No one knows when the violin and banjo were combined to create the colonial dance band of Virginia. The first players were black, but slave servants lived close to their owners in the "big house" Plantation tutur Philip Fithian told in his 1774 journal that his charges, the young Carter boys, Ben and Harry, were bedeviling him by joining black servants in playing the fiddle and banjo, and dancing. So it is clear these instruments were played together for a very long time before the minstrel craze of the 1840s made the combination of banjo and fiddle common.

Singing to an accompaniment by the violin is also an ancient practice, one brought to the colonies from England and Ulster. In his autobiography, founding father Benjamin Franklin told that his father, a Boston candle-maker, made an agreeable music by accompanying his psalm singing with the violin.

Among the places where America's oldest music is best kept is a tiny area of the central Blue Ridge Mountains, encompassing Grayson and Carroll c