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Cville Filmmaker to Profile Black Fiddlers

Eduardo Montes Bradley

A Charlottesville filmmaker is on a kind of treasure hunt this summer – tracking down Black musicians who play the violin and hoping to find historic fiddles.  By the end of the year, Eduardo Montes-Bradley hopes to finish a documentary about the importance of violins to Black history in America. 

You might think of the violin as an instrument played by people of privilege, but during decades of slavery new research suggests African-Americans mastered the fiddle, playing everything from folk tunes to complex classical compositions. 

“For a lot of black fiddlers, musicianship was a pathway to freedom," says Mary Coton Lingold, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. "You could earn money and purchase your freedom.”

And it kept hope alive during difficult times.  That’s why Charlottesville filmmaker Eduardo Montes-Bradley is working on a documentary about Black fiddlers, traveling the country in search of modern-day violinists of color and historic instruments.

“I want to find those fiddlers and those fiddle!” he proclaims, and he’s confident he will.

"If your great, great grandfather built a violin so he could entertain himself, you will keep it. I know.  I keep the harmonicas of my great, great grandfather," Montes-Bradley explains.

He hopes to complete the project in time for the Virginia Film Festival this fall.