Grand
Traditionalists- Jay Unger and Molly Mason
by
Peter Aaronby
Peter Aaron
...
The programs feature classes, jam sessions, guest performers, dances,
workshops, song swaps,band clinics, indigenous food, outdoor recreation,
and more, and are offered via four thematically oriented sessions:
New Year’s at Ashokan (December 29-January 1); Western and
Swing Week (June 29-July 5); Northern Week (July 20-26); and Southern
Week (August 10-16). “The Ashokan campus just really makes
it easy to do the camps,” Ungar says. “The way the buildings
are set up, the grounds, it just makes for a great community feeling.
The place just has this special energy.”
One
longtime recipient of that energy is Mammals fiddler Ruth Ungar
Merenda, the daughter of Jay and his first wife, folksinger Lyn
Hardy. “Growing up, to me music was just the family business,”
says Ruth. “Other families ran car dealerships or whatever,
and I just figured that music and the camps were what mine did—it
didn’t hit me until later on, how special it all is. But I
really absorbed so much amazing music, different traditional styles.
And I got to see people like (Cajun fiddle legend) Dewey Balfa play
when I was just a kid.”
“There’s
an upside and a downside to the Internet age we live in,”
says Mason, who had to relearn the guitar after undergoing brain
surgery in 2003 and 2004 to have a benign tumor removed. “It
makes it so much easier to find out about different music and other
things, and to communicate with other people, but it can also keep
people (physically) isolated from each other. It feels so good to
bring people together at the concerts and dances we play, to get
everyone dancing or singing along or sometimes even playing along.
By the end of the show, it always feels like it’s one big
community.”
CONTINUE...
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