Review of Dust-to-Digital's Blind Alfred Reed: Appalachian Visionary

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

The Food We Eat, The Stories We Tell: Contemporary Appalachian Tables

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

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

“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

Review of Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics by Jean R. Freedman

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

Need to Know: West Virginia

A West Virginia reading list & selection of favorite sites by Courtney Balestier, Mike Costello & Emily Hilliard

Read on via Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown

Foreword to the New Edition of Folk Songs from the West Virginia Hills →

"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

Building a Broom By Feel: Jim Shaffer →

"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

Helvetia, a Traditional Swiss Village in the Hills of West Virginia →

"It’s not that Helvetia is inauthentic or fake—in fact, it’s quite the opposite. And to say that the presence of a Swiss community in the remote mountains of West Virginia is unlikely would deny the history and impact of the waves of immigration and relocation to central Appalachia by diverse cultural groups (there were several Swiss settlements scattered across the region in the late nineteenth century). But what makes Helvetia unusual resides not only in the cultural, historical, and social preservation of the nearly 150-year-old village but in something less tangible. There is an enchantment about the place that exudes from the hand-painted signs of coats of arms, Swiss phrases, historical markers, and the public buildings and homes adorned in Alpine gingerbread and bright floral patterns. It’s a magic that exists in the intimacy of a community whose families have been neighbors, friends, and colleagues for generations."

Read more via HUMANITIES Magazine

Meet One of the Last Remaining Broom Makers in Appalachia →

Along Davis Creek, in Loudendale, WV, outside of Charleston, there’s a long green building on the side of the road with the words “Charleston Broom and Mop Co.” painted on the side. That building is the workshop of James Shaffer, who at age 87, is the last hand-made commercial broom maker in the state. He first learned the trade in 1946, meaning he’s been making brooms for 70 years.

Read on via West Virginia Public Broadcasting

One Year In Helvetia →

Welcome to Helvetia, population 59. In a high mountain valley “an hour from anywhere,” the little town sustains the traditions of the Swiss immigrants who settled there in 1869. West Virginia state folklorist Emily Hilliard spent 2016 documenting Helvetia’s seasonal celebrations to understand how this isolated community draws strength from its land, its history, and its people.

Read on via Bitter Southerner