Mountain Dance and Folk Festival

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The Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, held annually in Asheville, North Carolina, is the oldest continuously running folk festival in the United States. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

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. [1] [6] 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. [6] Other modern festivals, such as the National Folk Festival, were inspired by the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival. [7] [5]

In its early years, the festival hosted artists such as Samantha Bumgarner. Pete Seeger was inspired to play banjo after hearing founder Bascom Lamar Lunsford play the five-string banjo at the festival in 1936. [8] [9]

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"Good Old Mountain Dew", sometimes called simply "Mountain Dew" or "Real Old Mountain Dew", is an Appalachian folk song composed by Bascom Lamar Lunsford and Scotty Wiseman. There are two versions of the lyrics, a 1928 version written by Lunsford and a 1935 adaptation by Wiseman. Both versions of the song are about moonshine. The 1935 version has been widely covered and has entered into the folk tradition becoming a standard.

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"Aunt" Samantha Bumgarner was an American acclaimed early country and folk music performer and singer from Dillsboro, North Carolina. She won much praise for her work with the fiddle and banjo. In 1924, accompanied by guitarist Eva Davis, she traveled to New York City and recorded about a dozen songs for Columbia Records. The recordings are also notable for being the first use of a 5-string banjo on a recording. She was a yearly staple at Bascom Lamar Lunsford's Mountain Dance and Folk Festival from 1928 until shortly before her death.

"Cumberland Gap" is an Appalachian folk song that likely dates to the latter half of the 19th century and was first recorded in 1924. The song is typically played on banjo or fiddle, and well-known versions of the song include instrumental versions as well as versions with lyrics. A version of the song appeared in the 1934 book, American Ballads and Folk Songs, by folk song collector John Lomax. Woody Guthrie recorded a version of the song at his Folkways sessions in the mid-1940s, and the song saw a resurgence in popularity with the rise of bluegrass and the American folk music revival in the 1950s. In 1957, the British musician Lonnie Donegan had a No. 1 UK hit with a skiffle version of "Cumberland Gap".

Roger Sprung is an American banjo player and teacher best known for introducing authentic bluegrass banjo picking styles to the folk music community in the north and for the eclectic manner in which he has adapted bluegrass banjo techniques to music of other genres. His 1963 album Progressive Bluegrass may have been the first use of that title, later applied to a subgenre of bluegrass music by him and others.

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Francis M. "Frank" Warner was an American folk song collector, singer, musician, and YMCA executive. He and his wife Anne Warner collected and preserved many previously unpublished traditional song versions from the eastern United States, including "Tom Dooley", "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands", "The Days of Forty-Nine", and "Gilgarrah Mountain", a New Hampshire version of the song more widely known as "Whiskey in the Jar".

Dom Flemons

Dominique Flemons is an American old-time music, Piedmont blues, and neotraditional country multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter. He is a proficient player of the banjo, fife, guitar, harmonica, percussion, quills, and rhythm bones. He is known as "The American Songster" as his repertoire of music spans nearly a century of American folklore, ballads, and tunes. He has performed with Mike Seeger, Joe Thompson, Martin Simpson, Boo Hanks, Taj Mahal, Old Crow Medicine Show, Guy Davis, and The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band.

References

  1. 1 2 "Shindig on the Green: 52 years of music 'round about sundown 🎻 - AVLToday". 25 July 2018.
  2. "Mountain Dance and Folk Festival turns 90".
  3. "Mountain Dance and Folk Festival - Digital Heritage". 5 March 2012.
  4. "North Carolina: Looking for music? Here's where to start".
  5. 1 2 Jones, Loyal (1984). Minstrel of the Appalachians: The Story of Bascom Lamar Lunsford .
  6. 1 2 Fussell, Fred; Kruger, Steve (2018). Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina: A Guide to Music Sites, Artists, and Traditions of the Mountains and Foothills.
  7. "Feasts of Unnaming". xroads.virginia.edu.
  8. Schubert, Leda (2017). Listen: How Pete Seeger Got America Singing.
  9. Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing, pp. 48–49.