I’ve been saying it’s dance music for fiddle, listening music for violin. Now, I’m seeing that there is more to it then that.

Here are two cases in point. First is the Sweet Child O Mine Rockin Fiddle Challenge. I’ve written about that.

Based on what I hear, I hesitate to call it fiddling. The players in The Dueling Fiddlers are virtuoso violinists.

Evidence is on Adam’s teaching video. To exemplify a point he rips the first few bars of the Brahms Violin Concerto. Fiddlers cannot do that. Only a few violinists can do that. And he refers to his partner in The Dueling Fiddlers as a virtuoso violinist. Well, he should know!

Second case is from a YouTube video two student players made. A violinist and a cellist put together a composition of Super Mario themes.

It’s very well done and highly entertaining, if you have any acquaintance with the Super Mario game.

The ability they have to do this comes from classical music training, or serious music as the practitioners call it. But, the spirit is different, just like the spirit of The Dueling Fiddlers and Sweet Child O Mine is different.

The explanation seems to me that there are three broad categories of music in Western culture: folk music, serious music, and pop music.

Pop music can and does borrow terms from either tradition. It has no long tradition of its own. It is a product of the rise of the middle class and the industrial revolution.

The first great pop musician in our country was Stephen Foster. I don’t know if pop music history goes back before that. Instead of pop, you would have folk.

So the question now is, how does pop music use the term fiddle?

The video is just below. I would be ready to say there is a fiddling spirit in the music. See what you think.