33rd Annual Celebration of Traditional Music at Berea College Oct. 18-21

This year’s line-up of Festival Musicians for Friday and Saturday activities include 89-year old fiddler Joe Thompson, mentor of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and winner of a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Award; claw hammer banjoist Bob Carlin; Steve Terrill, multi-instrumentalist from North Carolina; Rabbit Hash String Band, named for their hometown in Kentucky; North Carolina ballad singer Betty Smith; fiddler Roger Cooper of Lewis County, Ky., with Michael Garvin playing guitar; the McGuire Sisters Gospel Singers from Rockcastle County; Cherokee Gospel Singers from Cherokee, N.C. and Frank Jenkins calling the Saturday afternoon dance. 

Besides taking place a week earlier, there are a couple of other changes to this year’s Celebration.  More activities are scheduled on Friday, including a noon lunch and performance by festival musicians, the music symposium at 3 p.m. which in previous years has taken place on Saturday, and a variety of evening jam sessions.  On Saturday, an all-day event ticket – $12 for adults; $6 for youth 10-17 – includes an unlimited number of performances and instrument workshops (please call to register) plus the Saturday evening Concert of Festival Musicians, a Celebration highlight. Saturday evening concert admission only is $10 for adults and $5 for youth. The concert begins at 7:30 in Phelps Stokes Auditorium. Daytime activities only on Saturday cost $5/3. Tickets may be purchased at the event locations. All other events are free and all locations are handicapped accessible.

Folklorists Michael and Carrie Nobel Kline will share music and oral histories from the Pennsylvania coalfields, highlighting ethnic diversity at Friday’s 3 p.m. Symposium, titled “Where the Coal Trains Load:  World Music from Eastern Pennsylvania.” The presentation will be in the Woods-Penniman Building Commons. On Saturday, workshops and performances, and an open mic session are lined up from 10 a.m – 2:30 p.m., following by an afternoon dance at 3 p.m. and the evening Concert at 7:30.  The Celebration concludes Sunday morning with a Traditional Gospel Sing at Union Church in Berea, at 9:30.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops are a group of young African-American musicians that have come to together to play the rich tradition of fiddle and banjo music of Carolinas’ piedmont. They draw on the musical heritage from the foothills of North and South Carolina and carry on the tradition of black musicians.  Making up the band are native Arizonan Dom Flemons who plays the jug and guitar, Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson of  the Carolinas’ Piedmont area on banjo and fiddle. They have been under the tutelage of Joe Thompson, said to be the last black traditional string band player, of Mebane, N.C., and strive to carry on the long standing traditional music of the black and white communities.

The Kentucky Arts Council, a state agency in the Commerce Cabinet, has provided funding for the 2007 Celebration with state tax dollars and federal funding  from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.