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Bascom 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 Mountain t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Appalachians
The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They once reached elevations similar to those of the Alps and the Rocky Mountains before experiencing natural erosion. The Appalachian chain is a barrier to east–west travel, as it forms a series of alternating ridgelines and valleys oriented in opposition to most highways and railroads running east–west. Definitions vary on the precise boundaries of the Appalachians. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) defines the ''Appalachian Highlands'' physiographic division as consisting of 13 provinces: the Atlantic Coast Uplands, Eastern Newfoundland Atlantic, Maritime Acadian Highlands, Maritime Plain, Notre Dame and Mégantic Mountains, Western Newfoundland Mountains, Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Valley and Ridge, St. Lawrence Valley, Appalac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records is an American record label founded in 1916. History From 1916 Records under the Brunswick label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, a company based in Dubuque, Iowa which had been manufacturing products ranging from pianos to sporting equipment since 1845. The company first began producing phonographs in 1916, then began marketing their own line of records as an afterthought. These first Brunswick records used the vertical cut system like Edison Disc Records, and were not sold in large numbers. They were recorded in the United States but sold only in Canada. 1920s In January 1920, a new line of Brunswick Records was introduced in the U.S. and Canada that employed the lateral cut system which was becoming the default cut for 78 discs. Brunswick started its standard popular series at 2000 and ended up in 1940 at 8517. However, when the series reached 4999, they skipped over the previous allocated 5000s and continued at 6000. When t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Folk Festival
A folk festival celebrates traditional folk crafts and folk music. This list includes folk festivals worldwide, except those with only a partial focus on folk music or arts. Folk festivals may also feature folk dance or ethnic foods. Handicrafting has long been exhibited at such events and festival-like gatherings, as it has its roots in the rural crafts. Like folk art, handicraft output often has cultural, political, and/or religious significance. Folk art encompasses art produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring tradespeople. In contrast to fine art, folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative rather than purely aesthetic, and is often sold at festivals by tradespeople or practicing amateurs.West, Shearer (general editor), ''The Bullfinch Guide to Art History'', page 440, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, United Kingdom, 1996. As at folk festivals, such art and handicraft may also appear at historical reenactments and events such as Renaissance fairs. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably ... was inspired to play banjo after h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhododendron
''Rhododendron'' (; from Ancient Greek ''rhódon'' "rose" and ''déndron'' "tree") is a very large genus of about 1,024 species of woody plants in the 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 state flower of Washington and West Virginia in the United States, the state flower of Nagaland in India, the provincial flower of Jiangxi in China and the state tree of Sikkim and Uttarakhand in India. Most species have brightly colored 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. Species Description ''Rhododendron'' is a genus of shrubs and small to (rarely) large trees, the smallest species growing to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asheville, North Carolina
Asheville ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 11th-most populous city. According to the 2020 United States Census, the city's population was 94,589, up from 83,393 in the 2010 census. It is the principal city in the four-county Asheville metropolitan area, which had a population of 424,858 in 2010, and of 469,015 in 2020. History Origins Before the arrival of the Europeans, the land where Asheville now exists lay within the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation, which had homelands in modern western North and South Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, and northeastern Georgia. A town at the site of the river confluence was recorded as ''Guaxule'' by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto during his 1540 expedition through this area. His expedition comprised the first European visitors, who carried endemic Eurasian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 well as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Library Of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.; it also maintains a conservation center in Culpeper, Virginia. The library's functions are overseen by the Librarian of Congress, and its buildings are maintained by the Architect of the Capitol. The Library of Congress is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its "collections are universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 470 languages." Congress moved to Washington, D.C., in 1800 after holding sessions for eleven years in the temporary national capitals in New York City and Philadelphia. In both cities, members of the U.S. Congress had access to the sizable collection ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parlor Song
Parlour 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 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 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 Bellini and Donizetti, became parlour songs, with texts either translated or replaced by new ly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 Black Americans, which merged sub-Saharan African cultural heritage 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 Proclamation, emancipation altering mainly the nature (but not continuation) of slavery for many. Many new derivative music genres emerged from the spirituals songcraft. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 coll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clawhammer
Clawhammer, sometimes called down-picking, overhand, or frailing, is a distinctive banjo playing style and a common component of American old-time music. The principal difference between clawhammer style and other styles is the picking direction. Traditional picking styles (Banjo#Classic_era%2C_1880s-1910s, classic banjo), including those for folk music, folk, Bluegrass music, 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 and/or elbow, rather than a flicking motion by the finger. In its most common form on the banjo, only the thumb and middle or index finger are used and the finger always downpicks, hitting the string with the back ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
