Mountain View, Arkansas, was filled with young musicians, singers and dancers from July 17 through 20 during the Old-Time and Traditional Music & Dance Camp, hosted by Branson’s Ozark Mountain Music Association in partnership with Mountain View nonprofit, Ozark Roots Music and Art.
Each day’s schedule featured individual and group lessons on guitar, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and bass, as well as vocals, square dancing, traditional dancing and old-time jig dancing, with over 75 students and 30 instructors participating. The camp also included participation in jam sessions at the host, First Baptist Church, and locations around town, with campers’ families joining regular visitors to the area to watch and listen. Several regular instructors have commented that the OMMA camps are some of their favorite events each year.
Both Ozark Mountain Music Association and Ozark Roots Music & Art are dedicated to preserving traditional Ozark skills in new generations of young people, through education and performance/participation opportunities. Ozark Mountain Music Association’s earliest camps were held in Mountain View, the vision of Robert and Karlene McGill; some of those first campers are now performers and instructors. The camps later moved to host venues in Branson, and following the McGills’ retirement, Wendy Wright capably stepped in to continue the Association and help it grow. As the camps’ popularity has grown, so has the number of home states from which students/campers travel to reunite with friends or make new ones each year. Some youth bands originally formed at camp continue to perform together, including some at the recent Youth in Bluegrass competition held in Branson.
Bluegrass Camp is now held in Branson at the Michel family’s Homestead Venue, and the Traditional/Old Time camp has returned to Mountain View for the past few years, where Ozark Roots also coordinates Mountain View Meeting Place and Club Possum performance venue for local musicians. “Possum Holler” refers to an actual Mountain View area location, and for the first several years of OMMA, the traveling performance troupe was billed as the “Possum Holler Fiddlers.”
The tradition of music on the Mountain View courthouse square dates back several decades, as locals gathered to wrap up a hard week of work by picking, fiddling, singing and dancing on Friday and Saturday nights. These evenings were often led by folk singer Jimmy Driftwood, who taught high school agriculture in nearby Timbo for many years, and inspired the town’s annual Folk Festival held each April. Many tourists visiting the nearby Ozark Folk Center state park and Blanchard Springs Caverns plan an evening on the courthouse lawn or in nearby “Pickin’ Park,” some with their own guitar or fiddle in hand. Several adults, including this writer, enjoyed watching campers play and sing while also reminiscing about regular visits to the square in their own younger years.
Follow Ozark Mountain Music Association and Ozark Roots Music and Art on Facebook to stay up to date on area events and performances, or to share next year’s camp info with a young person in your life. Also, if you would like to brush up on your traditional skills or just watch some good old-fashioned fun in Branson, mark your calendar for September 14, when the Homestead will host an Ozark Mountain Music Association Day of music and square dancing; watch for details coming soon.
Comments