Listening for Musical Tonewood in the Appalachian and Carpathian Mountains

Abstract

This paper introduces the trade and practice of cutting tonewood, wood used in the production of musical instruments, in both the Appalachian Mountains of the United States and the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. As a work of collaborative ethnography, this work combines the first-person narrative of John Preston, a tonewood cutter in West Virginia and Transylvania, and contextual framing and analysis by Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth. Through the text we explore how the production of tonewood creates global, affective connections between mountain regions and reveals unique challenges to the global forests of the Appalachian and Carpathian Mountains.