Sheila Kay Adams | |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Sheila Kay Adams |
| Born | March 18, 1953 |
| Origin | Sodom Laurel, Madison County, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Genres | Traditional, Old-time music, Storytelling |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, ballad, singer-songwriter, storyteller |
| Instrument(s) | Vocals, banjo, guitar |
| Years active | 1970–present |
| Website | www |
Sheila Kay Adams is an American storyteller, author, and musician from the Sodom Laurel community in Madison County, North Carolina.
A seventh-generation ballad singer, storyteller, and claw-hammer banjo player, Sheila Kay Adams was born and raised in the Sodom Laurel community of Madison County, North Carolina, an area renowned for its unbroken tradition of unaccompanied singing of traditional southern Appalachian ballads that dates back to the early Scots/Irish and English Settlers in the mid-17th century. [1]
Adams learned to sing from her great-aunt Dellie Chandler Norton and other notable singers in the community such as Dillard Chandler and members of the Wallin Family. She began performing in public in her teens, and throughout her career she has performed at festivals, events, music camps, and workshops around the United States and the United Kingdom. [2]
In 1975, Adams graduated from Mars Hill College. [3] In 2003 she was named Alumna of the Year and later received a LifeWorks recognition in appreciation for her shared commitment to service and responsibility, presented at the college's LifeWorks 150 Alumni Celebration in April 2007.
After teaching in the North Carolina public schools for seventeen years, Adams turned to full-time music and storytelling. [4]
Adams performs ballads from English, Scottish, and Irish traditions as she learned them from her ancestors, as well as innovating other tunes with a signature drop-thumb clawhammer style on the five-string banjo, an ability which has won her recognition and awards. [5] Adams' extensive knowledge of balladry has also been featured in National Public Radio's The Thistle & Shamrock program with Fiona Ritchie. [6]
Adams' ballad singing and musical performances have also been featured internationally, including the Celtic Colours International Festival in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. [7]
As a storyteller Adams often appears at major festivals including the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. [8] She also performed at the 1976 and 2003 Smithsonian Folklife Festival as part of The Bicentennial Celebration and Appalachia: Heritage and Harmony. [2]
Adams has been a regular performer with "A Swannanoa Solstice" in Asheville, North Carolina, alongside such artists as Al Petteway, Amy White, and Robin Bullock. [9] In 2004 she appeared at Art6 Gallery in Richmond, Virginia in conjunction with an exhibition of Sodom Laurel photographs by Rob Amberg. [10]
Adams performs and teaches regularly at the Swannanoa Gathering, a series of week-long workshops in various folk arts held in July and August on the campus of Warren Wilson College, near Asheville, North Carolina. She has taught workshops in banjo playing, unaccompanied singing, and storytelling.
In 1995, the University of North Carolina Press published Adams' first book, Come Go Home With Me, a semi-autobiographical collection of short stories. [11] The book was praised as "pure mountain magic" by Life magazine and was a winner of the 1997 Clark Cox Historical Fiction Award, North Carolina Society of Historians. [12]
Her second book was the novel My Old True Love, published in 2004 by Algonquin Books. [13] It was a finalist for the SIBA Book Award [14] and praised by Kirkus Reviews as "Deeply satisfying storytelling propelled by the desires of full-bodied, prickly characters set against a landscape rendered in all its beauty and harshness." [15]
Adams was named among eight North Carolina artists to receive the 2016 North Carolina Heritage Award for outstanding contributions to the state's cultural heritage. [16]
In 2013, Adams was one of nine individuals to receive a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. [17] [2]
In 1998 Adams received the Brown Hudson Award from the North Carolina Folklore Society in recognition of her valuable contributions to the study of North Carolina folk traditions. [18]
Adams has recorded several albums of ballads, songs, and stories including:
Buncombe County is a county located in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is classified within Western North Carolina. The 2020 census reported the population was 269,452, making it the 7th-most populous county in North Carolina. Its county seat is Asheville. Buncombe County is part of the Asheville, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Asheville is a city in and the county seat of Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the most populous city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 11th-most-populous city. According to the 2020 census, the city's population was 94,589, up from 83,393 in the 2010 census. It is the principal city in the three-county Asheville metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 417,202 in 2023.
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, contra dance, 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 along with the simple banjo-fiddle duet have historically been the most common configurations to play old-time music. The genre is considered a precursor to modern country music.
Fiona Karen Ritchie MBE is a Scottish radio broadcaster best known as the producer and host of The Thistle & Shamrock, an hour-long Celtic music program that airs weekly throughout the United States on National Public Radio (NPR). She also curates ThistleRadio, a 24/7 web-based music channel devoted to new and classic music from Celtic roots, and is co-author of The New York Times Best Seller Wayfaring Strangers.
Songcatcher is a 2000 drama film directed by Maggie Greenwald. It is about a musicologist researching and collecting Appalachian folk music in the mountains of western North Carolina. Although Songcatcher is a fictional film, it is loosely based on the work of Olive Dame Campbell, founder of the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, and that of the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp, portrayed at the end of the film as professor Cyrus Whittle. The film grossed $3 million in limited theatrical release in the United States, which was generally considered as a respectable result for an arthouse film release in 2001.
Bascom Lamar Lunsford 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."
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, and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.
Dan Levenson is an American old-time musician, storyteller, writer and educator. Specializing in Appalachian music, he sings, dances, and plays the five-string banjo, fiddle, and guitar.
Ola Belle Reed was an American Appalachian folk singer, songwriter and banjo player.
Dillard Chandler was an American Appalachian Folk singer from Madison County, North Carolina. His a cappella performances on compilation albums were recorded by folklorist and musicologist John Cohen.
The North Carolina Heritage Award is an award given out by the North Carolina Arts Council, an agency of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, in recognition of traditional artists from the U.S. state of North Carolina. The award was created in 1989.
Revere is an unincorporated community in Madison County, North Carolina, United States. It is also known as Sodom and Sodom Laurel.
Lenard Ray Hicks was an Appalachian storyteller who lived his entire life on Beech Mountain, North Carolina. He was particularly known for the telling of Jack Tales.
Mary Bullman Sands was an American singer of old traditional ballads during the early part of the 20th century. She was known locally as "Singing Mary" due to her singing talent and extensive knowledge of the words and melodies of many old-time traditional songs that had been passed down through previous generations. In 1916, English folklorist Cecil Sharp visited Madison County to collect and record traditional folk songs being sung in America that would have originated generations earlier in the British Isles. Sands sang 25 songs for him, 23 of which he included in his book, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians.
Robert Lynn 'Bobby' McMillon was an American traditional ballad singer, musician, and storyteller living in Lenoir, North Carolina. He was a 2000 recipient of the North Carolina Heritage Award.
Bertie Caudill Dickens (1902–1994) was an old-time banjo player from the community of Ennice in Alleghany County, North Carolina. Dickens was born in Grayson County, Virginia, but lived most of her life in Ennice.
Martin Douglas Wallin was a ballad singer and fiddler born in Madison County, North Carolina, and a recipient of a 1989 North Carolina Heritage Award.
Rob Amberg is a North Carolina photographer, folklorist, and chronicler of a small Madison County mountain community, Revere, North Carolina, which he depicted in his long-term photo project Sodom Laurel Album. Amberg anticipated the completion of highway I-26 from Charleston, South Carolina, to the Tennessee Tri-Cities area and, starting in 1994, began photographing, interviewing, and collecting objects to document the cutting of a nine-mile stretch of I-26 through some of North Carolina's most spectacular vistas and some of the world's oldest mountains—a project which contributed to the publication of his book The New Road. His documentary photography is archived in a collection at Duke University Library.
Mary Jane Prince Queen was an American ballad singer and banjo player. She was once called a "walking archive of mountain music" for her knowledge of the traditional music of Appalachia.
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