At the turn of the 20th century, most areas of Appalachia remained rural and isolated. In North Carolina, the county of Jackson fit that description. It seemed unlikely the county would produce an individual who would go down in local and national history as one of the most colorful characters of the 1920s and 1930s.
In Appalachia, Old-Time Music refers to a variety of traditional music styles — ballads, folk songs, fiddle and banjo tunes, sacred songs, and even some popular songs recorded in the early 20th century. . .
Folk festivals occur regularly in western North Carolina. Their origins go back to the 1920s. Asheville’s Mountain Dance and Folk Festival was one of the first. Their popularity has grown as our constantly-changing modern society fears losing touch with its cultural roots. . .
One voice seized me more than the rest. Over a simply picked banjo, the voice sang mournfully about a mole in the ground. Elsewhere, the same voice preached, over that same simple banjo, about dry bones. Like so many folk tunes, these told strange, elliptical stories, dense with images, exploding with emotion.
Dulcimers come in two versions. The so-called “mountain dulcimer” looks like a skinny fiddle with 3 to 6 strings, sits across the player’s lap, and is plucked with the fingers. The other consists of a box frame with 40-120 strings; because its sound is produced by hitting the strings with small mallets, it is often called the “hammered dulcimer”. . .
Tonya Carroll (B.A., 2007 M.A., 2009) with Bruce Frazier (Carol Grotnes Belk Endowed Professor in Commercial & Electronic Music) in the recording studio.