Storyteller, playwright and actress Karen Vuranch of Fayetteville has toured internationally – sharing the area’s rich Appalachian culture and history.
Here she shares a favorite Christmas story based on a traditional Scottish ballad.
Tag: Storytellers
Close Your Eyes and Imagine Christmases Past
Here’s a glimpse into Christmases past –
Fayetteville actress, playwright, and historian Karen Vuranch brings us a lovely passage from a piece written by Richard Matteson called Christmas in the Appalachian Mountains.
It’s a time when snow glistened across the roof of a small log cabin perched on a rocky slope, and smoke swirled out of a chimney from the old pot-bellied stove.
Inside the caroling has begun with Grandpa on banjo and Aunt Mary on fiddle. The toys are homemade, whittled from oak and decorated with corn silk and hickory stain.
It’s Christmas in the Appalachian Mountains!
New CD tells a mountain’s story before strip mining comes
Story telling is an old art form in Appalachia. One West Virginia story teller’s newest project, a CD of music and stories entitled The Mountain Came…
Story telling is an old art form in Appalachia. One West Virginia story teller’s newest project, a CD of music and stories entitled The Mountain Came Alive, attempts to modernize this tradition by addressing today’s concerns.
The CD combines Booth’s interest in music and storytelling with 20 tracks that follow the year in the life of a southern West Virginia mountain that is slated for strip mining.
Booth said he wanted to use traditional methods to tell a story to young people about Appalachia and events in the region that are happening now.
“I found that there were a lot of young folks who didn’t know quite know what Appalachia was or who they were and so I tried to put a lot of folk elements into this and also a lot of contemporary elements into it,” Booth said.
The mountain’s story starts in the winter and takes listeners through the seasons of life including the communities of people, animals, water and plants.
“As I have been telling stories around the country, particularly in Appalachia, one of the themes that comes up is mountain top mining and environmental issues,” he said.
“It tries show that all of these things are very closely related to a sense of place, which is what I believe is one of the strongest aspects of Appalachia, that we’re really related to a sense of place,” Booth said. “And forever and ever that place has been the mountains.”