Dunbar’s musical heritage was memorialized, when Samuel Preston Bayard came to Dunbar in the early 1940s to interview local musicians. Those interviews are included in his book, Hill Country Tunes: Instrumental Folk Music of Southwestern Pennsylvania. Bayard's book was devoted exclusively to American folk tunes and the history of the music. He found in Dunbar "a love of traditional music and song, more intense than in surrounding neighborhoods.” Here, it seems, were families in unusual numbers who had vivid memories of folk musicians of bygone days. They not only possessed the memories of these former musicians, but were, in fact, their descendants. He states that Dunbar, along with the surrounding villages, "had more that its share of fiddlers, singers, fifers and musical families, in which several members played, sang and shared this inherited folk art…often getting together for informal concerts and dances." The musical families included the Lowrys, Hughes, Martins, Devans, Smitleys, Provances, Yaughers, Bryners, Wingroves, Gilpins, McClains and Ahrenburgs.