

n.曲调，曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调

参考例句：

• a potpourri of tunes 乐曲集锦
• When things get a bit too much, she simply tunes out temporarily. 碰到事情太棘手时，她干脆暂时撒手不管。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 interns   

n.住院实习医生( intern的名词复数 )v.拘留，关押( intern的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Our interns also greet our guests when they arrive in our studios. 我们的实习生也会在嘉宾抵达演播室的时候向他们致以问候。 来自超越目标英语 第4册
• The interns work alongside experienced civil engineers and receive training in the different work sectors. 实习生陪同有经验的国内工程师工作，接受不同工作部门的相关培训。 来自超越目标英语 第4册

10 fiddling   

微小的

参考例句：

• He was fiddling with his keys while he talked to me. 和我谈话时他不停地摆弄钥匙。
• All you're going to see is a lot of fiddling around. 你今天要看到的只是大量的胡摆乱弄。 来自英汉文学 - 廊桥遗梦