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Emily Hilliard

Folklorist | Writer | Media Producer
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Review of Dust-to-Digital's Blind Alfred Reed: Appalachian Visionary

May 21, 2020

In 2006, during his Seeger Session Tour, Bruce Springsteen added an old song from the early days of the recording industry to his live sets. He kept only one original verse, adding his own to comment on the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and to critique President Bush (or “president bystander” as he calls him at one show) for his subsequent inaction. In 2013, British reggae band UB40 released a regrettable version of the same song on their new album, also taking lyrical liberties, in this instance to reflect concerns over the global financial crisis. That song, “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live,” was composed in the Jazz Age by Southern West Virginia farmer and musician Blind Alfred Reed (1880–1956). It’s impossible to know how Reed—a deeply religious, lifelong Republican whose songs were heavily critical of capitalism—would feel about these subsequent versions, but he would undoubtedly be surprised by the song’s longevity. He recorded “How Can a Poor Man?” in New York on December 4, 1929, one week after the stock market crash. He would never record again.

Read on in the Journal of American Folklore

In Academic, Folklore, Music, West Virginia Tags review, Journal of American Folklore, folk music, West Virginia, folklore
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The Food We Eat, The Stories We Tell: Contemporary Appalachian Tables

November 1, 2019

Hilliard’s chapter “‘The Reason We Make These Deep Fat-Fried Treats:’ In Conversation with the Rosettes of Helvetia, West Virginia,” is included in the new collection, The Food We Eat, The Stories We Tell: Contemporary Appalachian Tables, edited by Elizabeth Engelhardt and Lora Smith and published by Ohio University Press.

Related Events:

Keynote with Courtney Balestier, Emily Hilliard, and Lora Smith at Hindman Settlement School’s Dumplin’s and Dancin’, Hindman, KY, November 2, 2019

Reading and Dinner at Holly Hill Inn with Elizabeth Engelhardt, Robert Gipe, Emily Hilliard, and Lora Smith, Midway, KY, November 15, 2019

Reading at Taylor Books with Courtney Balestier, Emily Hilliard, and Lora Smith , Charleston, WV, December 5, 2019

Related Media:

Elizabeth Engelhardt and Emily Hilliard on WEKU’s Eastern Standard

Order a copy via Ohio University Press

In Folklore, Academic, Books, Food, West Virginia, Ohio University Press Tags books, foodways, food, Appalachia, West Virginia, Helvetia
Photo by Emily Hilliard

Photo by Emily Hilliard

Conditions for All of Us: Emily Hilliard in Conversation with Emily Comer

October 1, 2019

“On February 22, 2018, West Virginia public school teachers and school service employees, most of them women, walked out of their classrooms in what would become a nine-day statewide strike, fighting for a 5% raise and affordable healthcare coverage. But what the teachers’ statements, speeches, and protest signs indicated was that this was not just a protest for personal compensation, but a struggle for better social conditions for the future of their communities.“

Read on via Southern Cultures

In Academic, Folklore, History, Interview, Photography, West Virginia Tags labor, Appalachia, West Virginia, West Virginia Teacher Strike, Southern Cultures
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Review of Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics by Jean R. Freedman

August 15, 2019

The first time ever I was struck by Peggy Seeger’s music was when I saw a video of her performing “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” the song her husband Ewan MacColl wrote for her in 1957. In the video, Peggy is probably in her late 40s, wearing a pink t-shirt and jeans, her hair cut short in a curly pixie cut. She’s seated alone on a stage, picking arpeggios on a small parlor guitar. Her voice, like her presentation, is unadorned aside from her natural vibratro, ringing out with incredible clarity out into the dark auditorium. It’s stunning. While that performance is what initially piqued my interest in Seeger, Jean R. Freedman’s new biography, Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics, is what indulged and sustained my curiosity. The book, of interest to folk song scholars and fans of Seeger alike, offers an intimate and considered portrait, fully contextualized by Freedman’s background as an academic folklorist and informed by her thirty-year friendship with the folk singer, activist, and member of the legendary Seeger family.

Read on in the Journal of the Society for American Music

In Academic, Folklore, Music, Review, Cambridge University Pres Tags Journal of the Society for American Music, review, Peggy Seeger, folk music
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Foreword to the New Edition of Folk Songs from the West Virginia Hills →

December 20, 2017

"Folk Songs from the West Virginia Hills and other folkloric documentation can serve as a mirror to show us the culture we have, but also what we’ve lost and gained along the way, for better or for worse. Throughout the collection, Gainer provides evidence of how folk songs are distilled democratic cultural nuggets of a community, conveying the values of its people. He declares, 'They are called folk songs because they belong to the people and not any one individual.' Folklorist Lynne McNeill says this another way: 'Group consensus shapes folklore, so folklore is a great measure of group consensus.' I, for one, am proud to live and work in a place where the group consensus is for singing."

Read on via West Virginia University Press

In Academic, Books, Folklore, History, Music, West Virginia Tags West Virginia, folk music, West Virginia University Press
James Shaffer

Building a Broom By Feel: Jim Shaffer →

November 10, 2017

"Jim Shaffer’s shop is dusty and smells like a horse stable—a comforting olfactory association that I suddenly realize has less to do with horses than with the rolled and bundled straw I see stacked high along the walls. Though the pole barn that houses Shaffer’s Charleston Broom and Mop Company is just a few miles from the capital city of Charleston, West Virginia, the unincorporated area where it sits along Davis Creek in Loudendale is a wooded, quiet, and close-knit community. Everyone who lives here knows Jim, and many people across the state know him too. At 87, Shaffer has been making brooms for seventy years and is the last handmade commercial broom maker in West Virginia."

Read on in Southern Cultures

In Folklore, Academic, Craft, Photography, West Virginia, Interview Tags Southern Cultures, Appalachia, UNC, West Virginia

“Written and Composed by Nora E. Carpenter” Song Lyric Scrapbooks, Home Recordings, and Self-Documentation →

March 4, 2016

Essay in Southern Cultures' Documentary Arts Issue, Spring 2016

Read on in Southern Cultures

In Feminism, Folklore, History, Music, Academic Tags Southern Cultures, UNC

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