Mountain Bluegrass

March 8, 2009 8:51 AM

Music in the Digital Library of Appalachia provides an unprecedented resource for study of repertoire, technique, lore, and the musical interchanges among the region's traditional musicians. Once you know what you like, it's easy to find the music live with Blue Ridge Music Trails. Meet musicians who have grown up with that music, visit settings in which Blue Ridge folk music thrives, see traditional dancing, and in many cases, take part in the festivities. The Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail, winds through the mountains of Southwest Virginia. Along the trail, the Bluegrass, Old Time, and Traditional Country music is as beautiful and rugged as the landscape itself. [previous 1, 2]
posted by netbros (12 comments total)

This is great! Digging through it now.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 9:04 AM on March 8, 2009

This is a treasure trove.

My goodness sir, you have done us all a great service. There's nothing quite like some foot-stompin' bluegrass to get you breathing in the morning.
posted by baphomet at 9:05 AM on March 8, 2009

Congratulations sir, you have made me homesick.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:06 AM on March 8, 2009

Great post!
posted by Miko at 9:14 AM on March 8, 2009

If you happen to be in the area, you can also hear the students in the ETSU Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music program perform :)
posted by Mouse Army at 9:14 AM on March 8, 2009

When I was in college in Blacksburg, the Galax Fiddler's Convention was on my agenda every year. Good times, great music.

It's worth the trip, if'n you like bluegrass.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 10:03 AM on March 8, 2009

It's great that they're making this stuff available and all, but really the card-catalog type interface is just terrible for helping complete newbs like me explore the genre. I wish these libraries would team up with some web design students to implement features like a forum, listing popular songs by user votes, etc so that I can say "well I can start with these songs that at least some people like" and then move on from there. At least they had those keywords on the main page to help me guess at what I might like.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 10:31 AM on March 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

Already knew about the Digital Library of Appalachia since way back, but on behalf of all those for whom this is a new discovery, I'd like to offer a hearty thank you, netbros. Nice post.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:30 PM on March 8, 2009

If I'd known about the digital archive in the past, it'd fallen off my radar. Thanks for bringing it back to my attention. My people come from the mountains of Appalachia, and the only recording I have of my great-grandfather's voice, is of him singing Barbara Allen. Thanks again!
posted by Atreides at 5:36 PM on March 8, 2009

When web design students team up with libraries, what you get is an unmaintanable mess of PHP without even a nonce of a thought given to security, global variables this way and that. And then they want PHPBB and a bunch of directories sent to 777, and before you know it spambots are camped out on your shiny new forum. When you go to wipe it out and reinstall, you don't even know what modules you need, because it's completely undocumented, and of course that web design student has graduated and moved on to who knows where. It might have been worth it, though, if more than nine people actually signed up for it and used their profiles more than three times, but they didn't.

Yeah, maybe a popular song feature might be nice, but the last thing it needs is implementation by a web design student.
posted by adipocere at 8:01 PM on March 8, 2009

Fabulous. Thank you.
posted by OmieWise at 6:49 AM on March 9, 2009

Thank you so much for posting this, this really made me miss North Carolina. I have a friend, also a displaced Carolinian, who is learning the banjo and is going to die when I forward this to him.
posted by bradbane at 1:38 PM on March 9, 2009