In 2022, the Montgomery Museum of Art & History in Christiansburg, Virginia, which serves the entire New River Valley and Virginia’s Appalachia region, presented a highly successful concert at the Moss Arts Center in Blacksburg, Virginia. That concert, “50 Years in the Making,” featured Jack Hinshelwood, former executive director of The Crooked Road, and numerous other performers in old time and bluegrass music. Focusing on Hinshelwood’s 50 years of shared performing and recording with the other featured artists, the music ranged from old time to gospel to bluegrass.
In 2023, the Museum presented a second successful concert, “Doc at 100,” the acclaimed touring program celebrating the legacy of Doc Watson. With these successes, the Museum decided to make a heritage music concert an annual event and establish a tradition of celebrating traditional music and artists in Appalachia.
For the 2024 concert, “Cultural Crossroads in Traditional Music and Dance,” the focus was on cultural influences on mountain music and the impact of Appalachian music worldwide. Artists represented not only traditional old time and bluegrass music and dance forms, but also artists from the Celtic, Native American, African American, Asian, and Latin traditions showcased the complex intersections of cultures in Appalachian music and dance.
Artists on the roster included Eddie Bond and the New Ballard’s Branch Bogtrotters, the Earl White Stringband, Green Grass Cloggers, Jarrett Wildcatt, Kaz Inaba performing with Jack Hinshelwood (fiddle), Victor Dowdy (bass), and Jacob Wright (banjo), and the Lua Project. Emcees Tyler Hughes (executive director of The Crooked Road), Jack Hinshelwood, Earl White, and Phil Jamison (Appalachian dance scholar and member of the Green Grass Cloggers), provided commentary to help the audience appreciate the confluence of these various cultural traditions. At the end of the concert, all the artists appeared onstage together to play and sing songs from the Appalachian tradition in a visual and auditory mosaic of cultural crossroads.
More than 400 audience members were overwhelmingly positive about the concert, with a standing ovation, remarks at intermission, as they left the theater, and comments on a follow-up survey. On the survey, audience members indicated that what they most enjoyed about the concert was the inclusion of artists from various cultures and their musical influences. When asked what they learned about the heritage of Appalachian music and dance, they nearly all marked “Appalachian music and dance has been influenced by African American music and dance” and “Appalachian music has influenced music worldwide.”
In addition to the concert, an afternoon workshop (open to students and the general public) featured Dr. Dena Jennings, an African American physician, luthier, writer, and speaker, who makes and plays gourd instruments of all types. As a fifth generation Appalachian, Dr. Jennings mesmerized the audience with her discussion of Black influences in mountain music and her singing and playing style. Dr. Jennings also led the concert finale with all artists onstage in several traditional Appalachian songs. Her presentation was funded by a generous grant from Virginia Humanities and promoted by partner organizations, the Lifelong Learning Institute at Virginia Tech and the Moss Arts Center which provided space for her workshop.
The Museum began marketing the event some months before it occurred in various media and on several social media platforms. Much information was shared on the Museum’s own website and Facebook pages, especially reaching the Museum’s over 400 members. Other networks such as NROT (New River Old Time group) and Blacksburg Square Dance posted numerous notices about the event. A live television interview from a Roanoke station and short spots on several radio stations that feature heritage music reached a broad audience. The radio stations were media sponsors and provided the airtime as in-kind contributions. Purchased ad space at the Lyric Theater in Blacksburg ran for two months and reached an audience of their patrons for both film and live performance. Printed cards and posters were widely distributed on the Virginia Tech campus, to civic organizations in the region, and at all Museum events. Concert partners such as Friends of the Blue Ridge, the Lifelong Learning Institute at Virginia Tech, the Moss Arts Center, and Appalachian Studies at Virginia Tech and Radford University helped promote the event with their constituents. A 24-page program distributed at the concert provided context for the concert, photos, and bios of all the artists, a listing of bluegrass and old time artists and bands from all across the world, and acknowledgement of all our sponsors with their logos. Display boards with all sponsors and logos were part of the meet and greet reception for sponsors to meet the artists.
As noted in our application for the Arnold Shultz Fund grant, the Museum made special efforts to help increase participation in bluegrass by people of color. The artists themselves represented a wide spectrum of racial and cultural diversity and marketing for the concert stressed this panoply of different cultures. Special effort was made to contact and promote the concert with the cultural centers at Virginia Tech that represent students, faculty, and staff with African American, Native American, Asian, Latin, and Appalachian backgrounds. We also involved the Montgomery Junior Appalachian Musicians group (which includes several students of color) by having some of the students perform at the meet and greet event for artists and sponsors to interact and providing free concert tickets to MJAM students and accompanying parents.
The concert, an annual fundraiser for the non-profit Montgomery Museum, was an enormous success. With numerous grants, corporate and individual sponsorships, and in-kind donations, the Museum covered the costs of the concert and garnered a substantial contribution to Museum operations, including next year’s heritage music concert. The Museum also donated 20% of funds only from ticket sales to Appalachian victims of Hurricane Helene through Mountain Ways, the foundation also supported by Dolly Parton.
The Montgomery Museum of Art and History is grateful to the IBMA Foundation for supporting this effort through the Arnold Shultz Foundation. We believe we enhanced understanding of the intercultural nature of bluegrass and other traditional music and dance, reached a diverse audience, and contributed to an increasing appreciation of the Appalachian region’s heritage music.
RETURN to the January 2025 issue of The Cornerstone.
Recent Comments