Appalachia in the Bluegrass

Now in its eighth season, the 2012 Appalachia in the Bluegrass concert series is generously supported by the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music, the Appalachian Studies Program, and the Appalachian Center of the University of Kentucky. It is with great gratitude that the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music acknowledges the leadership and  support of Dr. Skip Gray, Interim Director of the School of Music and Dr. Ann Kingsolver, Director of the Appalachian Center and the Appalachian Studies Program.

All concerts are in the Niles Gallery of the Lucille C. Little Fine Arts Library just off Rose Street at the University of Kentucky.

Concerts are on Fridays at noon and last one hour. Admission is free and open to the public. Contact ron.pen@uky.edu for further information.

September 7: Appalatin

Appalatin formed in 2006 in Louisville through band members’ mutual love of the folk music sounds of Latin America and the Caribbean. Appalatin’s original music is a fusion of Latin and Appalachian folk music from the band member’s homelands in Central America, the Andes and Appalachia. Instrumentation features the guitar, charango, mandolin, Andean flutes, bongos,  congas, and cajón.  Their songs reflect messages of freedom, community, empowerment, human rights, spirituality, and environmental stewardship.

Appalatin’s first self-titled CD was released in March 2011.

Website: http://www.appalatin.com/Appalatin/Appalatin.html

September 14: Lee Boy Sexton with John  Sexton

A master of the drop-thumb and two-finger banjo style, Lee “Boy” Sexton has lived his whole life near his birthplace in Letcher County, Ky.  Born in 1927, he acquired his first banjo, a homemade wooden fretless model with a groundhog skin head,  for a dollar when he was eight years  old (he worked to clear a field for a week  to earn that dollar), and with instruction from his father and uncles (one of whom was banjo player Morgan Sexton, winner of the National Heritage Award). Sexton soon mastered the instrument, and the fiddle, as well. As a young  man he would work all week  in the mines and then play music all weekend at house parties, bean stringings, and corn shuckings. June Appal issued an LP of traditional material, Whoa Mule, in 1988, and an expanded CD version in 2004 with an additional 40 minutes of music. One of the most respected and revered folk musicians in East Kentucky, Sexton garnered a brief scene in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter, where he appears playing at a square dance.

In 1999 he was presented with the Kentucky Governor's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

Website: http://appalshop.org/frontporch/artists/lsexton.htm

September 21: Sparky  and Rhonda  Rucker

Sparky and Rhonda Rucker perform throughout the U.S. as well as overseas, singing songs and telling stories from the American folk tradition. Sparky Rucker has been  performing over forty years and is internationally recognized as a leading folklorist, musician, historian, storyteller, and author. He accompanies himself with fingerstyle picking and bottleneck blues guitar, banjo, and spoons.  Rhonda Rucker is an accomplished harmonica, piano, banjo, and bones  player, and also adds vocal harmonies to their songs.

October 5: Jarflies

Sitting out in front of Third Street Coffee in Lexington, Ky., playing a song he had written for a short film by local poet Bianca Spriggs, Mason saw Art walking into the shop and asked him if he’d  like to play on the tune. And he did. And then they worked on a whole bunch more and started calling themselves The Jarflies. Now those songs are sounding pretty good, and The Jarflies would like to play some of ‘em for you.

For 30 years (or more), Art Mize has been fiddling in the Kentucky Bluegrass and surrounding regions, living out his love for traditional fiddling idioms. He also plays mandolin and guitar, sings, teaches, brings finesse and expertise to the restoration of violin family instruments, and is the father of three wonderful children.

Mason Colby grew up in southern Louisiana and drifted around a bit before settling down in Lexington. It soon became apparent that he was going to have to start playing the banjo. The backyards and living rooms of Kentucky have provided a particularly pleasant education.

Website: http://www.thejarflies.com/shows/

October 12: Roger Cooper

All traditions have two characteristics in common: continuity and change. Kentucky fiddle traditions are a great example. Listen to a fiddler from northeastern Kentucky, and you’ll quickly notice differences in technique, style, and even names of the tunes than you encounter in other parts of Appalachia or western Kentucky. The Ohio River has played a major part in shaping the cultural landscape, which includes the fiddling, of Lewis County. Generations of travelers and settlers have contributed to what we know as a distinct tradition, which will continue changing in the future. One distinguished artist who embodies the unique fiddle traditions of the area is Roger Cooper.

Early in life, Roger made it his mission to learn from all the traditional fiddlers in Lewis County. At age twelve he played guitar behind fiddler Joe Stamper on Vanceburg radio WKKS. Roger spent years mastering the tunes as he heard them and playing them at contests, dances, and concerts. He has released albums such as Essence of Old Kentucky on Rounder Records.

Web: http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/r_coop1.htm

October 19: Morehead State University Kentucky Center for Traditional Music Old Time String Band

The “Traditional Music Program” is among the fastest growing academic traditional music programs at any school of higher education. We are fortunate that Morehead State University wants to support a dynamic environment in which students have an exceptional opportunity to study this aspect of our cultural traditions. The right time is now and the place is Morehead State University for this remarkable program.

The “Traditional Music Archives” contains a large collection of traditional music that is accessible to the public for scholarly use. These digital audio and video files include many examples of traditional Appalachian music and culture, including ballads and songs, fiddle and banjo tunes, old-time string band music, traditional and modern bluegrass music, religious preaching, and interviews with performers and church members.

“Outreach” includes performances, presentations, lecture/demonstrations and workshops by The Kentucky Center for Traditional Music faculty which includes professional entertainers who tour extensively. “Outreach” also includes Morehead State University student bands that are sections of The Traditional Music Ensemble, Bluegrass Band, Celtic Band, Old Time String Band and Old Time Country Band classes. These groups perform under the direction of their instructors on the MSU campus and across the region for programs such as the "Sounds of Our Heritage" series, which introduces students of all ages to many forms of traditional music.

Website: http://www2.moreheadstate.edu/kctm/

October 26: Si Kahn

His songs of family, community, work and freedom have been recorded by more than 100 artists and translated into half a dozen languages, including French, Welsh, Hebrew, Swedish, Drents (a Dutch dialect) and Plattdeutsch ("Low German"). Such songs as Aragon Mill (aka Belfast Mill, Oregon Mill, Douglas Mill, Weave and Spin), Gone Gonna Rise Again, Go To Work On Monday, and Rubber Blubber Whale have become a part of the oral tradition, and are sung in folk clubs and living rooms, at rallies and on picket lines around the world. Si has performed at concerts and festivals in Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Northern Ireland, Canada and the U.S. His musical body of work includes 15 albums of original songs for adults and children, plus a collection of traditional labor, civil rights and women's songs recorded with Pete Seeger and Jane Sapp.

Si Kahn has worked for over 45 years as a civil rights, labor and community organizer and musician. He began his organizing career in 1965 in Arkansas with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, more popularly known as SNCC, the student wing of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. During the War on Poverty, he served first as a VISTA Volunteer and later as Deputy Director of an eightcounty community action agency in rural Georgia, where he also coached the first racially integrated Little League team in that part of the state.

During the 1970s, he worked with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) during the Brookside Strike in Harlan County, Ky., and was an Area Director of the J.P. Stevens Campaign for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). These historic labor struggles are portrayed in the movies Harlan County U.S.A. and Norma Rae.

Si founded Grassroots Leadership, a Southern-based national organization, in 1980, and served as its Executive Director for 30 years, becoming Executive Director Emeritus on May Day 2010. For the past 12 years, Grassroots Leadership has worked to oppose privatization and to defend the public sector. This work currently includes a campaign to abolish all for-profit private prisons, jails and detention centers, including immigrant detention centers, as a step towards helping create a prison and criminal justice system that is at least to some extent just and humane.

Website: http://sikahn.com/

November 2: Don Pedi

Don Pedi was born into a musical family in Chelsea, Mass. On weekends, his grandfather, who died before Don was born, would close his barber shop for business, and open his home in the back as a gathering place for family and friends to share homemade food, fellowship and live music. Don's grandfather played guitar, mandolin and banjo. Don's uncle Frank made his living singing and playing music. Another gifted singer is Don's dad. He'll burst into song at the drop of a hat.

Don got involved with the Boston area folk music scene in the early sixties. 1964 was when he first laid eyes on a dulcimer. It was being played by Richard Farina at a live performance by Mimi and Richard Farina at the old Unicorn Coffee House in Boston.

The sound of the dulcimer proved most alluring. That night in a conversation with Richard Farina, Don was convinced that someday he would get himself a dulcimer and play it. Contemporary performers like Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Patrick Sky, Joan Baez and others attracted Don to the Newport Folk Festival. While there he was exposed to traditional musicians like Frank Proffitt, Doc Watson, Mississippi John Hurt, Almeda Riddle and such that where a major influence on his musical tastes.

By 1966 Don was traveling a lot. With Cambridge as a base, he lived for various periods of time in different parts of the country. In 1973, while living in the Colorado Rockies, Don met Tad Wright and Keith Zimmerman, a couple of musicians from Asheville, NC. After hearing Don play, they invited him to join them. He did, and they piled into Tad's 1969 Volkswagen mini-van and drove to North Carolina. At first sight of the mountains around Harmon Den and Fines Creek, Don knew he was home. He's pretty much lived in and around Asheville from then on. Since settling in Western North Carolina Don has been recognized as the man who could "really play" a dulcimer. He is a pioneer in that his music has broken new ground and cleared a path for others. In Don's hands, the dulcimer has been accepted as an instrument well suited to playing traditional Southern Dance music. This was at a time when most "Old-Time" musicians thought a dulcimer should be hung on a wall with a pretty ribbon.

In 1991 Don and wife Jean moved to a little farm in the mountains of Madison County, NC. The area is rich in traditional music and customs (neighbors still plow with mules and horses). His most recent recording is Stranger on a Mule with acclaimed fiddler Bruce Greene.

Website: http://www.donpedi.com/

November 9: Ruth McLain Smith

Ruth’s musical history is intertwined with the remarkable story of her family band.

Website: http://www.facebook.com/RS4books

November 16: Rich and the Po' Folks

Rich and the Po' Folks dates to the spring of 2006 when a group of friends got together with a common goal....to build a band on their shared love for the traditional music of east Kentucky and southwest Virginia. Taking their inspiration from some of the jewels of Appalachian music--fiddlers, banjo players, singers, songwriters-- Rich and the Po' Folks take the work of Old Time giants such as Art Stamper, Ed Haley, Charlie Osborne, George Gibson, Addie Graham, and John Morgan Salyer and use fiddle, banjo, bass, mandolin and guitar to kick it up as only a string band can! Their recent CD When the Whistle Blew is one of the finest recordings to come from East Kentucky's coal fields in many a year.

This performance is a special reunion of the Ramblers who have traveled a “fur piece” to reunite at the Niles Gallery. In February, the Ramblers participated in a State Department sponsored cultural exchange with Ustatshakirt in Krygyzstan, and this October the band was in Ecuador on a State Department sponsored cultural exchange.

Websites:
http://www.myspace.com/redstateramblers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGqvWfPbt5w

December 7: Crankies with Anna Roberts-Gevalt & Elizabeth LaPrelle

Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Elizabeth LaPrelle met in 2010 and soon began  planning adventures together.

Anna and Elizabeth use all the creative tools they can think of: storytelling, research, fiddle, banjo, guitar, ballads, puppets, poetry, and moving scrolls called “crankies."

They  are trying to engage themselves and their audience with traditional art in all the forms it can take—from canning to woodcuts, quilting to singing, to better express the rich stories this region has to share.

Elizabeth LaPrelle has been performing Appalachian ballads and old-time songs since she was 11. Her magnificent voice, her respect for the songs, and her authentic mountain sound and style brought her to the attention of first Ginny Hawker and then Sheila Kay Adams. Raised in Rural Retreat, Va., Elizabeth attended old time fiddlers’ conventions and sang harmonies with her  family, who taught her traditional singing styles and encouraged her to sing their own favorite American folk music. She received her undergraduate degree from the College of William and Mary with a major in Southern Appalachian Traditional Performance, and now tours the US regularly both performing and teaching.

Anna Roberts-Gevalt is a recent graduate of Wesleyan University in Connecticut. She grew up in Vermont, playing violin in a youth orchestra and in string quartets. Through recordings at college she was drawn to Appalachian fiddle and banjo tunes. This interest led to an internship at Appalshop in Whitesburg, Ky., during the summers of 2007 and 2008. This work has included archival research at Berea, East Tennessee State University, and the Library of Congress and hands-on experience at the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School, which puts banjos and fiddles into the hands of eager school age children.

Websites:
http://www.elizabethlaprelle.com/projects/anna-elizabeth-crankies
http://www.annarobertsgevalt.com/