Affrilachia

Last updated
Region of Appalachia ARC subregions as of July 2023.svg
Region of Appalachia
Frank X Walker Frank X Walker 160868.jpg
Frank X Walker

Affrilachia is a term that focuses on the cultural contributions of African-American artists, writers, and musicians in the Appalachian region of the United States. [1] The term "Affrilachia" is attributed to Kentucky-based writer Frank X Walker, who began using it in the 1990s as a way to negate the stereotype of Appalachian culture, [1] [2] which portrays Appalachians as predominantly white and living in small mountain communities. [3] Walker could be said to have made this word global. [4] The term Affrilachian stands for an African American who is a native or resident in the Appalachian region. [5] Affrilachia is also the title of Walker's 2000 book of poetry, published by Old Cove Press. [6]

Contents

Frank X Walker co-founded The Affrilachian Poets and in 2009, created The Affrilachian Journal of Arts and Culture. [5] Frank X Walker is a graduate of the University of Kentucky, currently serving as an associate professor in the UK Department of English. [7] Walker's partnership with the University of Kentucky allowed him to also create and teach an educational program on African-American and Africana studies, which further contributed to and raised awareness of Affrilachian art, culture, and history. [5] The word "Affrilachia" is included in the second edition of the Oxford American Dictionary . [8]

In 2011, Marie T. Cochran created the Affrilachian Artist Project with the goal of building a sustainable collaborative network among the region's artists and community organizers. [2] Today, the project has over 2,000 members and has organized several Affrilachian-themed art exhibitions.

Members

The Appalachian region has more than thirty prominent art community members who identify with the term Affrilachian, including writers, musicians, and artists such as Frank X Walker, Nikky Finney, Kelly Norman Ellis, Mitchell L. H. Douglas, Crystal Wilkinson, Parneshia Jones, Ricardo Nazario y Colón, Ellen Hagan, and Keith S. Wilson. [9] [10] [11] As of March 2022, 3.4K people currently follow the Affrilachian Artist Project's Facebook page. [2]

Culture

Literature

Frank X Walker wrote Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride (2010), Masked Man, Black: Pandemic and Protest Poems (2020),Black Box: Poems (2006), and Affrilachia: Poems by Frank X Walker (2000). [12]

Crystal Wilkinson is the author of the books The Birds of Opulence (2016), Water Street (2011), Blackberries, Blackberries (2000), and Perfect Black (2021). [13]

In 2018, Affrilachian poets celebrated 25 years since the term was created in the book, Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets edited by Bianca Lynn Spriggs and Jeremy Paden, published by The University Press of Kentucky. [14] This book had contributions from Frank X Walker himself along with other prominent members of the Affrilachian literary community. [14]

Visual arts

Appalachia is also home to vibrant African American art communities. In 2011, artist, educator, and curator Marie Cochran started the western North Carolina-based Affrilachian Artist Project to combat the common perception of Appalachia as a racially homogenous, white region. [10] She co-curated the Affrilachian Artist Project's inaugural exhibition at the August Wilson Cultural Center in Pittsburgh, PA. [15] A traveling version of the exhibit, which includes work by LaKeisha Blount, Victoria Casey-McDonald, and Rahkie Mateen, has been hosted by galleries throughout Appalachia. [10] [16]

Music

History

African Americans, including those who identify as Affrilachian, have had a significant impact on the sound of Appalachian music over the years. The start of African American influence on Appalachian music began when individuals were forcefully brought from West Africa to the United States and put into slavery. [17] Along with West African enslaved musicians came various stringed instruments made from gourds, such as the ngoni, that would later become the banjo, an instrument that is common in Appalachian music. [17] [18] The enslaved West African musicians played stringed instruments using a unique picking technique called “clawhammer”, which has become a popular banjo style in the Appalachian region. [18]

African Americans continued to influence Appalachian music on plantations, where work songs and spirituals were frequently sung, and into the 19th and early 20th centuries. [17] [19] By this time, string music began to be associated with minstrelsy and black-face performances, so African American musicians distanced themselves from it. [19] Some modern string bands, however, such as the now-disbanded Carolina Chocolate Drops, have worked to reclaim Appalachian music for the Affrilachian community. [17] With members including Rhiannon Giddens and Dom Flemons, the Carolina Chocolate Drops won a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album in 2011. [20]

Malinda Russell's Cookbook Domestic Cook Book Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen.jpg
Malinda Russell's Cookbook

Cuisine

Affrilachian food and cuisine has slight variations from region to region, just like the rest of Appalachian culture. Some of the staples across Affrilachian cuisine are the practices of preserving produce through pickling, fermenting, and canning as well as drying out other crops such as beans and corn. [21] Much of the food that is eaten in the various Appalachian regions has historically included the crops that families could grow themselves or trade for at local markets. Another Affrilachian staple is the style of pan-frying many different dishes using butter as opposed to neutral oils—a technique also common in French and Creole cooking. Rufus Estes has differentiated his fried chicken from many others using the "pan-fried in butter" method.

Molasses and sorghum are frequently used in baking and as sweeteners. Vegetables such as okra, kale, collard greens, sweet potatoes, and cabbage are prevalent in Affrilachian cooking as are a variety of beans grown in the region. Cornbread is a common side dish. Fruit cobblers and sweet potato pies are popular desserts. [21]

Malinda Russel has been coined as an influential member of Affrilachia because of the cookbook The Domestic Cookbook: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen that she published and her "Washington Cake" that gained fame from its combination of citrus and spiced flavors. [21]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hillbilly</span> Stereotype of some rural Americans

Hillbilly is a term for people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas in the United States, primarily in the Appalachian region and Ozarks. As people migrated out of the region during the Great Depression, the term spread northward and westward with them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bluegrass music</span> Genre of American roots music and sub-genre of country music

Bluegrass music is a genre of American roots music that developed in the 1940s in the Appalachian region of the United States. The genre derives its name from the band Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. Like mainstream country music, it largely developed out of old-time string music, though in contrast, it is traditionally played exclusively on acoustic instruments and also has roots in traditional English, Scottish and Irish ballads and dance tunes, as well as in blues and jazz. It was further developed by musicians who played with Monroe, including 5-string banjo player Earl Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt. Monroe characterized the genre as "Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin'. It's a part of Methodist, Holiness and Baptist traditions. It's blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Appalachia</span> Geographic region in the Appalachian Mountains of the Eastern United States

Appalachia is a geographic region located in the central and southern sections of the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States. It stretches from the western Catskill Mountains of New York state into Pennsylvania, continuing on through the Blue Ridge Mountains and Great Smoky Mountains into northern Georgia and Alabama. In 2021, the region was home to an estimated 26.3 million people, of whom roughly 80% were white.

The U.S. state of North Carolina is known particularly for its history of old-time music. Many recordings were made in the early 20th century by folk song collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Influential North Carolina country musicians like the North Carolina Ramblers and Al Hopkins helped solidify the sound of country music in the late 1920s, while influential bluegrass musicians such as Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson came from North Carolina. Arthur Smith had the first nationally syndicated television program which featured country music. He composed "Guitar Boogie", the all-time best selling guitar instrumental, and "Dueling Banjos", the all-time best selling banjo composition. Country artist Eric Church from the Hickory area, has had multiple No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, including Chief in 2011. Both North and South Carolina are a hotbed for traditional country blues, especially the style known as the Piedmont blues. Elizabeth Cotten, from Chapel Hill, was active in the American folk music revival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Old-time music</span> Genre of folk music

Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, clogging, and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle and plucked string instruments, most often the banjo, guitar, and mandolin. Together, they form an ensemble called the string band, which has historically been the most common configuration to play old-time music. The genre is considered a precursor to modern country music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Appalachian Regional Commission</span> Government agency in the United States

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) is a United States federal–state partnership that works with the people of Appalachia to create opportunities for self-sustaining economic development and improved quality of life. Congress established ARC to bring the region into socioeconomic parity with the rest of the nation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Appalachian music</span> Traditional music of the American Appalachian Mountains region

Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. Traditional Appalachian music is derived from various influences, including the ballads, hymns and fiddle music of the British Isles, the African music and blues of early African Americans, and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.

Appalshop is a media, arts, and education center located in Whitesburg, Kentucky, in the heart of the southern Appalachian region of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hillbilly Highway</span> Out-migration from the Appalachian Highlands

In the United States, the Hillbilly Highway is the out-migration of Appalachians from the Appalachian Highlands region to industrial cities in northern, midwestern, and western states, primarily in the years following World War II in search of better-paying industrial jobs and higher standards of living. Many of these migrants were formerly employed in the coal mining industry, which started to decline in 1940s. The word hillbilly refers to a negative stereotype of people from Appalachia. The term hillbilly is considered to be a modern term because it showed up in the early 1900s. Though the word is Scottish in origin, but doesn't derive from dialect. In Scotland, the term "hill-folk" referred to people who preferred isolation from the greater society and the term "billy" referred to someone being a "companion" or "comrade". The Hillbilly Highway was a parallel to the better-known Great Migration of African-Americans from the south.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank X Walker</span> African-American poet from Kentucky, born 1961.

Frank X Walker is an African-American poet from Danville, Kentucky. Walker coined the word "Affrilachia", signifying the importance of the African-American presence in Appalachia: the "new word ... spoke to the union of Appalachian identity and the region's African-American culture and history". He is a professor in the English department at the University of Kentucky and was the Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2013 to 2015.

"Cripple Creek" is an Appalachian-style old time tune and folk song, often played on the fiddle or banjo, listed as number 3434 in the Roud Folk Song Index.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crystal Wilkinson</span> American poet

Crystal E. Wilkinson is an African-American feminist writer from Kentucky, and proponent of the Affrilachian Poet movement. She is the winner of a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2020 winner of the USA Fellow of Creative Writing, and a 2021 O. Henry Prize winner. She teaches at the University of Kentucky. Her work has primarily been in involving the stories of Black women and communities in the Appalachian and rural Southern canon. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Kentucky 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leah Song</span> American singer-songwriter and activist

Leah Song is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumental musician, storyteller, poet, artist, and activist known for her role as one of the two frontsisters of Rising Appalachia — with younger sister Chloe Smith — incorporating sultry vocals, rhythm, banjo, guitar, ballads, dance, spoken-word and storytelling into her work. Her music is based in the traditions of Southern soul and international roots music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Appalachian stereotypes</span> Inaccurate impressions about Appalachian people and culture

The Appalachian region and its people have historically been stereotyped by observers, with the basic perceptions of Appalachians painting them as backwards, rural, and anti-progressive. These widespread, limiting views of Appalachia and its people began to develop in the post-Civil War; Those who "discovered" Appalachia found it to be a very strange environment, and depicted its "otherness" in their writing. These depictions have persisted and are still present in common understandings of Appalachia today, with a particular increase of stereotypical imagery during the late 1950s and early 1960s in sitcoms. Common Appalachian stereotypes include those concerning economics, appearance, and the caricature of the "hillbilly."

Bianca Lynne Spriggs is an American poet and multidisciplinary artist born in Milwaukee, WI. While widely considered a born-and-bred Kentuckian, she actually moved around a lot due to the nature of her parents' work. For several years of her childhood, she would bounce around from Florida, Indiana, and Milwaukee. She moved to Kentucky when she was eleven years old and lived there the longest. She currently resides in Athens, OH where she is an Assistant Professor of English at Ohio University. As a second generation Affrilachian Poet, she is the author of Kaffir Lily, How Swallowtails Become Dragons, The Galaxy is a Dance Floor, and Call Her By Her Name. She is the editor of The Swallowtale Project: Creative Writing for Incarcerated Women (2012), and co-editor of the anthologies, Circe's Lament: An Anthology of Wild Women, Undead: A Poetry Anthology of Ghouls, Ghosts, and More, and Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets(University of Kentucky Press, 2018).

Marie T. Cochran is an American installation artist, educator, project strategist, art writer, and art curator. In 2020 to 2022, she was Lehman Brady Professor, at Duke University.

The city of Baltimore, Maryland includes a significant Appalachian population. The Appalachian community has historically been centered in the neighborhoods of Hampden, Pigtown, Remington, Woodberry, Lower Charles Village, Highlandtown, and Druid Hill Park, as well as the Baltimore inner suburbs of Dundalk, Essex, and Middle River. The culture of Baltimore has been profoundly influenced by Appalachian culture, dialect, folk traditions, and music. People of Appalachian heritage may be of any race or religion. Most Appalachian people in Baltimore are white or African-American, though some are Native American or from other ethnic backgrounds. White Appalachian people in Baltimore are typically descendants of early English, Irish, Scottish, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh settlers. A migration of White Southerners from Appalachia occurred from the 1920s to the 1960s, alongside a large-scale migration of African-Americans from the Deep South and migration of Native Americans from the Southeast such as the Lumbee and the Cherokee. These out-migrations caused the heritage of Baltimore to be deeply influenced by Appalachian and Southern cultures.

Rural diversity refers to the presence of a diverse population of people in a low-density area outside of a city. While the term "rural" is contextual, it generally refers to a relatively low population density, a land-based economy, and a distinct regional identity. Some researchers have defined rurality as existing on a continuum. A report estimates that in 2020, 43.85% of the world's population was living in rural areas. However, the United Nations predicts that this number will shrink in the coming years; projecting that 68% of the worlds population will live in urban areas by 2050. Rural areas may lack diversity in demographics like religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, mental health, socioeconomic status, physical ability, or other socially significant identifiers.

The Metro Detroit region of Michigan is home to a significant Appalachian population, one of the largest populations of Urban Appalachians in the United States. The most common state of origin for Appalachian people in Detroit is Kentucky, while many others came from Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, and elsewhere in the Appalachia region. The Appalachian population has historically been centered in the Detroit neighborhoods of Brightmoor, Springwells, Corktown and North Corktown, as well as the Detroit suburbs of Hazel Park, Ypsilanti, Taylor, and Warren. Beginning after World War I, Appalachian people moved to Detroit in large numbers seeking jobs. Between 1940 and 1970, approximately 3.2 million Appalachian and Southern migrants settled in the Midwest, particularly in large cities such as Detroit and Chicago. This massive influx of rural Appalachian people into Northern and Midwestern cities has been called the "Hillbilly Highway". The culture of Metro Detroit has been significantly influenced by the culture, music, and politics of Appalachia. The majority of people of Appalachian heritage in Metro Detroit are Christian and either white or black, though Appalachian people can be of any race, ethnicity, or religion.

Appalachian cuisine is a style of cuisine located in the central and southern sections of the Appalachian Mountains of the Eastern United States. It is an amalgam of the diverse foodways, specifically among the British, German and Italian immigrant populations, Native Americans including the Cherokee people, and African-Americans, as well as their descendants in the Appalachia region.

References

  1. 1 2 Stasio, Dana Terry, Frank. "Finding Affrilachia". www.wunc.org. Retrieved 2019-03-04.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. 1 2 3 "I Pledge Allegiance to Affrilachia". Rewire.News. 28 February 2019. Retrieved 2019-03-04.
  3. ↑ "Naming Affrilachia: Toward Rhetorical Ecologies of Identity Performance in Appalachia | enculturation". enculturation.net. Retrieved 2019-03-04.
  4. ↑ "Old Cove Press". Archived from the original on 2017-04-27.
  5. 1 2 3 Spriggs, Bianca. "Frank X Walker: Exemplar of Affrilachia." Appalachian Heritage, vol. 39 no. 4, 2011, p. 21–25. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/aph.2011.0109.
  6. ↑ Walker, Frank X. (2000). Affrilachia. Old Cove Press. ISBN   978-0-9675424-0-9.
  7. ↑ "Behind the Blue: Poet Frank X Walker Reflects on Work as Writer, Professor". UKNow. 2016-10-13. Retrieved 2021-03-04.
  8. ↑ Thompson, Aaron. "Stereotypes Of Appalachia Obscure A Diverse Picture". NPR.org. Retrieved 2021-03-05.
  9. ↑ "Members". The Affrilachian Poets. Retrieved 2019-03-04.
  10. 1 2 3 "Affrilachian Artist Project Brings Together Appalachian Artists Of Color". BPR. 2020-02-28. Retrieved 2022-03-25.
  11. ↑ "About - Keith S. Wilson".
  12. ↑ "Frank X Walker - Affrilachian Poet, Educator, Author of Black Box, Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York, and Affrilachia". www.frankxwalker.com. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
  13. ↑ "Books". Crystal Wilkinson. Retrieved 2021-03-04.
  14. 1 2 "Black Bone". The University Press of Kentucky. Retrieved 2021-03-04.
  15. ↑ Nelson, Katy (2012-11-26). "Growing project showcases black artists in the mountain region". Carolina Public Press. Retrieved 2022-03-25.
  16. ↑ Dyer, Candice. "Artist explores intersection of Black culture, Appalachia". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. ISSN   1539-7459 . Retrieved 2022-03-25.
  17. 1 2 3 4 Gatlinburg, Mailing Address: 107 Park Headquarters Road; Us, TN 37738 Phone: 865 436-1200 Contact. "African American Southern Appalachian Music - Great Smoky Mountains National Park (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2022-03-25.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  18. 1 2 "Affrilachian Folk | Affrilachian Folk". rampages.us. Retrieved 2021-04-13.
  19. 1 2 Chia, Connie (2014-11-12). "Doug Orr: African American Influence on Appalachian Music". UNC Press Blog. Retrieved 2022-03-25.
  20. ↑ "Nonesuch Records Carolina Chocolate Drops". Nonesuch Records Official Website. Retrieved 2022-03-25.
  21. 1 2 3 Caldwell, Robin (2019-12-18). "What it Means to Eat "Affrilachian" or Black and Appalachian". Black Southern Belle. Retrieved 2021-03-06.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.