Idaho’s musical past will come to life Friday evening as musician and historian Gary Eller takes the stage at Civitan Park.
Eller plans to share songs and stories dating back to 1811, when the Astoria expedition, the first white party to cross southern Idaho, traveled through the region with a Native American woman now known as Marie Dorion. He’ll tell stories like hers through music spanning from that time to the 1930s.
“What you find when you kind of study story songs is that, you know, people are basically the same as they were 4,000 years ago,” Eller said. “You can find some of the same threads running through stories in the Bible as you do today, including complaints about politicians. Idaho is not an exception to that.”
Originally from West Virginia, Eller said he discovered that both Idaho and his home state share common traits.
“Both are mountainous, rugged, filled with individualist people, end of the roaders, people that want to be left alone. And both states were based on extractive industries,” he said.
Eller also noticed that much of Idaho’s musical history had not been preserved.
As the founder of the Idaho Songs Project, Eller and a group of musicologists have scoured archives, museums and collections across the state to uncover lost songs that once told Idaho’s story.
“Our mission is to find, document, interpret and preserve pre-radio era story songs of early Idaho,” Eller said.
He invites anyone attending the performance to be ready to share a song or story of Idaho.
“Bring your voice. If you don't want to sing the song, you can just tell me about it and we'll go from there,” Eller said.
The performance is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Friday at Civitan Park in Idaho Falls.
To learn more about Eller and his work preserving Idaho’s music, listen to the full interview on BYU-Idaho Radio’s podcast on Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.