Long ago, dulcimers enchanted Persian royalty, Tibetan monks and Hungarian gypsies with their haunting harp-like sounds. Today, they’re mesmerizing crowds once again at area folk festivals, county fairs and town festivals.
Bill Robinson of St. Charles isn’t surprised by this dulcimer renaissance. In fact, locally, he is largely responsible for it.
In the basement of his tidy ranch house, Robinson plays, teaches and makes hammered dulcimers. There he also houses his private collection of roughly a dozen dulcimers. Most stand, like sentries, upon individual wooden supports near Robinson’s pool table. And though the trapezoid-shaped instruments seem rigid and awkward, Robinson has the power to bring them to life.
Walking to a favorite, Robinson picks up a pair of flexible dulcimer hammers. As soon as they make contact with the dulcimer’s wire-laced soundboard, an infectious bluegrass melody echoes throughout the small room.
As he plays, Robinson, 50, goes through a subtle metamorphosis. His warm brown eyes begin to twinkle, a broad smile crosses his face, while one foot taps the carpeted floor. Rhythmically, his hands sail across the instrument.
“Sometimes people ask me how I get so many notes into a song,” said Robinson. “I tell them my hands are in and out so quickly, I don’t even know what they did.”
By day, Robinson manages a machine shop at Daco Inc. in North Aurora. During his free hours, he lights up folk festivals, concert halls, conventions, weddings and nursing homes with his lilting dulcimer music.
The majority of his repertoire does not contain the Celtic and English melodies many people associate with dulcimer music. Robinson’s music, instead, is a unique mix of traditional folk and bluegrass melodies.
His bluegrass band, Bill Robinson and Friends, has performed at Fermilab, Geneva’s Fox Valley Folk Festival, the Gebhard Woods Dulcimer Festival in Morris and at St. Charles’ Day in the Country festival.
In 1993 and 1994, the band was voted No. 1 bluegrass band in Illinois by the Illinois Country Music Association, based in Delavan (near Peoria). It’s an accomplishment that excites Robinson and his fans, such as Donna Tufano of Elmwood Park.
“Bill has quite a following. He’s the most requested performer at the Gebhard Woods Dulcimer Festival,” said Tufano.
Tufano, festival coordinator, says the two-day festival is mecca to Illinois dulcimer enthusiasts. Each July, nearly 5,000 dulcimer devotees descend upon Morris. According to Tufano, who also owns one of Robinson’s handmade instruments, it’s a testament to the increased interest in dulcimer music.
“Ten years ago, a lot of people didn’t know what a dulcimer was,” said Tufano, “Now most people do. At any antique show or county fair, there’s usually a dulcimer player … surrounded by a large crowd.”
Robinson is often that dulcimer player. His energetic stage presence and happy, upbeat music attract instant fans, especially at the Gebhard Woods Festival.
“There’s too much sadness in the world,” Robinson said. “That’s why I like to play happy music, music that gets toes tappin’.”
Robinson’s wife, Ann, usually accompanies him on those toe-tappin’ adventures. Occasionally the couple’s grown children, Martin Robinson and Monica Heisey, will drive in from out of state. Possibly, they’ll see more of Robinson when he performs than when he’s at home in his underground dulcimer domain.
“That’s where he is most of the time,” said Ann Robinson. “He’s really in his own world down there.”
When Robinson surfaces, it is often to attend a dulcimer festival, such as the Gebhard Woods Festival. In seven years, he hasn’t missed one. And each year he brings a gift.
“Bill always donates one of his beautiful handmade dulcimers to our raffle,” said Tufano. “This year, the raffle (of his dulcimer) brought in $1,000, which helped pay performers and support personnel.”
The festival is sponsored by HANDS (Hammered and Noted Dulcimer Society) of Illinois, a 12-year-old, not-for-profit organization whose nearly 100 members are dedicated to the preservation and promotion of dulcimer music. Tufano is the group’s treasurer and one of its four founding members. She is also one of Robinson’s dulcimer students, like Sherry Farley of Sandwich.
Farley’s interest in dulcimers began three years ago when she bought a dulcimer Christmas tape. She loved the instrument’s sound so much that she bought a dulcimer. But when she met Robinson at her first Gebhard Woods Festival, she realized she had erred.
“Near the entrance, under a shade tree, someone was playing this beautiful music,” recalled Farley. “That someone was, of course, Bill.”
Within moments Farley realized Robinson’s hammered dulcimer, not her mountain dulcimer, was the instrument on her Christmas tape.
“At the festival, I took Bill’s workshop,” Farley added. “Then, when I got home, I ran out and bought a hammered dulcimer.”
She also purchased one of Robinson’s dulcimers, and, when she learned he gave lessons in nearby St. Charles, she immediately enrolled.
For dulcimer student Diane Tate of Wilmette, the attraction is Robinson’s giving nature and vast experience.
“Bill is so incredibly generous with his time and knowledge,” said Tate. “He has this great reservoir of music in his head, which he freely shares. By doing so, he helps preserve it.”
Robinson plays and teaches in the aural tradition: by ear. He does not read music. Little written dulcimer music actually exists because, when written out, hammering patterns and embellishments are often lost. That is why, traditionally, dulcimer music has been taught from person to person.
“Some of the songs Bill’s father taught him, no one else has ever heard before,” explained Tufano.
Originally, Robinson’s paternal grandmother taught the songs to Robinson’s father, the late Ross Robinson. He, in turn, taught them to Bill. In that tradition, Bill has now passed some tunes down to the only other dulcimer player in the family, his daughter.
“Monica’s pretty busy raising a family in Michigan now,” Robinson said, “but she picks up things real fast. I only have to show her how to play things once.”
Robinson was 17 when his father began teaching him the dulcimer. Sadly, about that time, his father suffered a stroke. “The stroke affected his left side,” Robinson said. “So Dad just taught me to play melody with my right hand, instead of my left, like other people.”
And that’s just fine, because, when it comes to playing the dulcimer, there really aren’t any rules. That’s what makes it interesting, says Robinson.
“One of the guys I teach is left-handed, which was a bit challenging for me. However, now I’m a better player because I’ve learned to play melody with my left hand as well as my right,” Robinson said.
Fellow dulcimer performer Paul Van Arsdale of Tonawanda, N.Y., is also a traditional dulcimer player. In American dulcimer circles Van Arsdale is considered the best traditional hammered dulcimer player in the country today.
“We call him the grandfather of dulcimer music,” Robinson said. “In my book, he’s it!”
Van Arsdale, whose grandfather once played dulcimer for Henry Ford in his Dearborn, Mich., home, started playing when he was 10 years old. In 1977 and 1981, he performed at the Smithsonian Institution’s Festival of American Folklife. He has also performed outside Washington, D.C., at the National Folk Festival at Wolf Trap Farm and Park. This year, he recorded a collection of favorite tunes with Robinson.
“Bill is unique,” said Van Arsdale, 74. “He’s one of the few traditional dulcimer performers playing bluegrass. And he’s a lot of fun. When he gets going, I think Bill could go on forever.”
The modern-day, trapezoid-shaped, hammered dulcimer Van Arsdale and Robinson play is a distant relative of the ancient Persian santur, the Hungarian cimbalon and the Chinese yangchyn, percussion instruments played with small hammers. Other dulcimers, like the zither and mountain dulcimer, are either plucked or strummed.
Dulcimers are hollow-bodied instruments, believed to be the forerunners of the piano. Today, they are made with choice hardwoods and strung with bronze, brass or steel wires. Early American versions were crude.
Discarded door panels and packing crates were often used to make those first American dulcimers. Farm fencing wire became dulcimer strings. Tuning screws were just that, simple wood screws. Playing hammers were fashioned out of corset stays and dull hacksaw blades.
Dulcimers came to America with the first European immigrants. Their popularity with the American pioneers, however, was mainly a question of transportation. They were easier to move in covered wagons than pianos.
When piano transportation became feasible, interest in dulcimers declined. Twenty years ago, interest rose again when dulcimers became accepted as important components of American folk culture. Luckily, a handful of people had been preserving their music and heritage
Basic dulcimers have four melody strings and between 20 and 30 accompaniment strings, strung horizontally across the instrument. Hammered dulcimers, on average, have 83 strings. The larger an instrument is, the more musical possibilities there are.
“Basically, a simple melodic line is played with your right hand, harmonizing notes with your left,” Robinson said. “When you get better, the right hand is automatic and you can expand harmony more with your left hand.”
Teaching and playing dulcimers, however, isn’t the only way Robinson helps preserve the dulcimer’s rich heritage.
“Bill is truly a renaissance man,” said fellow dulcimer musician Richard Waterbury of Wheaton. “Not only does he play and teach dulcimer, he also repairs and makes them. Bill’s dulcimers are really beautiful.”
When winter winds blow, Robinson retreats to his subterranean world. There, behind a set of louvered doors, he creates his masterpieces. In the past 20 years, he has made roughly 60 dulcimers.
“I do it on an order basis, working three or four hours at a time, in the evening and on weekends. At that pace, it takes me about three months to complete an instrument,” Robinson said.
Robinson crafts his dulcimers without patterns or set measurements. Instead, he relies on sight and sound. And that sound must be tailored to fit the player.
“Some people like a sweet, mellow sound. Others want an instrument that will project,” Robinson said. “When I’m playing in my band, I compete with a five-string banjo. That’s why I play a dulcimer that really booms out.”
Robinson makes sound adjustments by altering the size of the sound chamber opening and by using different types of wire and wood. Rosewood, for example, creates a sharply pitched sound. Spruce creates more volume.
“You can work with any instrument to find its potential,” explained Robinson. “Sometimes, I’ll shave a little wood off the soundboard or put the supports in a different location.”
Still, some dulcimers take on a sound all their own. To prove that point, Robinson conducted an experiment. He built three dulcimers exactly the same, down to the last detail. The result?
“Each one sounded different,” Robinson said.
But Robinson, who is a perfectionist, doesn’t always yield to the whims of a stubborn instrument.
“If Bill doesn’t like an instrument when it’s completed, he’ll tear it all apart,” said Waterbury, who occasionally helps Robinson work on a dulcimer.
Robinson’s dulcimers begin at $500, depending on size and cost of materials. His time is not figured into the equation.
“I spend a lot of hours on an instrument. I kind of feel like they’re my babies,” Robinson said. “I can’t charge by the hour. If I did, no one could afford my instruments.”
Robinson also loves to experiment. To date he has built several oversized dulcimers, a miniature one for his daughter’s small children and a special leather strap that allows him to wear the dulcimer around his waist instead of resting it on a tilted stand.
The strap allows Robinson to move about freely on stage.
Whether through teaching, playing or creating them, Robinson’s main goal has always been as simple as that: giving the world a better view of the dulcimer. And that is, perhaps, his greatest contribution to the dulcimer renaissance.
