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An enthusiastic crowd erupts in applause as
Marvin Jaramillo blows the closing notes of “The Star-Spangled Banner”
on a small pocket harp in Yellow Pine, Idaho (pop. 35). Jaramillo’s soulful
rendition of the national anthem was an obvious crowd-pleaser during the
town’s annual harmonica contest last August. The event drew 4,000 specta
tors and contestants who traveled 25 miles of dusty, backcountry road to
celebrate an instrument that has been played—and enjoyed—for more
than a century in remote mining towns like Yellow Pine.
“Whether you’re good or not, they go wild,” says Jaramillo, 50, after
walking off the Main Street stage in Yellow Pine.
Jaramillo is good. He can bend harmonica notes into gospel,
jazz, blues or music from his ancestral Spain, and he won first
place in the Yellow Pine Harmonica Contest's diatonic division
the last two years. Jaramillo points to a 100-foot pondemsa
;sS (s' K pine as the other obvious reason for making die 19-hour
drive from Albuquerque, N.M. Thousands more
v. \ conifer trees blanket the steep mountains sur
rounding Yellow Pine, a former mining town
fc bordering the 2-million-acre Frank Church
River of No Return Wilderness.
Gold prospectors first homesteaded the
region in the early 1900 s, but Yellow Pine's
lieyday came in rlie 194<)s wlien nearly SO |iercent
i of the nation's tungsten (an alloy of steel) was
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extracted from the nearby Stibnire mine to produce World War II armaments. In
the years since, die mine, which also produced gold, reopened only briefly when the
precious metal’s price spiked in the early 1980 s. Now, Yellow Pine's economy relies
on hunting, fishing and harmonica music.
"You have to love living here for reasons other than business,” says
Darlene Rosenbaum, who with her husband, Robert, owns and operates
Yellow Pine Lodge. "We moved here over 20 years ago intending to fix and
sell the place the next year, but we never got around to leaving." Harmonica
fans line up all weekend for a taste of Darlene’s sweet apricot cobbler and pie
made from huckleberries she gathered from the mountainside.
Yellow Pine residents embraced the harmonica in 1990 as a way to
celebrate a century of Idaho statehood. “(Former) Governor (Cecil) Andrus
wanted every community to do something to celebrate the centennial,”
recalls Lynn Imel, 65, who moved to Yellow Pine in 1968 with her husband,
Dave. “Someone mentioned that the early prospectors came to Idaho with
either their fiddles or pocket harps. Weiser, Idaho, already had a fiddle fes
tival, so we decided on the harmonica.”
Townspeople worked together to launch the contest, which drew 300
people the first year and since has grown into the second largest harmonica
contest in the nation.
“We try to find musicians from out of state a place to stay,” says Imel, a
member of the Yellow Pine Enhancement Society, which hosts the annual
contest. “This year we took the books out of the library so the Monroe Broth
ers from Ohio could sleep there.” Most attendees stay in campgrounds in the
nearby Boise National Forest or camp at the entrance to town where the music
of harmonicas, fiddles and guitars filters nightly through the pines.
“People have a perception of harmonica as a lowly instrument, a toy even. And it
is," says Bud Boblink, of Schererville, Ind., a festival judge since 1996. “But when they
hear the music you can make with it, there is this astonishment.”
Thar sense of “Wow!” parallels what visitors experience when they drive to the
rnmsmmms
The annual harmonica contest welcomes all musical styles.
remote town of Yellow
Pine and are surrounded
by the natural grandeur.
Dave Imel first
encountered the town’s
magnificent setting
while elk hunting in
1962. “I looked down
on the town from that
mountain over there
and said, 'That's the place
Page 10
American Profile