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Overview

The Berea College Appalachian Music Fellowship Program has been made possible by a grant from the Anne Ray Charitable Trust established by the late Margaret Anne Cargill of La Jolla, California. The fellowship program supports graduate students, faculty, public school teachers, and/or performers in one to three month residencies for the purpose of conducting research in Berea’s collection of non-commercial traditional music and to promote the preservation of and access to that music. Fellowship stipends are $3000 per month.

Brian Harnetty (April 2006) focused on identifying and analyzing traditional music for incorporation in a large-scale multiple media work entitled american winter. Brian is from Columbus, Ohio, and received his Master of Music in Composition degree from the Royal Academy of Music in London in 2000. Recently he has served as visiting professor of music at Kenyon College and is presently collaborating on an energy related video project with Appalshop. Further information about Brian's fellowship research and audio compositions is available on a separate web page.

Erynn Marshall (April - June 2006) primarily explored eastern Kentucky fiddle styles and song traditions following on similar research conducted in West Virginia begun in 1998. She is from British Columbia and is a fiddler, ethnomusicologist and author of the book Music in the Air Somewhere: The Shifting Borders of West Virginia's Fiddle and Song Traditions, recently published by the West Virginia University Press. Erynn’s work at Berea included transcriptions of fiddle tunes by Hiram Stamper, J.P. Fraley, Santford Kelly and others. She also interviewed members of the Stamper family and made a number of field recordings including a heretofore undocumented Old Regular Baptist congregation in Lincoln County. Her fieldwork involved meeting many resident musicians and visiting local, traditional music gatherings in Rockcastle, Garrard, Knox, Pike, Knott and Rowan counties as well as the Berea area. With banjoist Chris Coole she brought her residency to a close June 20th with an on campus concert that included several of the fiddle pieces and tunings she studied while at Berea. Further information about Erynn's fellowship research is available on a separate web page.

Ajay Kalra (June - July, 2006) is a Ph.D. student in Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1999 he left behind a medical career in India to study bluegrass and country music performance at East Tennessee State University. There he earned an M.A. in Liberal Studies and became deeply involved in researching the music and culture of the region. He served as an assistant editor for the Encyclopedia of Appalachia, for which he wrote a number of articles on Appalachian music. While at Berea he focused on analyzing the repertoires and playing styles of the seventeen African American performers who have appeared at Berea’s Celebration of Traditional Music since its beginning in 1974. Further information about Ajay's fellowship research is available on a separate web page.

Contact Us

Inquiries should be sent to:

Harry Rice
Special Collections & Archives
Berea College
Berea, KY 40404
harry_rice@berea.edu

Other Berea Archival Resources

Nora Carpenter Traditional Music Collection, SAA 108
Song lyrics, poems, and sound recordings authored or collected by Nora E. Carpenter of Magoffin County, Kentucky, mostly during the period 1920 - 1960. Also included are numerous clippings of published song lyrics, poetry, and community history, along with a few song books published by regional country music radio performers during the 1940s and 1950s. Seven self recorded reel-to-reel audio tapes document Nora Carpenter’s singing, banjo and harmonica playing during the 1960s-1970s. The recordings have been digitized for preservation and CD copies are available for listening. Tune titles, performer names, and locations are searchable via the Sound Archives page, an in-house database or printed index. 3 ms boxes

Cash Gospel Quartet, SAA 109
Radio program sound recordings, program play lists, published song books, photographs, and personal appearance programs documenting the radio performing career of the Cash Quartet from Rockcastle County, Kentucky. Members included Walter Cash and his wife Reba; a sister, Joanne; and R.H. Hamm. They did not make commercial recordings. However, during the late 1950s and much of the 1960s they had their own weekly program on Renfro Valley radio station WRVK and occasionally appeared on John Lair’s Renfro Valley Gatherin’ heard over Louisville’s WHAS and other stations. Their non-radio work included frequent local and regional monthly sings and singing conventions, especially those in Kentucky’s Pulaski and Laurel Counties. The recordings have been digitized for preservation and CD copies are available for listening. Tune titles, performer names, and locations are searchable via the Sound Archives page, an in-house database or printed index. Several can be heard online. 2 ms boxes

Josiah Combs Collection, 1910-1960, SAA 71
Typescript of writings and collected folklore by Knott County, Kentucky, native and noted folklore scholar, Josiah Combs. Topics include ballads and songs, Appalachian linguistics, and scatology. 3 ms boxes

Buell Kazee Collection, 1946-1979, SAA 54
Correspondence, articles, photographs, and sound recordings documenting the career, repertoire, and musical talent of Buell Kazee, Kentucky folk singer, banjo player, and Baptist minister. Performance and interview recordings are particularly notable for their extensive documentation of Kazee’s distinctive banjo fingering techniques and tunings. Tune titles, performer names, and locations are searchable via the Sound Archives page, an in-house database or printed index. 3 ms boxes

Bradley Kincaid Papers, 1923-1988, SAA 13
Correspondence, photographs, interview transcripts, clippings, songbooks, sheet music, and other printed material documenting the career of Kentucky country music radio pioneer, Bradley Kincaid. Tune titles, performer names, and locations are searchable via the Sound Archives page, an in-house database or printed index. 14 ms boxes

John Lair Papers, 1930-1984, SAA 66
Correspondence, photographs, radio scripts, sound recordings, interview transcripts, and other printed material documenting the life and work of Rockcastle County, Kentucky native, John Lair, founder of the Renfro Valley Barn Dance. Tune titles, performer names, and locations are searchable via the Sound Archives page, an in-house database or printed index. 79 ms boxes

Bascom Lamar Lunsford Collection, 1874-1973, SAA 29
Correspondence, photographs, diary photocopies, folk song lyrics, interviews, sound and video recordings documenting the career of NorthCarolina folk music scholar and festival organizer, Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Tune titles, performer names, and locations are searchable via the Sound Archives page, an in-house database or printed index. 10 ms boxes

Talitha Ethel Powell McClure Ballad Collection, 1915-1980, SAA 32
Handwritten lyrics to fifty-three ballads collected by Berea College student, McClure from her mother, Talitha Powell, during the 1915-16 school year. The Elder Powell later sung several of these songs for ballad scholar, Cecil Sharp on his 1917 Berea visit. 1 ms box

McLain Family Band Records, SAA 86
Correspondence, concert / bluegrass festival programs, advertising material, photographs, sound and video recordings that document the McLain Family Band’s performing activity between 1968 and 1989. 52 ms boxes

James Watt Raine Ballad Collection 1908-1949, SAA 6
Ninety ballads and songs collected by James Watt Raine during the time he taught at Berea College, from 1906 to 1939. 1 ms box

Doc Roberts Papers, 1910-1938, SAA 75
Correspondence, recording contracts, royalty statements and fan mail documenting the commercial recording and radio work of Kentucky fiddler, Doc Roberts. 3 ms boxes

Leonard Roberts Papers, 1950-1983, SAA 57
Audio recordings, and transcriptions of folklore narrative collected by noted Kentucky folklorist, Leonard Roberts. Story and tune titles, performer names, and locations are searchable via the Sound Archives page, an in-house database or printed index. 60 ms boxes and 15 card file boxes

John F. Smith Traditional Music Collection, 1915-1940, SAA 5
Several hundred ballads, songs, fiddle, and banjo tunes, some with musical notation, collected from Berea College students during the early 1900s by John F. Smith. Also included are lists of musical instruments played in the students’ home communities and descriptions of house dances and singing schools they participated in.4 ms boxes

William H. Tallmadge Baptist Hymnody Collection, 1968-1980, SAA 33
Correspondence, sound recordings, notebooks, church association minutes, and hymnbooks documenting Tallmadge’s study of Old Regular, Primitive and United Baptist singing traditions in Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina, during the 1960s and 1970s. Song titles, performer names and locations are searchable via an in-house database. 17 ms boxes

Jeff Titon Kentucky Traditional Music Collection, 1990-1996, SAA 93
Fifty-seven audio and ten video field recordings of interviews and performances that mainly document southeastern Kentucky Old Regular Baptist singing traditions 1990-1996. Also documented are the repertoire and playing style of southern Kentucky fiddler, Clyde Davenport 1990-1991. Included as well is an undated, published video, “A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle” (Landis Family gospel singers of Granville County, North Carolina) produced by Titon associate, Tom Davenport. Tune titles, performer names, and locations are searchable via the Sound Archives page, an in-house database or printed index.

Mary Wheeler Ballad Collection, 1917-1982, SAA 76
Ballad transcriptions, correspondence, clippings and photographs documenting Mary Wheeler’s collecting efforts while teaching at Hindman Settlement School in 1926. 2 ms boxes

D. K. Wilgus Folklore Collection, 1918-1989, SAA 67
Kentucky ballads, songs, stories, sayings, legends, and local histories that Wilgus collected directly and through students while teaching at Western Kentucky University 1950-1962. Of equal importance are the sizable folksong and ballad files that Wilgus obtained from such earlier folklore scholars as Josiah Combs and E.C. Parrow whose study of Kentucky folklore date to the turn of the nineteenth century. 12 ms boxes