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Fiddler In Floyd County, Virginia Amplifies Black Musicians In Old-Time Music

Appalachian old-time music is a confluence of many cultural traditions, including those of Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, and the Scots-Irish. Yet the contributions of Black and Indigenous musicians have often been denied and overlooked. In Floyd County, Virginia one man is working to amplify the participation of Black musicians in old-time music.

On a rainy evening in a community center in Blacksburg, Virginia, Earl White was teaching one of his fiddle students how to move the bow in a circular motion. He explained to the student that in old-time music, moving the bow in small circles helps create a drone that plays out underneath the melody notes.

The Fiddle Became An Appendage

Earl White (right) gives a fiddle lesson to a student at a community center in Blacksburg, Virginia. In addition to the technical instruction of playing, White also passes on knowledge about the cultural and historical context of the music.

White is in his 60s and goes by the name Fiddlin’ Earl White. “And then at some point I shortened that to ‘FEW,’” White said. “And after I thought about that I was like, ‘You know there’s a lot of truth to that. There are few Black fiddlers in the world today playing Appalachian string band music.’”

White lives on a farm in Floyd County, about 30 miles from Blacksburg. He came to old-time music by way of dancing. In the early 70s when he was a college student in Greenville, North Carolina, White and a group of friends got into clogging. “We would be clogging on the porch, clogging in the street. Clogging—basically clogging became a way of life,” White said.

They dubbed themselves the Green Grass Cloggers and began performing around the country at folk festivals and dance competitions.

Earl White (center) looks at the camera while performing with the Green Grass Cloggers. The Green Grass Cloggers came to prominence in dance, bluegrass, and old-time communities in the 1970s, and traveled the country performing at festivals and competitions.

One day, at a performance in Maine, White found himself backstage. “I was sitting in the green room, and sitting in the corner was this old Black man and he was playing the fiddle,” White said.

It was Papa John Creach, warming up to go on for Jefferson Airplane. “In all of our travels of clogging, there were never any Black fiddlers that I saw. And so here he was playing the instrument as a fiddle, and I decided at that point, I wanna do that,” White said.

From then on, the fiddle became an extra appendage for White. Those old-time festivals and fiddlers’ conventions became a learning opportunity. “I’d find a jam and I’d put my recorder under the seat of the fiddlers and just keep it running. And then I’d go and dance on my board,” White said.

White would watch how those fiddlers used their bows, and he would listen back to the recordings. One of White’s favorite players on the festival circuit was Tommy Jarrell, a renowned fiddler from Mount Airy, North Carolina. “I used to wake up to Tommy Jarrell. I would go to sleep to Tommy Jarell. I was humming Tommy Jarrell. I was always whistling Tommy Jarrell,” White said.

A photograph from Earl White’s collection showing old-time fiddler Tommy Jarrell playing in a jam. White stands behind Jarrell’s shoulder on the left-hand side of the photograph.

It Was Always Played Together

When White was coming up as a fiddler in the 1970s, he was often one of only a few Black people at old-time gatherings. But his playing would spark memories for the older white musicians, like Jarrell. Seeing White bow his fiddle reminded them of an era when it was commonplace for Black and white old-time musicians to play together. “A lot of what I advocate is that old-time music is not a Black music, it’s not a white music. It was always played together,” White said.

But White explained that at a certain point, Black people started to feel less welcome at old-time gatherings. “A lot of the young people who might have continued those traditions, didn’t find comfort in going to those festivals. So as a result, the music was being lost in the Black community,” White said.

Other kinds of music—like blues and jazz—also started becoming more popular. “People didn’t want to square dance anymore. They wanted to shake their booties,” White said.

But on occasion, Earl did run across other Black old-time players at festivals. Like the time he met Joe Thompson, a master fiddler from Mebane, North Carolina. “When he saw me standing there playing, I thought the guy was gonna faint, you know. Or die, or something,” White said. “He thought he was the only and the last Black fiddler in the whole world.”

Meeting Joe Thompson sent White on a quest to find other Black fiddlers. But he had trouble tracking down historical details. “You saw a lot of pictures of Blacks holding banjos and Blacks holding a fiddle, but there’s generally no names associated with the people,” White said.

White explained that this erasure of Black contributions is another reason that old-time has been less popular in Black communities in recent decades. “If you don’t see yourself represented in the music, then there’s no reason to feel like you’ve ever had any kind of connection to it,” White said.

Earl White checks the bow of one of his fiddles. In addition to teaching, White regularly performs with his band, the Earl White Stringband.

But White is trying to change that. He regularly gives presentations about the participation and influence of Black players, and he organizes events around Floyd County that promote Black roots musicians. He, and his wife and bandmate Adrienne Davis, have also started a music camp on their farm called Big Indian Music Camp. “To me, part of that preservation is teaching the younger people,” White said.

At this point, most of White’s fiddle students are white. But he is teaching his pre-teen and teenage sons to play. And he hopes that by being an ambassador, he can continue to perpetuate Black traditions in old-time music. “If a young Black person sees another Black person playing, then they can say, ‘Oh wow, I can do that!’ And might be inspired. And so that’s a lot of my focus outside of the fact that I just personally enjoy it. I just love it,” White said.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council. The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.

A Champion Guitar Player Continues the Family Legacy While Handing the Music Down

If you know one thing about the Newport Folk Festival, it’s probably this:

In 1965, folk wonder boy Bob Dylan took the stage with an all-electric band. He changed the course of rock music forever, but also enraged some traditionalists in the process. Pete Seeger was apparently so disturbed by the noise that night he threatened to cut the power with a hatchet.

But this story concerns a performance that happened the following year, at the 1966 festival. It was electric in a different way. No hatchets involved.

This performance occurred during the festival’s fiddle contest. Up to the mic stepped a man in a sports coat and slacks. He had a Colonel Sanders string tie around his neck, a fedora over his white hair and a fiddle under his chin. It was St. Albans, West Virginia’s own Clark Kessinger.

The 70-year-old Kessinger ripped into the traditional fiddle tune “Sally Ann Johnson,” dancing behind the microphone like a man a quarter of his age. The surviving footage is grainy, but you can see the wicked grin on his face.

He’s smiling because this kind of music just makes you happy. But he’s also smiling because he knows he just might be the best fiddle player alive. And because, just a few years before, he thought his days as a professional musician were over forever.

Kessinger was born in 1896. He started playing fiddle at a young age and, when he was still a kid, his dad would take him around to local honkytonks, where the boy earned more in tips in one night than his dad made all week.

Clark joined the Navy during World War I. After he got out, he started entering local fiddle contests — and taking home top prize every time. By the end of that decade, he was making best-selling records with his guitar-playing nephew Luke. The duo was billed as the Kessinger Brothers and their recording of “Wednesday Night Waltz” sold a million copies for Brunswick Records, making them one of the first country artists to achieve that level of success.

Then came the Great Depression, which put an end to the Kessinger Brothers’ recording career. Luke, a hard drinker, died of cirrhosis of the liver. Clark found work as a house painter. He got married — a few times — and raised a bunch of kids. He still played the fiddle for local dances but it seemed like his days as a professional musician were over.

Until the folk revival of the 1960s. A new generation of fans discovered those old Kessinger Brothers recordings. Interest was so high Clark went back out on the road. In 1964, at the age of 68, he took first place at the renowned Galax Fiddler Convention in Galax, Virginia. Two years later, he was at Newport. Two years after that, he played on the Grand Ole Opry. And in between all those high-profile gigs, he appeared at folk festivals all around the country.

His second chance at a music career ended almost as quickly as it began, though. In 1971, Clark was at the mic at yet another competition when he suffered a severe stroke. He collapsed right there onstage, and though he survived, he could no longer play fiddle.

Yet despite this tragic setback, Clark was about to usher in the next chapter of the Kessinger family’s musical legacy.

Not long before his stroke, Clark had a visitor at his St. Albans apartment. It was his nephew, Bob Kessinger and Bob’s 15-year-old son Robin.

Bob was an accomplished mandolinist, and had shown Robin his first chords on a guitar.

“That’s how I started playing. He needed a guitar player, so I started playing guitar with him,” Robin said.

Robin took to the instrument and started picking up songs anywhere he could, even from his Saturday morning cartoons.

“These really old cartoons you hear a lot of fiddle tunes on there. Like the buzzards flying, that’s ‘Arkansas Traveler.’”

He also learned songs from his dad’s recordings of this renowned old fiddler.

“Dad played Clark Kessinger albums and he had reel to reel tapes. I was indoctrinated that way. I was familiar with a lot of the tunes for as long as I could remember.’

So when Clark started sawing off a few traditional tunes — “Billy in the Low Ground” and “Done Gone” — Robin joined in on guitar.

“I backed him up. I played the chords,” Robin said. “He gave me a big compliment. He said ‘Bob, he sounds like Luke.’ I knew how Luke was.”

Luke, of course, was Clark’s late nephew.

After his stroke, Bob helped take care of Clark, so Robin got to spend even more time with him. And though he couldn’t play anymore, he still managed to pass down some of his musical knowledge to his great-nephew.

“He listened to all kinds of music. That’s one of the things I learned from him, was to listen to all kinds of music. And if you can use it in what you already know, you can make it better that way,” Robin said.

Robin took what he learned from Clark and began winning some contests of his own. He picked up titles in Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia and West Virginia. Just like Clark, Robin won first prize at Galax — though on guitar, not fiddle.

In 1985, he won the National Flatpicking Championship in Winfield, Kansas. He’s finished in the top five of that competition 10 times, more than any other competitor in history.

But for all the trophies, medals and ribbons he’s won through the years, there’s one that means more to Robin than any of the others.

Of all the plaques, ribbons and trophies he has received, Kessinger is most proud of his “Sammy.” The award is given by the Pinch Reunion to Good Samaritans who have made the world a better place.

The trophy looks a bit like an Oscar, but it’s called a “Sammy.” He was presented with it in 2001 at the annual Pinch Reunion in Pinch, West Virginia. Sammy is short for “Samaritan,” as in “Good Samaritan.” They give the award to people who have made the world a better place.

“It’s like a lifetime achievement for sharing my music and teaching,” Robin said.

Not only is Robin one of the most decorated musicians in American folk music, he has also dedicated the last four decades to teaching budding musicians like Bob Gilmore. Gilmore’s son Michael took lessons from Robin for a while. He lost interest when sports and other things came along. But years down the line, Gilmore ran into Robin at a music festival.

“I asked him if he was still giving lessons and he said ‘yeah,’” Gilmore said. “He said ‘I’ll take Michael back whenever.’ I said ‘Well, Michael’s not interested. I’m talking about me.’”

So he began meeting Robin every week at the Fret ‘n’ Fiddle guitar shop in St. Albans, where Robin keeps a small upstairs studio. That was 10 years ago. Their relationship is so mature now they interact less like teacher and student and more like two old buddies. Their lessons look more like living-room jam sessions.

“I’ve probably shown Bob more family tunes … I just keep digging up stuff I haven’t played in years,” Robin said.

Bob Gilmore, a longtime student of Robin Kessinger, keeps an eye on his teacher’s fingers as the pair play a traditional fiddle tune.

In fact, Robin schedules Bob as his last session for the day so they can take as long as they want.

“When he’s showing me stuff there always seems to be a story behind these tunes,” Gilmore said. “He might tell you where the song came from, what it’s about, what was going on at the time. So it‘s little more than the music you get with this, too.”

Clark’s music also lives on in the Kessinger family. Robin taught his son to play guitar and he’s picked up some contest wins of his own. His name is Luke.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting. The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.

Appalachian Folksinger Talks Parenthood, Pandemic And Livestreaming Lullabies

Elizabeth LaPrelle grew up performing music with her family in southwestern Virginia. Today, she is taking the tradition forward by playing with her own, young family for a social media audience that watched throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

If you’ve listened to Inside Appalachia, there’s a good chance you’ve heard LaPrelle’s music before, as one half of Anna & Elizabeth. That would be LaPrelle, who grew up in Rural Retreat, Virginia, and Anna Roberts Gevalt, who is now based in Brooklyn.

For a while, LaPrelle lived in Brooklyn, too, but eventually she and her husband, Brian Dolphin, moved back to southwestern Virginia to raise a family. They moved in just before the pandemic hit. In March 2020, the longtime performers and new parents took to Facebook Live and began weekly livestreams of lullabies and stories.

Inside Appalachia co-host Mason Adams spoke with LaPrelle to learn more, beginning with LaPrelle’s roots as a ballad singer who took up the tradition of regional legends like Texas Gladden.

***Editor’s Note: The following has been lightly edited for clarity.

LaPrelle: It started for me at a pretty young age. But I think my first memories of ballads, as such, like knowing that they were stories and being interested in learning them, and actually learning them and singing them would have been around 10 or 11 years old. I’ve learned Barbara Allen and I sang it at my summer camp talent show.

Adams: What initially led you away from your hometown of Rural Retreat?

LaPrelle: The short answer is just touring — being a musician and trying to live as a musician. I went away for college, and after four years, I went back to Rural Retreat. I really missed the mountains and wanted to focus on music ,and didn’t have a better idea than going back to my parents’ farm. But I would be out traveling on tour, mostly around the U.S., but also going overseas. I was doing shows in the duo, Anna & Elizabeth.

Then Anna moved from southwestern Virginia to Baltimore. So we would do a lot of our work around there as well. And then from Baltimore, she went to New York City, to Brooklyn. About a year after she moved to Brooklyn, I also moved to Brooklyn to be with my now-husband, then-boyfriend. We spent a couple years based out of the city, and again, touring a lot.

Adams: What was it that brought you and Brian to southwestern Virginia again?

LaPrelle: Having our kid, we thought, ‘Well, why don’t we go? We spent a couple years in New York. Why don’t we go to our place in Virginia? We can be on the farm. That seems like a nice place to have a young child and we’ll be near my parents, Noah’s grandparents, for a little while.’ So when Noah was just a couple months old, we moved. And then a couple months after that, a big pandemic. We had thought we would travel a little bit more last year, and also maybe look for another place to live, potentially a smaller city. We didn’t have the opportunity because we were in Virginia, and we pretty much stayed there and hunkered down.

Adams: I’m interested to hear you elaborate a little more on the pandemic and how it affected you as parents of a young child and as performing musicians. What’s that been like?

LaPrelle: Mostly enormous changes, not least of which, getting married and having a kid is really huge. Even before the pandemic, I had done a pretty big pivot to not traveling as much. When Noah was a young infant. I really wanted to be home, and I didn’t have anything planned. We were going to start getting out of our kind of parental bubble in March of 2020. So we didn’t. I’d already been doing lessons online, and so I made that my whole thing. I’ve actually really enjoyed teaching a bit more and teaching one-on-one. I’d done a lot of workshops, but not a lot of private lessons. And I like them, so I think I’m going to continue that even as things open up more.

My husband and I started doing a weekly livestream. Sometimes we read stories aloud and mostly we sing songs, just for whoever is tuning in at that moment. Now I’m starting to get the Facebook memories, and it’s us a year ago, holding like our itty bitty, breadloaf-sized baby. Now we just wait until he’s asleep because he has normal sleep hours. It’s also just very hard as a parent. It’s hard to be isolated just in your family. It’s really, really really really clear to me how much you really need community as a parent, and how the care of a child really should be spread over more people than just two.

LaPrelle maintains a Patreon page where she releases occasional songs. Dolphin also has a Patreon and a website. The two recently contributed two songs to a compilation titled “Old-Time Sweethearts – Vol. 1 & Vol. 2.”

Slavalachia: The New Music Tradition Uniting Across An Ocean, A Pandemic And A Revolution

This article was originally published by 100 Days in Appalachia, an independent, non-profit digital news publication incubated at the Media Innovation Center at the West Virginia University Reed College of Media. Sign up for their weekly newsletter here.

Belarusian musician and activist Siarhei Douhushau was in Chicago in March of 2019 on a U.S. tour presenting folk art and music from his eastern European home. Nadzeya Ilkevich, then a second-year graduate student at Ohio University, caught wind and lured her friend and fellow countryman to Athens, Ohio – an Appalachian foothill college town of about 40,000 – to perform traditional Belarusian songs using flutes and a hurdy gurdy, which is a hand-cranked hybrid of a violin and small piano.

Brett Hill was at Jackie O’s – a popular “uptown” brewpub – that night. Hill is the frontman for Hill Spirits, a modern Appalachian folk quartet based in southern Ohio.

“We asked Siarhei if he wanted to jam the next night,” Hill said. “Fortunately enough, he did want to…The evening was spent feasting, drinking, singing, shouting and growing to learn of each other’s traditions for the first time.”

Among the Madness, Someone Yelled, “Slavalachia!”

That evening, the namesake was born as both an Appalachian-Slavic folk ensemble and a cross-cultural folk alliance.

“As a cultural manager, this is the kind of collaboration I would like to see continue,” Ilkevich says.

She immediately grew the project, adding Maria Chichkova, of Torban Folk Band, from Lviv, Ukraine, to the Slavalachia lineup. Torban is a traditional ensemble that creates new arrangements around traditional Ukrainian acapella songs. “This is our traditional song transformed for a modern listener.”

Ben Stewart is a member of Brett Hill’s band Hill Spirits and traveled to eastern Europe in early 2020 for the Slavalachian music exchange.

According to Chichkova, traditional music in Ukraine is alive and well. But in Belarus, the health of traditional music, along with Belarusian culture, has long been tyrannized by centuries of Russian encroachment. Ilkevich says most families speak Russian as the primary language. The 2009 Census says about 70 percent of the population speak Russian at home.

“During Soviet times, and before Soviet times, the Russian government – and I’m not accusing the people – [was] trying to absorb…the Belarusian language and culture, and replace it with theirs,” Ilkevich says.

People grew disconnected from their traditional and folk music as these customs were increasingly portrayed through a Soviet lens, Ilkevich says.

Ilkevich says the situation in Belarus has only deteriorated during dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s 26-year reign. He is partial to the Soviet influence, she explains. “He changed the flag and symbol of the country. He tried to remove [the] Belarusian language from [schools].”

But in 2020, the political tension hit a climax when Lukashenko proclaimed himself the winner of what opposition leaders called a fraudulent election. Citizens poured into the streets in August last year for weeks of demonstrations, and neither the United States nor the European Union recognizes Lukashenko as the legitimate leader.

But Ilkevich says the uprising amidst a pandemic has stoked a fire of curiosity about Belarusian folk traditions among the people.

“Thanks to the revolution, we have a [real] boom of traditional culture,” she explains. “People started speaking [our] traditional language. They started being interested in their roots, to value the land they are from. Not just the culture, but even the land is endangered.”

In this file photo taken on Sunday, Aug. 23, 2020, a woman waves an old Belarusian national flag standing on the roof as Belarusian opposition supporters march to Independence Square in Minsk, Belarus. Protests broke out Aug. 9 after an election that official results said gave Lukashenko a sixth term in office, but that opposition figures and some poll workers said were manipulated. The nationwide demonstrations, some of which attracted up to 200,000 people, were the largest and most sustained challenge to Lukashenko in his 26 years of repressive rule.

Douhushau has been at the cultural front lines of the revolution. He says the COVID-19 pandemic is back-seat fodder compared to the revolution in his home country. “The pandemic became a good excuse for the current government to manipulate.”

Douhushau sarcastically says the borders are closed in Belarus because of COVID, but the government is allowing concerts to continue.

Douhushau explains the uprising in Belarus initially started with people rallying around a foreign song and a generic flag of white stripes, but has shifted toward the traditional songs and the historic flag of the country – symbols and songs of a country before Russian influence.

“We find our identity in a traditional culture. Everything is in there: our songs, our language, our genetic code,” Douhushau says. “Traditional song accompanies all the people’s protests and uprisings – the most powerful, the most emotional and the most influential.”

From Slavic Traditions to Appalachia – A World Away

Two months before the world locked down and seven months before the Belarusian revolution began, Appalachian musician Brett Hill and his Hill Spirits bandmate Benjamin Stewart flew to eastern Europe. The January 2020 trip was the first full meeting of Ilkevich’s Slavalachia brainchild.

Ilkevich, Chichkova, Douhushau, Hill and Stewart met in the airport in Lviv, Ukraine, where Chichkova held a white markerboard with Slavalachia inscribed on it.

“We were trying to film, but the guards wouldn’t let us,” Ilkevich remembers. “Siarhei started playing flutes, and the guards kicked us out.”

Left to right, Marichka Chichkova, Brett Hill, Siarhei Douhushau and Benjamin Stewart – the full Slavalachia lineup – first met in the Lviv, Ukraine, airport January 16, 2020.

It was during this trip, Hill says, he started to understand how both Slavic traditional music and Appalachian traditional music were so closely tied to one another. They are less about sonics and more about connections to their respective cultures-at-large.

Over the following weeks, members of Slavalachia deepened their connections with one another and each other’s respective folk traditions. They traveled around eastern Europe, practiced in small villages near the Białowieża Forest of Belarus, deep in the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine, and ultimately played their first live concert (remember those?) at Lviv’s Dzyga, a major cultural center.

Douhushau opened. Hill and Stewart played next and even taught a Georgian men’s vocal choir a moonshiner song.

“They just loved that stuff….It just lit the room on fire. Absolutely lit it on fire,” Hill says.

The Ukrainians went third, and the full supergroup – all three acts – played out their inaugural set as the closer to the first official Slavalachia showcase.

Ilkevich, the manager and producer of the project, was thrilled.

“They were jamming. Some other musicians came to the stage. The concert was one hour longer than we were supposed to have. It was big!”

Hill witnessed the health of Ukrainian traditional music as a major component of Ukrainian culture, but in Belarus, he saw the polar opposite. Instead of being celebrated, in early 2020, traditional Belarusian music wasn’t really known by its people.

Brett Hills is the frontman of Hill Spirits, an Appalachian folk band based in southwestern Ohio.

“Appalachian traditional music finds itself between these two in terms of their stages of cultural health,” he said. “Appalachian folk music is not going anywhere, but it has not earned respect that it might have even 100 years ago, when Bascom Lamar Lunsford was performing for the Queen of England.”

In other words, Appalachians aren’t exactly sitting around the dinner table singing traditional songs like Ukrainians might, but no dictator is trying to sweep their heritage under the rug like in Belarus either.

“I still get messages from Ukrainians…asking when we’re going to come back and perform more of that music,” Hill says. “[The result has been] my musical project, Brother Hill, being about three times as listened to in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and eastern Europe than in the U.S.”

“That solidifies it, too. The foreigners dig this Appalachian music a little more than the Americans do!”

Before Slavalachia, Douhushau says he knew nothing of Appalachian music.

“If I was searching this on the internet, I would never be interested in it. When I met [Appalachian musicians] personally, it opened this music for myself. I started to understand it and feel it. We started to improvise with that music and that opened my soul towards it. “

Chichkova echoes that she had zero previous knowledge of Appalachian music, but she says there is familiarity with her Ukrainian traditions. She hears it as music of the mountains, of nature, and “…about people and relationships. We are very connected to each other. And now our music is connected…The spirit is the same…All traditional music speaks one language.”

Before the Americans Returned to Ohio, Slavalachia Began Carving its Next Cross-cultural Exchange

But then Ilkevich says, “COVID f*@!ed everything up – beautifully!”

Plans were in the works for the next collaboration in the U.S. when the virus essentially shut the world down. Athens, Ohio, Mayor Steve Patterson invited Torban to showcase Ukrainian music in venues throughout the college town where Douhushau had played the year prior. She says the City of Lviv was ready to sponsor the trip to promote Ukrainian culture abroad. The Americans started scheming their return to Ukraine to record an album with Douhushau as the full Slavalachia outfit.

Brett Hill says his work on the Slavalachia collaboration has taught him about the similarities of Slavic and Appalachian music traditions.

Even with COVID, the project has not been fully put on hold.

During 2020, the musicians had what Hill calls a light-medium success recording remotely in response to Lukashenko’s controversial re-election in Belarus. Musicians half a world away used digital platforms to continue communicating and practicing, even recording tracks that were sent back-and-forth – tracks that were a direct response to the political uprising in eastern Europe, a resistance piece.

“We utilized a song that I have been singing since I was a little boy, called ‘Which Side Are You On?’” Hill says, a song widely known for its use during various protest movements throughout history, especially in Appalachia. “My father was a union man, his father before him was a union man, workers carpenters, elevator operators…This song is a song that reins true in hills of Appalachia or streets of Belarus.”

Filmmakers in Ohio, Belarus and Ukraine gathered footage, and a music video for the song was cut and released in support of the uprising. The video, like the song, was cut and assembled from three remote locations. It’s been viewed nearly 9,000 times.

Despite kicking out one track, the musicians are much more eager to play together in person rather than in a virtual space. They have recently put the videoconference practice on hold.

“Unfortunately, a monitor does not give energy,” Chichkova says. “I like to feel live bodies…I think it’s normal because it’s an energy.”

Ultimately, the hybrid of styles among these differing folk traditions presents an opportunity for tangible collaboration and ongoing camaraderie, Hill says of Slavalachia.

Ben Stewart. along with bandmate Brett Hill, played traditional Appalachian folk music in early 2020 for audiences in Ukraine and Belarus, before the COVID-19 pandemic essentially closed down in-person cultural exchanges around the world.

“The point of Slavalachia is to band together, make super dope music that has never been – as far as we can tell – made before by the fusion of these three traditions, and also help support each other’s not only musical projects…but support each other’s folk traditions.”

Hill says he hopes to travel to Ukraine to perform once coronavirus restrictions begin to loosen up – and when Douhushau can find time to travel during the Belarusian revolution.

For now, Ilkevich is awaiting a transfer from Lviv to Prague, where she will continue to work in cultural promotion in the Czech Republic. One of the many productions on her post-COVID to-do list is Slavalachia. She wants to keep filming and compile the footage into a documentary – her husband is a documentary filmmaker.

“I’m keeping everybody together and watering Slavalachia-land for them to grow.”

Chad J. Reich is a freelance journalist, multimedia producer and MFA candidate at the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University. His MFA documentary “A Monolithic Folly: Fracking Colorado’s North Fork Valley,” was named a Finalist in the Student World Awards. In June 2021, Chad will join Western Colorado University as the official photographer and videographer.

Editor’s Note: Two characters in this story speak English as a secondary language, and one speaks only Belarusian. Quotes have been edited for clarity but retain accuracy and authenticity.

Folktales And Music Bring To Life The W.Va., Welsh Connection

Before the pandemic hit, our Inside Appalachia team was planning a reporting trip to Wales as part of our ongoing folkways project, as the country has a strong historical connection to Appalachia that we wanted to explore. The trip’s been postponed, but in a special report as part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Project, Caitlin Tan interviewed two Welsh storytellers who through their craft bring us artistic parallels between our region’s sister country.

Wales, Appalachia, COVID-19

They called it “The World Turned Upside Down.” In the 18th and 19th century the British monarchy took over Wales and the Industrial Revolution began. Thousands of poorer farmers were displaced, left with no land or work, so they sailed West, eventually finding themselves in Appalachia. This continued to happen for hundreds of years.

“People were displaced from here and then coming over to Appalachia and displacing people who live there,” said Peter Stevenson, a professional storyteller, artist and folklorist who lives in Wales. “So, it’s not necessarily a particularly nice story, but there’s a lot of folktales behind that.”

One of Peter Stevenson’s drawings depicting a part of his story, ‘The War of the Little Englishman.’

Peter spent the last few years writing about this complex period in history and about the resulting connection between Wales and Appalachia. The tales have culminated into a book called “The Moon-Eyed People.”

In a way, these old stories help us understand ourselves and the times we are living in, Peter said. Even the title, “The World Turned Upside Down” seems familiar right now.

“And I don’t think it’s too much a stretch of the imagination to kind of realize we’re probably in one of those right now, in a very different way,” he said. “But it’s in a human emotional level. We’re upside down. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.”

Rooted In The Land

West Virginia Public Broadcasting interviewed Peter for a story last year when he hosted an art exhibit in Morgantown featuring Welsh and West Virginian artists, exploring the unique folklore connections between the two regions. Peter has family in the Mountain State, which initially sparked his interest in the connections between these two places.

He said that through the centuries of immigration Welsh and Appalachian folklore have naturally influenced one another.

“Geographically, they’re very similar landscapes, you know, mountains, woods, you have the big rivers, we have the sea, but there’s this strong connection between the people and the land,” he said. “And the thing that comes out of that connection, it’s stories and music, folk culture, buildings, all the things that are rooted in the landscape that people respond to and see.”

The Welsh countryside on a WVPB scouting trip in December, 2019. Peter Stevenson said he sees a lot of similarities in the Appalachian and Welsh landscapes.

The Craft Of Storytelling

When Peter tells a story, one feels like a kid again – sitting crisscross, entranced by the vivid tale.

As Peter has retold these old folktales for audiences, he has adapted them – sometimes just taking the idea of an old story and writing it using his own folklore research.

In live performances, Peter’s artwork typically accompanies each story. He often tells Welsh tales using an Appalachian storytelling device called the crankie. Basically, it is a scroll that moves horizontally, depicting hand drawn or painted images.

The crankie scroll that Peter designed for the story “The War of the Little Englishman,’ set in front of the actual old ruins from the tale.

In the book “The Moon-Eyed People,” Peter intentionally used white, black and red in his drawings. He said he hoped the colors conveyed the tense times. He drew the faces of the characters, often including animals, to look inherently friendly; however, the scenes and the small details often depict things from one’s nightmares – a group of angry villagers burning a castle down, a girl with wolf ears, and little goblins and fairies emerging from a fairytale book, to name a few.

“I can tell a great long story and I know hundreds of stories, but how do I remember them? Well, I don’t remember word for word,” Peter said. “What I do remember are pictures. I see images. So, I know the narrative of a story. I know what’s going to happen one moment to the next, because I can see the pictures.”

Featuring The Cello

Lately, Peter’s storytelling performances about Wales and Appalachia have included music.

Specifically, music performed by Ailsa Hughes. She is a Welsh musician, storyteller and artist.

She wrote the song “Messenger of the Darkness,” to accompany one of Peter’s stories – adapting it from old Appalachian and Welsh folktales about death, featuring an owl, an ominous symbol in many cultures.

messengerofdarknessWEB.mp3

Listen to Ailsa's song 'Messenger of Darkness.'

Ailsa’s voice is hauntingly beautiful. Whether in Welsh or English, her voice harmonizes with her cello – creating a reverberation that fills one’s whole room, even if it is coming through a computer, several thousand miles away.

Although Ailsa has not traveled to Appalachia, she said she is inspired by landscapes and the old folktales of both countries. In fact, during the pandemic Ailsa has been using music, sounds and the landscape to bring people together, through something called “sound mapping.”

One of Peter’s drawings from the story, ‘Rhyfel y Sais Bach’ or in English, ‘The War of the Little Englishman.’

“I get people to listen at the moment from their gardens or just put their windows open and creatively depict the sounds they’re hearing in the landscape,” she said. “So, like drawing and writing words and finding ways of describing the sounds that they’re hearing.”

Melody Rooted In Tradition

Ailsa started playing the cello at age seven. It was only later as an adult that she started writing songs, using them as a storytelling device and, as part of her band duo Tinc y Tannau, sometimes finding lyrical inspiration from old Welsh texts.

“This sense of finding, belonging that I feel really present with that at the moment, this need to connect with my ancestors and to connect with the place where I am, the place where I feel at home in a deeper and deeper way and I think through the arts we can do this,” she said.

Ailsa has also taken to the dulcimer, an ancient stringed instrument from Western Europe that was later modified into the mountain dulcimer in Appalachia. It is featured prominently in a lot of the region’s old-time music.

Ailsa recorded herself playing the dulcimer in her own unique, Welsh style, across the Atlantic Ocean, nearly 4,000 miles away.

dulcimer.mp3

Listen to Ailsa's dulcimer improvisation.

“I can’t profess to be able to play this, but I couldn’t not play it a little bit for you,” she said.

Ailsa and Peter had plans to perform their stories and songs this summer in Wales, but the pandemic canceled their shows. However, they recorded themselves and shared their collaboration with us at WVPB.

Peter’s drawing of one of the several castles burnt down in the ‘War of the Little Englishman.’

The story and song they performed is about the “World Turned Upside Down” period in Wales. The story is called ‘Rhyfel y Sais Bach‘ in Welsh or, ‘The War of the Little Englishman,” and it is written and told by Peter Stevenson, and the Welsh hymn is sung by Ailsa Hughes.

storyandsongWEB.mp3

Listen to the story "Rhyfel y Sais Bach."

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.

Storyteller Uses Song To Inspire Children To Learn About Nature

These days, kids are spending less time exploring the outdoors and more time in front of screens.

A 2019 report by the independent non-profit Common Sense Media found that on average, 8-to-12 year-olds in the United States spend approximately five hours on entertainment screen media every day. But numerous studies show that time outside is great for kids, helping them reduce stress and stay healthy.

In a special report exploring folkways traditions, as part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Project, reporter Saro Lynch-Thomason explores how one North Carolina naturalist is using storytelling and song to get kids excited about the natural world.

Using Folklore to Learn About Nature

On a humid afternoon near Leicester, North Carolina about twenty people tromp through a field behind naturalist Doug Elliott. They are participating in a plant walk, exploring trees, flowers and herbs. Doug leads the group to a large tree, turns around and challenges them all to a riddle.

“Hidey hidey hi, hidey hidey hey

There’s a big black stain in my driveway

High as a house, low as a mouse

Got more rooms than anyone’s house.

Hey diddle high, hey diddle, diddle.

Look inside there’s a possum in the middle.

What is it?”

One person in the crowd calls out the answer, “Black walnut!” Gesturing to the tree behind him, Doug explains that black walnut trees grow high as a house, while their nuts fall low as a mouse. But, he says, what about the “possum in the middle?”

Doug takes out a black walnut shell cut in half that looks just like a possum’s face, with a narrow head and small, black eyes. Everyone “oohs” and “ahs” at this small, delicate discovery.

For more than 40 years, Doug has been telling stories and singing songs about nature, using riddles, songs and lore to engage audiences. As a child, he loved catching bumblebees in jars and exploring the woods and swamps around his home.

But it was not until after graduating college that Doug realized his passion for educating others about nature. It started when Doug began to grow his own food.

“I was an art major. I was totally unemployable,” he says. “And I thought, if I’m going to be an artist I better start growing a garden. I started growing the garden, all these weeds came up!”

But Doug says a friend had given him a book called “Stalking the Wild Asparagus” by wild food enthusiast Euell Gibbons, and after reading it Doug realized the weeds growing in his garden were not useless. Some were even more nutritious than the plants he was trying to grow.

“It kind of opened the world to me,” he says. “I got so excited about that, I started giving talks about nature, or useful wild plants.”

Since then, Doug has made a career out of storytelling living in North Carolina. He says he settled in Appalachia because people here have a deep connection to the land and they are willing to share what they know.

Now in his 70s, Doug uses storytelling to help kids learn about nature at a time when most are spending less and less time in it.

One of the kids inspired by Doug’s work is five-year-old Forest Herschman.

Forest and his father Kevin live in a house on a rural mountainside in Barnardsville, North Carolina. During the evening, one can hear tree frogs and crickets right outside their door.

Forest spends a lot of time in the woods, watching tadpoles and deer. He can even name his favorite local trees.

Doug conducts an evening performance at the Firefly Gathering. Doug’s performances typically include traditional songs, riddles, and folk tales from Appalachia and the American South.

“I like pine trees,” Forest says. “And I like maple trees so we can tap them and get the sap!”

A few years ago, Forest found some second-hand tapes of Doug’s stories and songs and was mesmerized, Kevin says..

“There was probably a three or four or five even month period where he would listen to these Doug Elliott tapes like every day,” Kevin says. “He learned how to work the tape player. He would sit down on my bed and listen to Doug Elliott for 25 or 30 minutes, easy.”

One of Forest’s favorite stories by Doug is about a non-venomous snake, called a black rat snake. It lives near farms and eats rodents. The story is about a time that Doug gently squeezed a black rat snake to help it regurgitate a plastic egg.

Kevin says not too long ago he and Forest spotted a black snake near their house. But Forest was not scared, he was excited because he had heard songs and stories about snakes. Upon hearing about this encounter, Doug just smiles.

“That warms my heart,” Doug says. “You ask me why I’m doing this, that might be one of the reasons.”

It is just one example of the many ways that Doug’s stories help kids take delight in the natural world around them.

This story is part of the I nside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council. The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.