>>It's like getting something from your ancestor ancestors?

Is it called that?

>> It's like maybe a little bit like a miracle.

>> There's something above.

Who decides?

Sometimes.

In a curious way that things have to end.

Or will happen.

And it does.

>> Funding for this program was provided by the American Scandinavian Foundation, the Museum of Danish America, and many individual donors.

Thank you.

>> My name is Dwight, and I am of Monroe, Iowa.

I'm a Danish button accordion player.

And a Missouri Valley style fiddle player.

Narrator: Dwight Lamb, “Red” was born in 1934, in Moorhead, Iowa.

It's farming country near the Missouri River in northwest Iowa's Loess Hills.

Dwight was son to pump organ player Mary and fiddler Clarence Lamb, grandson to fiddler and Danish, but an accordion player.

Chris Europe.

Grandpa Chris had emigrated from Denmark to nearby Turin, Iowa in 1893.

>> Mainly I loved the tunes, you know, and the melodies I started when I was probably about three years old.

I listen to my dad fiddle, you know, and and I had music around the house all the time.

Every night, you know, I'd start humming wanting my grandpa to play the accordion >> And Dwight's one of those guys that, was a master of the Missouri Valley style.

And he knew all the great fiddle players in the areas.

>> My grandpa was a fiddler, and he lived in a town called Big Springs, Kansas.

And, sometime through the late 60s and 70s, he started contest fiddling.

And, the contests were all up in Nebraska and Iowa and Missouri, some in Kansas.

And because of that, he became friends with Dwight Lamb.

But about the age of eight, I started contest fiddling.

And, because of that, my summers were spent traveling with my grandparents and all of these great older fiddlers became my not just my mentors, but my other sets of grandparents.

And Dwight was in that that little group.

For me, he's the last of that generation that I learned from.

And, you know, my grandpa's been gone since 1993, and because he's still doing what he's doing, I feel like I still have my grandpa here.

>> Of course, that's your that's fiddling hero, Bob Walters.

>> The context of old time.

You know, when you when, of course, his main man was Bob Walters.

When Dwight heard him on the radio, him and Dwight's dad used to listen to the radio.

And Bob Walters was a radio fiddle player.

And you heard all that?

The tunes he played.

And Dwight would write in request to Bob Walters.

>> He said, you know, when you get a good fiddle, it's it's like going from a Model T to a Cadillac.

He said, can you play one like this?

This is so much easier.

Yeah.

>> The Walters family we've tracked it back, the fiddle music they had was Scotch-Irish.

They were living in Kentucky for quite a while.

I think their music that they came up the river on the boats basically is it's Midwestern fiddling.

>> A house in which Dwight grew up.

Then just outside nearby on Iowa, is now moved into town by its new owner.

The porch is where Dwight remembers many afternoons and evenings of music making.

Dwight grew up, married and remarried, helped her a son, two stepsons and grandchildren.

He worked at the Gamble's hardware store, then for many years at the post office in Onawa.

>> Red worked at the post office and I did too.

>> Red was saying that you sang songs together at the post office?

>> Oh yes.

>> Dwight served as the mayor of Onawa.

>> Like any other small town, it anybody could be mayor.

They wanted to spend time.

>> And this one is from KMA radio.

>> Right here.?>>Yeah.

And I was trying I think what year that was the year they had their 50th anniversary.

>> In 1985.

Okay.

>> And that was that's down in Shenandoah.

Yeah.

>> That's year.

So you were you?

Did you win?

Said the champ.

>> I won.

>>You were the top dog.

>> Dwight played and won fiddle contests and served as a judge at others.

He played dances and house parties and took every opportunity to jam with older musicians.

And he recorded many of them.

Also, he welcomed students who came his way.

>> My folks lived between, his folks, Clarence Lamb and Don Lamb's folks, Art Lamb.

And oh, during the winter, when we couldn't get out or anything, we would walk over to Clarence and Mary's and or down to the Art and Rowen or your place.

Yes.

And and then they come back to ours, and and so then we would walk over to Clearance and Mary's and, remember we had possum?

>> Oh, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah.

There's lots.

But anyway, Chris Jerrup and Clarence and Mary and Dwight played music.

Yes.

>> The roots of Dwight Lamb's music are typical of the cultural ferment of the late 19th and early 20th century American Midwest.

After the near destruction of local native peoples, the settlers came and put down roots, bringing with them a crazy quilt of languages, music, foods, and industry.

Dwight's grandfather arrived with a bunch of popular tunes from rural Denmark.

Dwight learned his grandpa's Danish tunes on the button accordion.

The accordion was an amazing innovation in the 19th century, allowing one person to play melody, rhythm and harmony while putting out a big sound.

It was portable and widely used for social dances at house parties, weddings and harvest celebrations, and it community dance halls.

Typically, dances might happen in fall, after the harvest or during slack time in winter.

>> I think I must be that because my folks are gone.

I'm probably the only person that heard all four of them play >> On Dwight's 1999 rounder CD, he included a couple of Danish tunes learned from his Grandpa Chris.

This CD made its way back to Denmark.

Discovery in Denmark.

Dwight's old Danish tunes, learned from his grandfather, began repatriation of a repertoire that had gone extinct in Denmark >> To folk musicians like accordionist Mette Kathrine Jensen Strk and fiddler Kristian Bugge, Dwight's tunes were definitely Danish, but there was no one alive in Denmark who had ever heard them.

>> This Danish music was finally found in America.

>> It sounded like something from up north in Denmark, but I don't recognize who it should be and I thought I knew everyone then.

It cannot be because I knew that everyone up there they were that they played like that.

But he lives in Iowa, in Iowa.

>> Led by Mette Kathrine and Kristian, Dwight and his tunes were welcomed back to Denmark in a multiyear project that included concert tours, CD and tune book projects and good cheer.

We joined them on a spring 2017 tour, first stop Fano Island.

>> More, tunes I hear from Dwight.

I hear from what my dad was trying to remember from his dad.

>> You have these comparatively few melodies that people have been playing for so many years, for hundreds of years, that you get the feeling that when you hear these songs, you don't only experience, you know, the sense of history, but you also experience a sense of community.

So I'll play, a tune that is, very well known in the rest of Denmark as well.

>> In North of Jutland, where Dwight is from, it would have been a waltz like this is.

But here it goes in the rhythm of this.

And so.

>> In Vendsyssel, North of Denmark, where the regional traditional music repertoire was extinct for several generations.

We visit the churchyard resting place of Dwight's great grandparents, the fiddler Crane Europe, and his wife, Marie.

>> Nice to see that.

They rest in a nice place.

And, very nice to see where my grandpa grew up.

He is confirmed here in this church.

Right out here on the other side of those trees, >> And the site of his great grandparents old farm outside nearby Senhora.

>> The living quarters was on this.

And then the north towards the livestock in the same building.

That's where they used to do years ago.

And earn everything you got, that's for sure.

>> A concert where his great grandfather could have played and after concert folk dance.

>> I have been dancingfolk dance since I was 12 years old, and now I'm teaching folk dance for children and for grownups.

You can't be angry and sour when you are dancing.

>> Overnight and breakfast at the Ocean Theater.

Most of concerts with Dwight, Mette, Kristian, and where youth learn to believe in themselves.

>> We always work to give people self-confidence.

>> We make many plays with young people, and we, often use folk music as part of it.

And we do it because there is, a rhythm in the music.

>> And if you bring it together, we see it.

And they, they, they, they become better actors because the, the rhythm comes into them.

And the rhythm is very important for to make good >> At a concert that evening in Århus, Dwight and Jim Heating meet for the first time.

A few years before Jim, through Kristian had gifted Dwight with Jim's childhood accordion, a preserved, pristine version of Dwight old Hohner.

Jim had seen Dwight play at a festival.

>> The old, accordion I got from my grandfather when I was ten years old.

He hoped that I would play on it, but I. I never.

>>So I said, who's going to have it?

>> What's it like now to to have him play it?

>> It was so beautiful, Jim.

>> Landing at a B and B in Copenhagen There are big plans brewing.

But first brunch.

Research documentation, informal music making.

>> But it's first time you have a fiddler.

Play a tradition, intact here in Denmark, who had participated in in United State.

>> And an evening concert in nearby Koge.

>> Go to the source is like a chain in culture.

Here.

Chain, chain chain.

And we are a part of that chain.

>> I had no idea that it would ever work out to be like this.

>> What really attracted me to it was the chance to make a portrait of these people who decide to dedicate their lives to to something like folk music, which especially, especially in Denmark, it's very much, a very, very small niche of people who really has to sacrifice a lot in terms of, economy, especially in order to live out their passion.

>> In most places in the world, very few people who value folk music and dance traditions, some European conservative religious movements feared and discouraged this music and dance the fiddle even sometimes called the devil's instrument.

>> It's definitely not the devil's instrument, but the European and United States folk music revivals beginning in the 1960s and 70s, of which Dwight was a part, grew interest, trust and participation.

That evening at Christiansborg Palace Point receives Denmark's highest cultural recognition, the national folk musician Riksspelman.

Followed by a hot night of music and dance.

>> It was easy to play with him.

He has a steady rhythm, and you can tell he's been playing for a long time.

>> Then the Folk Baltica transborder music festival.

Three concerts at three venues.

>> He's an elderly man, so he walked very fragile to the stage.

And I'm sure that many people in the audience will think what is going to happen now?

Can that man actually play music?

That old man?

Is that possible?

[fiddle folk music] [applause] >> The music is identity.

Traditional music is identity.

It's a it's a social kind of art.

And it's at the same time it's identity.

And it goes way beyond national borders or anything like that.

It's it's, you know, it's much deeper in, in, in your identity, in your personality, in your soul.

It means that we we belong to something that is bigger than ourselves.

The real deal is, developing the tradition.

The best example is the island of Fano on the West Coast, where people have been sailors and fishermen and brought in new tradition and tendencies all the time and, and merged it into to the, standing tradition all the time.

>> But the tunes could be, from Denmark, or they could be from Holland, or they could be from, Indonesia.

When, we don't know, people brought, bits and pieces home.

>> And this blend of somebody, something that is already there and something that's coming from, from outside this merge is tradition.

>> I just saw a review from our concert in Sonderborg, and the gentleman there, he wrote that you had problems walking.

But the played the ass out of the pants.

>> It was Dwight Lamb And folk music comes back to Denmark.

How authentic is the music?

>> I think it's very authentic.

It's.

It seems to me that it's been in a pocket, kept really well over in Iowa.

>> The concerts in northern Germany are poignant to its ethnic Danish minority.

>> It was a song I would cry also as a child when I heard it, and we used to sing it very loud.

My father also had this, habit to sing very loud in the living room and dance.

>> And a final concert in Copenhagen before heading back to the United States.

>> In the article, they wrote th they said that he he didn't walk that well, and he obviously doesn't, but he played his ass off.

in in Denmark.

That's just great.

>> I had Bill Peterson from South Dakota.

>> In addition to performing, managing Dwight and mentoring others, Bill promotes concerts and festivals.

He hosts a weekly concert and monthly dance at bars in canton and nearby Sioux Falls, South Dakota that include the Danish tunes and attract few participants.

>> That's part of what makes America so cool is that, when we really honor people's diverse backgrounds and really pay tribute to the different art forms and appreciate them then and where, it's way more beautiful country than when we pretend like there's just one general melting pot.

>> And next is Nate Cameron.

He's been working with me since 1996, and he's a fine fiddle player.

>>Outside of Ames, Iowa.

Nate and his wife Alice live on their community supported agriculture farm.

Nate was in college when he met Dwight and began a now 24 year musical friendship.

>> Hes been like a grandpa, and a dad and, teacher and, fellow musician to me all at once, as well as that great friend.

I love the connections you make and, the neat sharing you can have with people when you play the music.

>> Next is Amber Gaddy.

She and, David, >>Amber Gaddy and David Cavins live in Columbia, Missouri.

They were college pals with Nate, and they also introduced themselves to Dwight.

Amber and David help lead an old time jam and dance in nearby Hallsville, where they keep Dwight's Missouri Valley and Danish tunes alive for succeeding generations.

We just really enjoy the style, music and the tempo and everything and, there's a it's really good music to dance to >> It's very old fashioned.

I guess you just have to, like, be one and go out there and have fun.

>> Dwight, Bill, Nate, Amber and David shared a stage in Washington, DC.

Here, Dwight accepted the United States highest cultural honor, a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship.

And performed with other fellowship winners at an evening concert and webcast.

>> Mr.

Dwight Lamb.

>> Thank you.

>> How important.

is Danish folk music to you?

That's the music of your homeland.

But what is your homeland?

Good at that.

>> Okay.

Right.

You want to?

>> I've been lucky enough to be able to travel with him, be his travel companion, and.

And help him get around, take care of him and do what I can for him.

And, he always says, hopefully somebody some day somebody will do that for you.

So.

Yeah.

So, passing it down, you know, not only the music but just getting through life.

>> Its hard to talk about it.

>>One of my best friends I guess How do you remember?

>> I remember them by their name and the beginning notes and the keys >> Yeah.

>> I think a lot of people like this story a lot, in Denmark.

A lot of people are starting to play the tunes.

[Fiddle and Accordion Music] >> Funding for this program was provided by the American Scandinavian Foundation, the Museum of Danish America, and many individual donors.

Thank you.