Old-time music is in Elkins Park resident's blood

Rafe Stefanini feels awkward at parties unless he has a musical instrument in his hand - specifically, a fiddle, banjo, or guitar. The fiddle is his favorite, and with it he plays old-time music surpassingly well. "A national treasure" is how the late folk musician Mike Seeger, half-brother of Pete, once described him.

Old-time music is traditional American music or hillbilly music. It's the music of the Appalachian Mountains and the red-clay hills of the South and the backwoods hollers of West Virginia and Kentucky.

Stefanini, 55, does not come from those parts. His full first name is Raffaello. Although he lives in Elkins Park, he is an Italian citizen who grew up in a mountain village near Bologna.

Nevertheless, American old-time music is in his blood. Of the 15,000 songs on his iPod, 80 percent are old-time, he estimates. In the late '70s, when he was in his mid-20s, he formed a band in Italy with his brothers Bruno and Gianni. Its name: the Moonshine Brothers.

"I didn't know much about the music then, but I knew what moonshine was," Stefanini says.

Over the years, he has played in several bands and trios, with partners from disparate parts of the United States. Today, he is making music again with kin, one who is very near and dear: his daughter, Clelia.

The two have just released a CD of fiddle, banjo, and guitar music, Never Seen the Like . . . .

"I bred my own musical partner," Stefanini says proudly.

"The music is simple technically, but it has depth," Clelia says. "It's straightforward, but a lot of people can't play it."

The CD is available at the Whole Foods Market in Jenkintown, where Clelia, 19, is a cashier. Her part-time schedule permits her to practice with her father and join him for appearances. They perform about twice a month, usually at dances and house concerts.

"I try to play every day, to practice or learn something new," Stefanini says. "This is totally homemade music, as it was played originally and traditionally."

"He is true to source," Clelia says, paying her father the ultimate compliment.

Alice Gerrard, founder and former editor of the Old-Time Herald, a bimonthly dedicated to old-time music, says Stefanini "feels very strongly about the music and has definite ideas about how it should sound. He tends to like the more classic sounds of traditional music, as opposed to people who are stretching the boundaries a bit."

Old-time music is about storytelling, and the songs usually celebrate the ordinary and quotidian. "They are songs sung on the back porch," Stefanini says. Some typical titles convey the flavor: "Drunken Hiccups," "The Sales Tax Toddle," "Possum Up a Gum Stump," "Jenny Run Away in the Mud in the Night."

Old-time music was rarely written down, and though much of it has been recorded, it is primarily transmitted orally and aurally, played and listened to at concerts and festivals. Neither Rafe nor Clelia can read music; they play by ear.

On a wintry afternoon, the two are at home, sitting by the fire in the living room, which is occupied by a dozen acoustic guitars and vintage banjos. A doorway next to the fireplace leads to Stefanini's workshop, where he repairs violins, his livelihood. In Italy, he went to violin-making school for three years. The fiddle is a violin without pretensions, a violin that drives a pickup. Stefanini's fiddle was made by his brother Bruno.

Stefanini became interested in the acoustic guitar when he was 13. His Uncle Vincenzo, who didn't play, taught him chords and made him practice. Stefanini was captivated by the TV show Bonanza - "my true picture of the West and America," he says with a chuckle. When his father purchased an album of themes from the show, featuring fiddle, banjo, guitar, and square-dance music, Stefanini was smitten.

His belongings in a backpack, he first visited the United States in 1975, when he was 21. He returned several times, usually in the summer, so he could attend folk festivals, especially the Old Fiddlers' Convention in Galax, Va. There, he met a clogger named Nikki Lee, who became his wife in 1985.

By then, Stefanini had embraced the fiddle and banjo. Through the '80s and '90s, he played in bands with names such as the Wildcats, the L7s, and Big Hoedown. In 1989, the U.S. Information Agency selected the Wildcats for a tour of Southeast Asia. In 1998, Big Hoedown appeared on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion. Summers, Stefanini taught at camps oriented to old-time music in New York, West Virginia, and North Carolina.

It was at a camp in Mount Airy, N.C., about six years ago that Clelia experienced an epiphany. Though she had grown up with old-time music ("I tried to facilitate an interest without pushing her," Stefanini says), her taste tended more to Jay-Z. Then, one evening, at a rollicking session of old-time music, Clelia couldn't resist listening. The rendition of "Old-time Train 45" was "throbbing."

"It grabbed a part of me," Clelia recalls. "There was so much feeling."

In old-time music, the fiddle and banjo carry the tune, and the guitar supplies backup, Stefanini says. "The structure is rigid. You don't improvise as wildly and freely as in jazz, but you can still give the music your own style, your own signature. Unlike classical music, it's liberal and imperfect."

"It's not about being perfect," Clelia interjects. "It's about being with people and cocreating."

They grab their fiddles to make the point. Facing each other on a couch, they treat an audience of one to "Shove That Pig's Foot a Little Further Into the Fire," a late-19th-century tune.

The music evokes America in all its variety. There are traces of the songs of Irish, Scottish, and German immigrants; Negro spirituals; and primitive Baptist hymns. It is at once lively and poignant, and the fiddles convey both.

Rafe and Clelia manage the trick of tending intently to the sound of their own instruments while simultaneously engaging in a seamless dance of interweaving melodies. They are playing for and to each other, and the sweet bond of communication between father and daughter is marvelous to behold.

"I always longed for the past, a simpler life," Stefanini muses afterward. "Maybe that's why this music appeals to me. The goal is to achieve a certain sound that sounds old, that sounds right."