UALR Donaghey Scholar Emily Phillips won the J. Mulkey Kent award and first place in the open division in the Arkansas State Old Time Fiddle Championship Sept. 19-20 at Ozark Folk Center State Park in Mountain View.

Phillip’s love of old-time folk music comes naturally. She’s a native of Mountain View, Ark., the self-proclaimed “Folk Music Capital of the World.”

“You can go to courthouse square any night of the week, and there are musicians everywhere playing folk music,” she said.

Phillips, a freshman at UALR, began playing the fiddle in the fourth grade through a school program called Music Roots. The program offers free lessons on instruments in traditional folk music.

She said she has been playing fiddle for nine years and loves to perform and compete, but it took three years to overcome stage fright.

“I passed out the first time I performed,” she said. “It took a lot of practice, but now I love it. I never wanted to quit.”

She has recorded a solo CD entitled “Old Time Fiddlin” and three CDs with other artists. On one CD she recorded with a local band, she plays the banjo, which she picked up in middle school through the Music Roots program.

“In old time music, I love the way the claw-hammer banjo sounds. Until recently, there weren’t many claw-hammer banjo players in Mountain View,” she said.

Phillips performs regularly in night shows at the Ozark Folk Center and volunteers in shows at the courthouse square. She plans to enter her first banjo competition next year.

Phillips is an anthropology major and a member of the Historical Society of Mountain View and is “just generally interested in people and culture.”

She recently returned from a trip to Scotland where she attended a fiddle workshop with a friend who is an instructor in Music Roots.

“It was absolutely amazing,” she said. “The entire culture and music tradition is phenomenal. Most of the music heritage in the Ozarks came from Scotland and Ireland.”

According to Phillips, the trip was community funded through donations, and they are giving back to the community by sharing what they learned in Scotland with the children in the program. Listen to Phillips play at this link.

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