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Bascom Lamar Lunsford
Bascom Lamar Lunsford (March 21, 1882 – September 4, 1973) was a folklorist, performer of traditional Appalachian music, and lawyer from western North Carolina. He was often known by the nickname "Minstrel of the Appalachians". Biography Bascom Lamar Lunsford was born at Mars Hill, Madison County, North Carolina in 1882, into the world of traditional Appalachian folk music. At an early age, his father, a teacher, gave him a fiddle, and his mother sang religious songs and traditional ballads. Lunsford also learned banjo and began to perform at weddings and square dances. After qualifying as a teacher at Rutherford College, Lunsford taught at schools in Madison County. In 1913, Lunsford qualified in law at Trinity College, later to become Duke University. He began to travel and collect material at the start of the 20th century, often meeting singers on isolated farms. Lunsford has been quoted as saying he spent "nights in more homes from Harpers Ferry to Iron Moun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Appalachians
The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, are a mountain range in eastern to northeastern North America. The term "Appalachian" refers to several different regions associated with the mountain range, and its surrounding terrain. The general definition used is one followed by the United States Geological Survey and the Geological Survey of Canada to describe the respective countries' physiographic regions. The U.S. uses the term Appalachian Highlands and Canada uses the term Appalachian Uplands; the Appalachian Mountains are not synonymous with the Appalachian Plateau, which is one of the provinces of the Appalachian Highlands. The Appalachian range runs from the Island of Newfoundland in Canada, southwestward to Central Alabama in the United States; south of Newfoundland, it crosses the 96-square-mile (248.6 km2) archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, an overseas collectivity of France, meaning it is technically in three countries. The highest pea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground
"I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground" (Roud 4957, sometimes titled "Mole in the Ground" or "Kimbie") is a traditional American folk song. It was most famously recorded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford in 1928 for Brunswick Records in Ashland, Kentucky. Harry Smith included "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground" on his ''Anthology of American Folk Music'' released by Folkways Records in 1952. The notes for Smith's ''Anthology'' state that Lunsford learned this song from Fred Moody, a North Carolina neighbor, in 1901. Song Lunsford said of this song: The title of this mountain banjo song is "I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground." I've known it since 1901 when I heard Fred Moody, then a high school boy, sing it down in Burke County. Fred lives in Haywood County, North Carolina, and the footnote to the song is that the "bend" referred to is the bend of the Pigeon River in Haywood County, North Carolina. I played it as a request of my mother back in 1902. It was the last request she ever made of me. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Mountain Dance And Folk Festival
The Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, held annually in Asheville, North Carolina, is the oldest continuously running folk festival in the United States. History Started initially by Bascom Lamar Lunsford as an offshoot of the larger Asheville Rhododendron Festival in 1928, the festival started on its own in 1930. In 1967, the festival was taken over by Asheville's Folk Heritage Committee. The festival starts on the first Thursday in August and continues through the following Friday and Saturday. Other modern festivals, such as the National Folk Festival, were inspired by the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival. In its early years, the festival hosted artists such as Samantha Bumgarner. Pete Seeger Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and social activist. He was a fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s and had a string of hit records in the early 1950s as a member of The Weav ... was inspired to play banjo after ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Rhododendron
''Rhododendron'' (; : ''rhododendra'') is a very large genus of about 1,024 species of woody plants in the Ericaceae, heath family (Ericaceae). They can be either evergreen or deciduous. Most species are native to eastern Asia and the Himalayan region, but smaller numbers occur elsewhere in Asia, and in North America, Europe and Australia. It is the national flower of Nepal, the List of U.S. state and territory flowers, state flower of Washington (state), Washington and West Virginia in the United States, the state flower of Nagaland and Himachal Pradesh in India, the provincial flower of Jeju Province in South Korea, the provincial flower of Jiangxi in China and the List of Indian state trees, state tree of Sikkim and Uttarakhand in India. Most species have brightly coloured flowers which bloom from late winter through to early summer. Azaleas make up two subgenera of ''Rhododendron''. They are distinguished from "true" rhododendrons by having only five anthers per flower. E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Asheville, North Carolina
Asheville ( ) is a city in Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. Located at the confluence of the French Broad River, French Broad and Swannanoa River, Swannanoa rivers, it is the county seat of Buncombe County. It is the most populous city in Western North Carolina and the state's List of municipalities in North Carolina, 11th-most-populous city with a population of 94,589 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The four-county Asheville metropolitan area has an estimated 422,000 residents. History Origins Before the arrival of the European colonization of the Americas, European Colonists, the land where Asheville now exists lay within the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation, which had homelands in modern Western North Carolina, western North and South Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, and northeastern Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. A town at the site of the river confluence was recorded as ''Guaxule'' by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto during his 1540 expedi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Folkways Records
Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987 and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways. History The Folkways Records & Service Co., and its music publishing subsidiary Folkways Music Publishers, Inc., were founded by Moses Asch and Marian Distler in 1948 in New York City. Harold Courlander was editor of the ''Folkways Ethnic Library'' at the time and is credited with coming up with the name "Folkways" for the label. Asch sought to record and document sounds and music from everywhere in the world. From 1948 until Asch's death in 1986, Folkways Records released 2,168 albums. In December 1950, Folkways Music Publishers, Inc. was acquired by Howard S. Richmond. In 1964, Asch helped MGM Records start Verve Folkways Records which evolved in 1967 into Verve Forecast Records. The Folkways catalog includes traditional and contemporary music from around the world as wel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Library Of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law of the United States, copyright law through the United States Copyright Office, and it houses the Congressional Research Service. Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the oldest Cultural policy of the United States, federal cultural institution in the United States. It is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill, adjacent to the United States Capitol, along with the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, and additional storage facilities at Fort Meade, Fort George G. Meade and Cabin Branch in Hyattsville, Maryland. The library's functions are overseen by the librarian of Congress, and its buildings are maintained by the architect of the Capitol. The LOC is one of the List of largest libraries, largest libra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Parlor Song
Parlour music (or parlor music) is a type of popular music which, as the name suggests, is intended to be performed in the parlours of houses, usually by amateur singers and piano, pianists. Disseminated as sheet music, its heyday came in the 19th century, as a result of a steady increase in the number of households with enough resources to purchase musical instruments and instruction in music, and with the leisure time and cultural motivation to engage in recreational music-making. Its popularity faded in the 20th century as the phonograph record and radio replaced sheet music as the most common means for the spread of popular music. History Many of the earliest parlour songs were transcription (music), transcriptions for voice and keyboard of other music. Thomas Moore's ''Irish Melodies'', for instance, were traditional (or "folk") tunes supplied with new lyrics by Moore, and many arias from Italian operas, particularly those of Vincenzo Bellini, Bellini and Donizetti, became par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Negro Spiritual
Spirituals (also known as Negro spirituals, African American spirituals, Black spirituals, or spiritual music) is a genre of Christian music that is associated with African Americans, which merged varied African cultural influences with the experiences of being held in bondage in slavery, at first during the transatlantic slave trade and for centuries afterwards, through the domestic slave trade. Spirituals encompass the "sing songs", work songs, and plantation songs that evolved into the blues and gospel songs in church. In the nineteenth century, the word "spirituals" referred to all these subcategories of folk songs. While they were often rooted in biblical stories, they also described the extreme hardships endured by African Americans who were enslaved from the 17th century until the 1860s, the emancipation altering mainly the nature (but not continuation) of slavery for many. Many new derivative music genres such as the blues emerged from the spirituals songcraft. Prior to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Child Ballads
The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as ''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads''. The tunes of most of the ballads were collected and published by Bertrand Harris Bronson in and around the 1960s. History Age and source of the ballads The ballads vary in age; for instance, the manuscript of " Judas" dates to the thirteenth century and a version of " A Gest of Robyn Hode" was printed in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. The majority of the ballads, however, date to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although some are claimed to have very ancient influences, only a handful can be definitively traced to before 1600. Moreover, few of the tunes collected are as old as the words. Nevertheless, Child's collection was far more comprehensive than any previous ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Clawhammer
Clawhammer, sometimes called down-picking, overhand, or most commonly known as frailing, is a distinctive banjo playing style and a common component of American old-time music. The style likely descends from that of West African lutes, such as the akonting which are also the direct ancestors of the banjo. The principal difference between clawhammer style and other styles is the picking direction. Traditional picking styles ( classic banjo), including those for folk, bluegrass, and classical guitar, consist of an up-picking motion by the fingers and a down-picking motion by the thumb; this is also the technique used in the Scruggs style for the banjo. Clawhammer picking, by contrast, is primarily a down-picking style. The hand assumes a claw-like shape and the strumming finger is kept fairly stiff, striking the strings by the motion of the hand at the wrist or elbow, rather than a flicking motion by the finger. In its most common form on the banjo, only the thumb and m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Dry Bones (folk Song)
"Dry Bones" is a folk song, included in Harry Smith's ''Anthology of American Folk Music'' under the heading "Social Music". On this collection it is sung by Bascom Lamar Lunsford (1929). The song is also performed by alternative country duo The Handsome Family on their 2003 album ''Singing Bones''. The song also features on Golden Opportunities 2, an EP released by Okkervil River in 2011. Synopsis This song's five verses refer to different biblical stories. The first verse refers to Enoch from Genesis 5:21-24. Verse 2 is based on Acts 16:25-26. The third verse refers to Moses and the burning bush from Exodus 3:2. The fourth verse (and the title) is based on the story from Ezekiel 37:1-10. The last verse hints to the familiar story from Genesis Genesis may refer to: Religion * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of humankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
