Music in the Southern Appalachians

The Southern Appalachians boast a rich tradition of sacred and secular music-making. As
is historically typical of rural areas, Appalachian music can be played on simple, homemade
instruments, or brought to life with the untrained and unaccompanied voice. For hundreds
of years, mountaineers—including African Americans and Native Americans—have created,
transmitted, and transformed an extraordinary corpus of dance tunes, ballads, and hymns, all of
which have roots in other cultures but have become distinctively Appalachian with the passage
of time. In this program, Dr. Esther Morgan-Ellis will provide an overview of instrumental and
vocal music traditions of the Southern Appalachians, including fiddle, banjo, ballad singing, and
sacred hymnody. Her presentation will combine live performance with historical recordings