For the first time this weekend, Reston will host the Bones Fest, an annual celebration of what is one of the world's oldest musical instrument.
"You're going to see bones players from across America and across the Atlantic," said Sally Carroll, a Reston resident and bones enthusiast who is hosting this weekend's festival.
Bones, or rhythm bones, are essentially pieces of animal bone, wood or plastic that are clicked together rhythmically, producing a sound like castanets. Bones can be played without accompaniment, or can clack along with old-time music, bluegrass, Irish tunes and more, Carroll said.
Each year since 1996, the Rhythm Bones Society — a national organization for bones players — has met in different states for Bones Fest, where performers can show off their latest rhythms and play with their fellow musicians.
The theme for this year's bones fest is "Dancing with Your Hands." The festivities will begin Friday night at Lake Anne Plaza, where bones players will practice in workshops and jam with various musicians throughout the plaza.
The workshops and jam sessions will continue through the weekend, culminating in a full rhythm bones performance Sunday, at 1 p.m., at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Herndon.
"Anything that you love, you want to share it with people," Carroll said. "I'm excited."
RHYTHM BONES have been found in most ancient cultures, Carroll said, with evidence suggesting people played some form of the instrument in Mesopotamia, ancient China and elsewhere.
In the United States, bones were popular from 1840 through the 1920s, when the instrument became associated with racially-demeaning minstrel shows.
For the next 55 years, few people played the bones openly and most players assumed the instrument had gone mostly extinct.
In the mid-1970s, however, the nation's bicentennial reawakened for many people a renewed interest in folk culture and some of the earlier stigma attached to bones playing was dropped. Soon thereafter, the art of playing rhythm bones playing became more widely disseminated by a Massachusetts man who made an instructional video and wrote a book about playing the bones.
That man's grandson, Jonathon Danforth, who is also considered one of the top bones players in the country, will attend this weekend's festival.
"It's certainly going to be unique," he said. "Most folks have never seen a thing like this before."
DANFORTH SAID it is still hard to have a local community of rhythm bones players, so the annual bones fest allows aficionados to join together and jam.
"A lot of us feel like it's a family reunion," he said. "We're fairly few and far between."
The number of known bones players has increased even more since the first rhythm bones Web site was launched in 1995. Five years later, the burgeoning bones playing community was incorporated into the Rhythm Bones Society, based in Greensboro, N.C.
Everett Cowett, the organization's executive director, said it is the organization's job to continue building on the growing prevalence of bones and to ensure the instrument is given its due in the nation's folk history.
"We've got to keep the tradition of rhythm bones playing alive," he said.