For junior Georgia Halverson, nothing compares to the feeling of playing Texas-style fiddle music: her fingers flying, bow dancing, feet stomping and heart singing. She has put bow to string nearly every day for the past 13 years, competed at around 40 fiddle contests and, on June 24, placed second in the junior division of the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest in Weiser, Idaho.

“I love fiddle because of the large variety of music that I get to be a part of and the kinds of people I meet along the way,” Halverson said. 

Characterized by its spirited melodies and danceable groove, Texas-style fiddle music is always a crowd-pleaser. According to Halverson, it’s living history. While fiddlers have created their own variations, the melody to Halverson’s favorite fiddle tune “Sally Goodin’” has remained unchanged since it was first recorded in 1922. Tunes are taught by ear and passed down through generations. Fiddlers are typically accompanied by three rhythm guitar players who keep the beat and add energy.

Not much seems to have changed since the first fiddle contest in Texas was held nearly 100 years ago. In Halverson’s mind, no fiddle contest is complete without an old couple waltzing, an all-nighter jam session and at least one shouted “Aww-haw!” 

“You can tell if somebody is a good fiddle player by how the song feels, like if you want to clap along and you just enjoy listening,” Halverson said. “There are a lot of players that I see at regular contests who have dedicated their whole lives to this one style of music. And it just sounds completely perfect, like absolutely zero mess-ups. They’ve perfected this type of music and they’ve worked so hard to get where they are. It’s really inspiring to see them play.”

Halverson’s favorite thing about fiddle contests is the small but tight-knit community. The Texas Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association puts on around 25 contests each year, most taking place in small towns, and fiddlers from across the state travel to each one to see old friends, participate in jam sessions and, if they play well, take home some prize money. Halverson estimates that she has made thousands of dollars from placing at fiddle contests.

“A lot of people brush it off because they think just country people do fiddle,” Halverson said. “But from what I’ve seen, all different kinds of people, people with different views, come together to play this music. And it doesn’t matter what everyone thinks. It doesn’t matter if they all have different political views. Everyone just plays the music, and that’s the only thing that they’re focused on.”

Texas Old Time Fiddlers’ Association board member Katie Crawford, who frequently judges contests, said that becoming a top competitor requires daily practice and a deep love for the music. According to Crawford, Halverson has made a name for herself in the community despite being only 16 years old and was recently voted “Favorite Fiddler” by Texas Old Time Fiddlers’ Association.

“Georgia has the guts to put herself in a vulnerable position onstage where she will knowingly and willingly be judged and critiqued – as you have to in order to compete,” Crawford said. “She seems to take those critiques positively by practicing and improving before she performs again. It’s also clear to me that she understands her own groove and is creating her own personality in the rhythm of the style whether or not she really knows how to control that. I think she’s definitely going to become one of the big leaguers if she continues to study the genre.”

Halverson is also an accomplished classical violinist, playing in the McCallum Chamber Orchestra and a string quartet. While it can be hard to balance practicing both fiddle and classical violin, she believes that playing both styles makes her a more well-rounded musician.

“I love playing classical and fiddle because it makes me different from everybody else in both worlds,” Halverson said. “If I could just focus on one, I feel like I could progress a lot faster, but at the same time, I feel like playing both of them gives me skills in both aspects that other people don’t have.”

Junior Georgia Halverson performs at the Bowie Fiddle Contest on Oct. 1. Video courtesy of Halverson.

Senior violist Z Campbell, who plays in Halverson’s quartet and has fiddle experience, said that in addition to building skills like improvisation and playing with accompanists, fiddle can change the way classical musicians think.

“It can help you learn to have more fun in your classical music,” Campbell said. “I feel like people take it so seriously, and you feel like I’m going to go into orchestra class, I’m going to sit down, I’m going to play every note perfectly. But with fiddle, you have more room to figure things out and make things up which is super useful for classical music.”

Campbell said that Halverson’s commitment to music inspires everyone in the quartet.

“She’ll tell us stories about her fiddle competitions or what she’s doing with fiddle,” Campbell said. “It’s honestly really inspiring because it’s hard to balance a lot of musical stuff. But she’s just doing it all. It’s pretty inspiring to see that she’s doing all different types of music and making it all work.”

Halverson started dreaming of competing at the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest, the most highly respected fiddle contest there is, in middle school. This summer, Halverson and her family finally hopped on a plane to Weiser, Idaho, eager to witness the world’s best fiddlers in action. 

“There’s such a big community there, everyone literally stays in a huge campground together,” Halverson said. “Every night there’s jamming, and it’s really fun to see everyone laugh and have fun. It’s not all about the contest, like most of the people there are just there for the jamming, not for the actual contest. It’s all these people from literally all over everywhere you could think of. Everyone is just gathered for this one week a year. And I think that’s really special.”

Halverson said she practiced more in preparation for the contest than she ever had before. 

Like other contests, Weiser requires each contestant to play a hoedown, waltz and “tune of choice” in all three rounds, but they are met with the unique challenge of a four-minute time limit. According to the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest website, fiddlers must perform without sheet music and are judged on old-time fiddling style, danceability, rhythm, timing and tone quality. Halverson practiced an hour every day for months to cut down her tunes and solidify a repertoire of 25 tunes. 

And it paid off. 

“I actually felt a little bit more confident on stage than I usually do because I had prepared so much for that contest,” Halverson said. “I mean, there was a lot of stress, but everyone was just kind of hanging out in the warm-up room and talking and I was just proud that I had put in enough work to get that far.”

Halverson stepped to the microphone, smiled widely and played the tunes she knew like the back of her hand. Halverson, the champion of the 2022 Gatesville and Athens junior division contests and the third-place junior winner of the Texas State Fiddle Championship, brought home a second-place national finish.

“Since it was my first time going, I didn’t have very big expectations,” Halverson said. “I didn’t even know if I was going to make it past the first round. I guess I was mainly aiming to get a good experience for my first time there and not feel super competitive about it. Just meeting a bunch of new people and getting a sense of the environment. I was very surprised to see how far I made it because I know that it’s literally all the people from the entire United States coming to this one contest and everyone gives it their all. I was really happily surprised with the turnout.”

But the journey to get there wasn’t easy. Halverson said that above every contest she has won, overcoming stage fright is her biggest accomplishment. Reflecting on her performance in Weiser, Halverson knows she has come a long way. 

“The biggest struggle for me has been stage presence and getting over my stage fright because a lot of the time that’s what the limiting factor is for me,” Halverson said. “I can prepare all I want, but I get so nervous on stage that I’ll completely mess up. I feel like fiddle has given me a lot of confidence and social skills, just interacting with all the different people that I meet. My biggest accomplishment so far is getting over that fear.”

Halverson said her overall goal is to enjoy the contest fiddling experience. But she worries that as Texas-style fiddle music declines in popularity and fiddle contests become less frequent, the future of contest fiddling is in danger. 

“If you look back on old newspapers you’ll see that fiddle contests used to be every weekend, and people would go and earn tons of money and have fun,” Halverson said. “It was a regular thing. But now it’s every few months. I’ll go maybe five months without going to a contest. So I definitely feel like it’s way less of a thing than it was in the ’80s.”

Crawford knows that youth involvement is essential to the survival of the genre.

“Without younger people getting involved in Texas-style fiddling, the genre will die,” Crawford said. “It’s been evolving since it became its own style, but if all the old folks that carry that tradition die off without having passed it down to anyone, it will die out. As a native style of Texas, I think it should be appreciated, preserved and taught to everyone who likes it enough to try it out. It’s truly an art that takes a lifetime to master.”

Halverson hopes that by attending fiddle contests, playing for friends and introducing people to a style of music that is so often unlike anything they’ve heard before, she can keep the music she loves going strong for years to come.

“By learning it as a young person, especially since there’s a lot of older people who are in the contest community, I’m definitely preserving it,” Halverson said. “And I’ll probably pass it down to younger generations as well. It would be really cool, whenever I can, to show new people and introduce this idea to them.”

Halverson said she doesn’t know who she would be without Texas-style fiddle. 

“It’s such a strong part of my family,” Halverson said. “I definitely have an attachment to music overall. The friends that you make and the family that you build definitely stay with you. I feel like fiddle definitely makes me who I am as a person today.”

This story was originally published on The Shield Online on October 9, 2022.