Been doing some thinking about the U.S. ...
I read Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" series as a child and am reading it to my daughter currently. As homesteaders in the 1800's, Pa plays his fiddle frequently in the series, but they seem to rarely encounter anyone else who owns an instrument.
I also recently read Orson Scott Card's "Saints", a fictional account of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young as they settle in Nauvoo, Illinois. During celebrations, such as a marriage, no one had any instruments as they were a poor community, and they danced to hand-clapping.
Lastly, I'm a fan of Apollo's Fire, an offshoot of the Cleveland Orchestra, who are known for performing "early music" on period instruments. And they definitely have instruments - flutes, dulcimers, harps, violins, cellos, a harpsichord, etc. They play music from many many time periods. But when they perform the music of, say, immigrants who have settled in Appalachia in the 1700's, they still use a large ensemble.
I just find it hard to believe that the average settler would have even one of these instruments in his/her home, much less the means to gather or be a spectator to a large group with such instruments.
So, who's right? Laura and Orson, showing that musical instruments were rare when people were settling, moving away from tightly-knit communities ... or Apollo's Fire with their complex groups?
Right!
So I am going to answer this from my area of expertise, which is the American South. I cannot speak to Mormon music or the prevalence of instruments among settlers pushing out west, though I imagine there are similarities.
So, the rural South in the 18th and 19th century. This is a time and place where one is largely obligated to provide one's own entertainment. There are no TVs, very few books, traveling shows are only an occasional thing. Taverns exist mostly in towns. Music was an important component of life. Immigrants brought their instruments with them, and what they didn’t have, they made.
You can scarcely find a traveler’s account from this period that doesn’t mention music. Folks play and sing (“jam”) in the evenings to unwind before bed, play and sing in church, and on weekends there are dances or “frolics.” Occasionally a traveling band would play the dance, but most of the time the music would be provided by members of the community. Music was a central part of social life, and a cultural lifeline that immigrants in a foreign land could cling to. It would be extremely unlikely for a person not to know anyone that played.
Fiddles and banjos (the ethnic instruments of the Scotch-Irish and African slaves respectively, the marriage of which gave birth to a majority of American music, by the way) are the most common instruments, but absent music stores, folks played what they could get. This led to a CRAZY variety of instruments. In addition to the fiddle/banjo duo, you’d often find bones, hand-drums, boxes or other percussion instruments, accordions, guitars, cellos, string basses, and dulcimers. We have mentions of jaw-harps, actual harps, pipes, triangles, bizarre three-stringed gut-fretted enlarged-cello sized things called “church basses,” washtub basses, saws, jugs, washboards and clarinets. You wouldn’t find all of those in an ensemble, though. Dance bands were usually duos or trios, and larger jams commonly featured multiples of the same instrument.
If you needed an instrument, and didn’t inherit one from a family member, there would usually be an instrument maker within reasonable traveling distance. Though a high-end violin might be a work of art, a “gudnuff” fiddle is not hard to make for a skilled woodworker, and a banjo is very easy. There were also a plethora of instruments of the homemade variety (cigar-box guitars being the most famous). In the latter part of the 19th century, instruments were cheaply available through mail-order catalogs like Sears Roebuck.
That all being said, I took a look at Apollo’s Fire on YouTube, and I’d hate to label anything they do as “right.” They’re playing sanitized old-timey melodies, yes, but nothing else about their performance remotely resembles “early music.” In fact, if they took that act on the road down here to Madison County, NC, where people still play hillbilly music, I’d bet dollars to donuts there’d be trouble. If you want a good contemporary representation of that sort of thing, I’d recommend checking out the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
Lemme know if I can clarify anything!