The Dulcitones

     The Dulcitones, an instrumental and vocal quartet based in Carter County, Missouri, will perform on the main stage of the 2009 Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival on Saturday, June 20, at 11 AM.

     As its name suggests, the group spotlights the dulcimer, specifically the version of the instrument known as the lap dulcimer or mountain dulcimer.  Although it evidently evolved from various European stringed instruments, the lap dulcimer developed here in the United States.

     Though found throughout the Upland South, the dulcimer seems not to have been as prominent within the region’s string music traditions as some other instruments (such as the fiddle and the banjo) prior to the folk revivals of the early and mid-20th century, when scholars and musicians gave it broader public recognition. 

     The Dulcitones consist of lap dulcimer players Virgie Alcorn Evans, Dana Feller, and Sylvia Richmond, and keyboardist Alta Richmond.  Evans is from Ellsinore; the other musicians are from Grandin.  The quartet performs a variety of American traditional music.

     Evans and Sylvia Richmond began playing together informally in 2004, and Feller and former member Joan Ballard soon joined them; Alta Richmond became a member of the group later.  The success of their first public performance during the dedication of a reconstructed log cabin on the courthouse grounds in Van Buren led them to consider performing regularly, and they began doing so with guidance from professional musician Susie Solomon of Ripley County.

     The Dulcitones have performed at cultural events throughout the region, including Civil War Days in Doniphan and Old Greenville Days in Greenville, and they appear often at the Bill Emerson Memorial Visitor Center at Wappapello Lake.  They also perform frequently at nursing homes in the Poplar Bluff area.

     This will be the Dulcitones’ first appearance at the Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival.  Prior to the performance itself, Sylvia Richmond will offer a brief, informal discussion of the dulcimer and dulcimer playing on the brush arbor stage at 10 AM.

     Sylvia Richmond explained that she took up the dulcimer at age 70.  She owned a dulcimer that had belonged to her late son but had little interest in music after the passing of both her son and her mother, who was also a musician and who had often played with her son. 

     However, Richmond’s niece encouraged her to take up the instrument, and both she and her niece began taking lessons at Foxfire Music in Fairdealing. 

     Her initial efforts with the instrument involved methodical instruction and reading music, but after the music store closed and her lessons came to an end, she continued learning by ear and experimentation, relying on the aural skills that she developed through playing the piano informally for many years.

     Anyone who is interested in learning more about the history of the instrument or would like to trade tunes or techniques is encouraged to participate in Richmond’s informal workshop.