Music [1]

The Association for Cultural Equity and its Alan Lomax Archive head to Clifton Center next weekend to celebrate East Kentucky’s rich musical heritage.  Featuring live music,

crankies

[4]

,

shape-note

singing and diverse performers from across the region, this two-day event will tell the story of Kentucky’s mountain music.

In late 1937, pioneering ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax traveled to the mountains of East Kentucky to document the region’s traditional music. After just two months, he returned to the Library of Congress with over thirty-two hours of recordings of ballad singers and songsters; Baptist, Methodist, and Pentecostal hymns; children’s game songs and lullabies; and dozens of fiddlers, guitarists, harp-blowers and banjo players.

This year, the Alan Lomax Archive (in collaboration with the University of Kentucky,

Appalshop

and the American

Folklife

Center at the Library of Congress) is digitally repatriating these invaluable cultural artifacts to repositories across Kentucky...and you can be there to welcome them home.

Be sure to check out one of these events!

Friday, September

• 7:00 pm: Pre-concert talk with Lomax Archive Curator Nathan Salsburg who will give remarks on Lomax’s East Kentucky recordings

• 8:00 pm: Concert with John Harrod & Kentucky Wild Horse. Opening set by Anna Roberts-Gevalt, Sara Wood and Karly Dawn Higgins

Saturday, September

• 10:00 am to 3:00 pm: Shape-note singing (hosted by the Ohio Valley Shape Note Singers)

• 2:00 pm: Appalshop Films Screening:

  To Fit My Own Category

  (on Nimrod Workman) and

  Dreadful Memories

  (on Sarah Ogan Gunning)

• 3:00 to 4:30 pm: Directed workshops

  • Crankies (Anna Roberts-Gevalt)

  • Banjo (Jesse Wells)

  • Fiddle (Nikos Pappas)

• 7:00 pm: Round robin tune-swap with Festival participants

• 8:30 pm: Square dance with Red State Ramblers (called by Randy Wilson)

All events are

pay what you will

and tickets will be available at the door.  More information on the festival and its artists can be found here [5].

(Photo courtesy of Anna

Connect with me on Twitter: @rackoflambert [6]!