Porch Music and Flatfoot Dancing An Appalachian Family playing folk music on the front porch and flatfoot dancing. Granny is shelling beans and watching. Farm, crops, corn shocks and barn in the background. Appalachian music is the traditional music of Appalachia.and developed over centuries of immigration and settlement. The earliest settlers in the Appalachian region were English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh. The fiddle, which the settlers had brought with them, became the lead instrument in mountain dance music. The dulcimer also came westward with the settlers. The banjo and the guitar eventually became essential parts of Appalachian music as well. Flatfoot dancing is an Appalachian tradition and a combination of several different kinds of dancing. There is a little of the Irish stepdance in it, sometimes a little polka shuffle, and perhaps a step or borrowed from what Southern blacks called tap dancing and other steps. There is no standard steps so every dancer tends to do it alittle differently.
