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& MOUNTAINS. This quarterly magazine is provided as a service
to our members and features insights on Council activities throughout
the state, available grants and current issues in the humanities.
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New
Harmonies:
Celebrating American Roots Music
Tour
2009-2010
The
West Virginia Humanities Council has selected six community venues
for a state tour of the Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit
"New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music." The exhibit,
sponsored by Verizon, will travel the state from April of 2009 through
January of 2010.
The community venues hosting the exhibit are:
-
Brass
Tree Community Room, Williamson
August 28 - October 9
Youth Museum of Southern West Virginia, Beckley
October 16 - November 30
www.beckleymine.com/ym/ym-overview.cfm
Grant County Library Performing Arts Center, Petersburg
December 4 - January 24
www.GCArtsCouncil.googlepages.com
New
Harmonies was developed especially for rural audiences and small institutions
that typically do not have access to traveling exhibitions. It features
recorded music stations, photos, objects, and text relating the stories
of a variety of forms of roots music and performers the likes of Bill
Monroe, Mahalia Jackson, Blind Willie Johnson, The Chuck Wagon Gang,
The Carter Family, Bessie Smith, Bob Wills, Narciso Martinez, Woody
Guthrie, and many others.
 
(From l to r: Julie
Lamb and Becky Poe Henderson of the B&O Railroad Heritage Center
in Grafton, with Verizon sponsor representatives Ashley Stender and
David Ombres, attended a special preview of New Harmonies Exhibit
on May 28 at the B&O Center; New Harmonies on display in the restored
B&O Railroad Heritage Center; Preview guests made use of the listening
stations in the New Harmonies Exhibit.)
The Humanities Council will make available funds
for host institutions to develop local companion displays and community
programs expanding on the themes presented in the exhibit. Activities
will include celebrations of local music traditions.
The
participating communities will also benefit from the expertise of
one of West Virginia’s most respected bluegrass musicians, Buddy
Griffin, who will be serving as the scholar for the tour. Griffin
is a professor in the Fine Arts Department at Glenville State College
where he directs the only bluegrass music college degree program in
the country. He has traveled the United States for many years as a
fiddler and banjo player with such major bluegrass groups as Jim and
Jesse and the Virginia Boys and The Goins Brothers. He has been a
frequent performer on the Grand Ole Opry, in Branson, Missouri, and
also organizes music for the West Virginia State Folk Festival. Griffin
will work with each of the tour sites to help them plan their local
displays and programs.
 
(From l to r: The April
11 opening event for New Harmonies at the Ice House in Berkeley Springs
drew a full house; Representatives from the six New Harmonies tour
sites met in Berkeley Springs on April 7 and 8, 2009, to learn how
to assemble the exhibition that arrived in 19 crates.)
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