Rackensackers' 45th a time for celebration, concerts

LITTLE ROCK — In celebration of the Rackensack Folklore Society's 45th anniversary, Arkansas musicians are coordinating performances of old-time mountain acoustic music today and Saturday.

There will be events sponsored by the Rackensackers and the Arkansas Dulcimer Society.

The annual Rackensack concert will be at 7 p.m. Saturday in the auditorium of the Arkansas Arts Center, East Ninth and Commerce streets, Little Rock. Seating is general admission and tickets are $10 per person or $25 for a family. Call (501) 680-1700.

Members of the society play old-time traditional music of the Ozarks on fiddles, guitars, banjos, dulcimers, harmonicas, bass tubs and other instruments. The performance also includes dancing dolls and comedy. Dennis Coop, a banjo and guitar player, is producing the concert.

The Pulaski County chapter of the society was formed in 1963 as a sister society to the original chapter, which wasformed a couple of years earlier in Mountain View by the late Jimmy Driftwood of Timbo, the late George Fisher of Little Rock and several others. Thecentral Arkansas Rackensackers meet the first Monday night of the month at the Arts Center and have an annual weekend concert each August.

The society is celebrating its anniversary by releasing its first music collection, a CD, Down in the Arkansas: Melody and Song in the Arkansas Tradition, a collection of hoedowns, songs and tales. The Arkansas Country Dance Society will also be featured.

There will be a special tribute to Fisher, an artist and political cartoonist for the Arkansas Gazette before it closed in 1991. Organizers say they hope to perform Fisher's signature song, "Turnip Greens."

Also in Little Rock, the Dulcimer Society will have a concert tonight at Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, 2200 Kavanaugh Blvd. Cost of admission is $10, or $25 for a family. There will also be two days of workshops today and Saturday. CallJim Munns at (501) 661-1129.

The dulcimer group is sponsoring the fifth annual Little Rock Dulcimer Getaway today and Saturday.

It will include two days of workshops in mountain dulcimer, hammered dulcimer and autoharp, with classes rangingfrom beginner to advanced, to be held at Pulaski Heights Baptist Church. Registration is at 8:15 a.m. each day, with classes ending at 4 p.m. Cost is $40 for one day or $70 for two days, with the concert included with each price.

Instructors for the mountain dulcimer are Scott Odena, Linda Brockinton and Joe Collins, all former national champions on the instrument. Odena and Brockinton live in central Arkansas and Collins is from Shelby, N.C. Instructors for the hammered dulcimer are Weesa Boyd, David Peterson and Linda Thomas.

Boyd is a member of Sligo, a Celtic group, and Peterson is a member of Peterson's Original Ragtime Band and the Arkansas Country Dance Society. Thomas won the 2001 Scottish Highland Games Hammered Dulcimer competition in Denver.

Instructor for the autoharp workshop is Charles Whitmer of Houston, who for 12 years taught autoharp at Augusta Heritage Workshops in West Virginia.

Weekend, Pages 101 on 08/15/2008