A return from a dream to more of the same.

Action items: Focus on soul. Make art. Talk with people. Protest. Vote.

L-R Molly Tenenbaum, Meredith McIntosh, Paul Brown, Chester McMillian last month at Fiddle Tunes 2025, making music for a square dance. I keep my eyes on the dancers and the dance caller a lot. I also love dancing, and I think that helps me be a better musician for other dancers.

It’s been weeks since my last post, and it’s good to be back.

I went away, to make music and teach at Centrum’s Fiddle Tunes in Washington state. Fiddle Tunes is a wonderful annual gathering of musicians, violin enthusiasts, fans, and scholars. I first visited there in 1979, two years after its founding, and I’ve returned several times since.

Being in the intentional community at Fiddle Tunes, participating in music’s power to unite people, is for me a dreamlike, levitating experience. I’ll take that anytime in today’s world filled with division, violence, and mistrust. I hope that you have some places of refuge, recharging, and creativity in your life. Small or large, they’re especially important right now.

A fiddle is a violin. The late Alan Lomax, founding director of the American Folklife Center in Washington, DC (and a longtime presence at Fiddle Tunes) told me that the word fiddle is an old European commoners’ interpretation of the word viol, a predecessor instrument to the violin. Fiddling is often perceived today as a traditional form of violin playing, sometimes but not always practiced by people with limited exposure to formal music training.
By those definitions or understandings, I am without doubt a fiddler rather than a violinist. I scarcely read music, and I can name by letter just a few of the notes I play on the fiddle. But I do carry remnants of styles I learned from older people when I was young, and apparently that holds some value. I love the unadorned vocal qualities of a good fiddle tune. That is enough for me.
Here is a bit of the coastline at the old decommissioned Fort Flagler in Port Townsend, Washington, where the Fiddle Tunes gathering is held.

Photo by Paul Brown 2025

There’s a great feeling of togetherness through the week.

Photo by Paul Brown 2025

In the final student concert, a class surprised me by performing April Waltz — written by a personal friend of mine, Selma Kaplan. When the group announced it, I quickly got my phone video recorder going. Traditional fiddle music brings stories and friendships full circle over and over.

Video by Paul Brown, July, 2025

I’ll be writing again soon on the unbelievable onrush of news, trying to help you make some sense of where and how you can deploy your energy in service of an open society, truth, and justice.

Speaking out, holding the powerful accountable, preserving our electoral system, and voting certainly remain critical needs.