RVANews

Chesapeake Bay Crab Pots: Marc Bershaw

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:42:21 +0000

Crab Pot Building
Reedville, Virginia

The Chesapeake Bay is famous for its blue crabs, which are harvested by using a trap known as a “crab pot.” Invented by Benjamin F. Lewis in the 1920s, patented in 1928, and perfected ten years later, the crab pot forever changed the way hard crabs are harvested on the Chesapeake Bay. The crab pot is a large square trap constructed out of galvanized chicken wire or PVC-coated wire with two internal chambers. The bottom chamber, or "downstairs," consists of two or four entrance funnels, known as "throats," which allow the crab to easily enter but not to exit. In the center of the bottom chamber is the "bait box." The top chamber is the holding area, known as the "parlor" or "upstairs," which traps the crabs. Chesapeake Bay Crab Pots of Reedville, Virginia, manufactures and sells crab pots to the commercial watermen and retailers along the coast of Virginia and Maryland between Norfolk and Baltimore. The company is owned and operated by Marc Bershaw, who is the brother of Heidi Wilkins, the owner of Jett’s Hardware, a Reedville institution. Marc is what longtime locals would call a “come here,” having moved to the Northern Neck recently after spending most of his life visiting family there. Yet despite his recent arrival to the area, Marc has become a much accepted and integral member of the local crabbing community.

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Drew Sturgis

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:39:58 +0000

Muskrat Trapping
Belle Haven, Virginia

Drew Sturgis’s family can be traced back more than ten generations on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Brought up on the Bay side of Accomack County, Drew grew up steeped in the many traditional folkways of the Shore. He is a commercial fisherman, a waterfowl hunting guide, and a trapper. At only twenty-one years of age, Drew is already regarded as one of the most gifted trappers on the Shore. The trapping of muskrats and snapping turtles has been part of the Eastern Shore’s waterman tradition for centuries. Early settlers traded with native tribes in the region for muskrat pelts and furs and this, along with tobacco, played an integral role in the settlement of the Shore. Today, the muskrat is the most valuable fur animal in the state of Virginia. On the Eastern Shore, muskrats are more often trapped for their meat, which is still a traditional dish along the Delmarva Peninsula.

Latell Sailmakers: Lance Barton and Melanie Tennant

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:37:10 +0000

Sailmaking
Deltaville, Virginia

Sailmakers were once as common on the Middle Peninsula and Northern Neck as automobile mechanics are today. Sail-powered log canoes and bateaux bustled on local waterways and were the primary means of commercial transportation. The days of small sail-powered workboats pretty much ended with the introduction of gasoline and diesel engines. The craft of making sails, however, continued to serve larger sailing craft, such as the schooners that worked the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. The job of making these big sails was mostly confined to large sail lofts in Baltimore and Crisfield, Maryland, and Norfolk. After World War II, a change in the American lifestyle brought the profession of sailmaking back, with the increasing popularity of recreational sailing opening the door for a new breed of sailmaker. Jerry Latell of Latell Sailmakers and his partners Lance Barton and Melanie Tennant in Deltaville have revived the local sailmaking tradition in the Middle Peninsula and Northern Neck. Latell owns and operates the only sail loft in Deltaville, once considered the wooden boatbuilding capital of the Chesapeake Bay. As a result of their ability to make both traditional and contemporary style sails, Latell and his crew recently constructed a 4,000-square-foot sail for the Jamestown replica of Susan Constant, which was the largest of the three ships that carried settlers in 1607 from

Ray Rogers

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:36:38 +0000

Menhaden Net Building, Mending, and Rigging
Reedville, Virginia

Danny Bowden

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:36:06 +0000

Commercial Fishing
Chincoteague, Virginia

The largest island of Virginia’s Accomac County, Chincoteague is seven miles long and three miles wide. Chincoteague is situated on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, about four miles from the mainland, and is surrounded by Chincoteague Bay, Chincoteague Inlet, and Assateague Channel. The first census, taken in 1831, showed 510 inhabitants, but the population soon doubled, as the island became one of the largest producers of oysters, clams, and fish on the eastern seaboard. Among the chief fish caught here are trout, croakers, spot, and channel bass, which weigh as much as sixty-five pounds each. While Chincoteague has since become one of Virginia’s largest tourist destinations, both commercial and recreational fishing have remained important industries on the island. Danny Bowden can trace his family back to the 1600s on Chincoteague and neighboring Assateague Island. Like many of his ancestors, Danny follows the seasons, gill netting for rockfish in the spring and fall, crabbing in the spring and summer, and guiding waterfowl hunters in the fall and winter, “taking whatever Mother Nature has to offer.” Danny is the quintessential Chincoteague waterman—continuing to work the waters, and demonstrating his craft at numerous maritime festivals throughout the region, as well as at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

Deborah Pratt

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:35:36 +0000

Four Time World Oyster Shucking Champion
Jamaica, Virginia

For communities on Virginia’s Northern Neck, the oyster fishery was perhaps the largest and most influential industry from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. Men and women employed by the industry worked a variety of jobs, from boat cook, captain, and crew to shore-based scow gangs and shuckers. Shucking, in particular, provided many employment opportunities for African Americans throughout the Chesapeake Region. Deborah Pratt’s parents first met while working in one of the many small oyster houses that dotted the Northern Neck coastline, and she has been shucking since 1976 when her sister Clementine Macon taught her. Though the oyster industry has experienced a dramatic decline since the mid-1990s, the art of shucking has continued as a highly competitive sport, where competitors race to shuck two dozen oysters. Deborah, who can shuck two dozen oysters in less than three minutes, began competing in 1985, and she quickly established herself as one of the top shuckers in the world. She has won the prestigious Virginia State Championships held each year in Urbanna, the National Oyster Shucking Championships in St. Mary’s City, Maryland, and has had impressive finishes in international competitions in Boston and Ireland. Deborah is known on the oyster shucking circuit for shucking a particularly “pretty oyster.” She says, "If you go into the oyster at 3 o'clock, 6 o'clock and 9, you will always get in." From there it's just about how fast you get in, and how little damage you do to the fragile oyster within.

Dudley Biddlecomb

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:34:53 +0000

Oyster Aquaculture
Fairport, Virginia

The Chesapeake Bay’s oyster population was at one time one of the most plentiful in the nation with its ideal brackish waters, and oyster harvesting was a booming industry throughout the Bay’s communities. Oyster farming was likely developed in tandem with pearl farming, and dates back to at least the ancient Romans, as early as the first century BC. In the 1960s, decades of disease, pollution, and habitat destruction led to the decline of the oyster population in the Bay, nearly destroying them completely by late in the 1980s. With fewer oysters, the health of the bay declined because oysters feed on sediment and algae, which, when left unchecked, cloud the water and kill underwater grasses essential to maintaining the Bay’s water quality. Fortunately, the Bay oyster population has experienced a recent resurgence as a result of innovative techniques used by watermen who have moved from the traditional planting of shells on the Bay’s floor to farming using cages, racks, and floats. Thus, the number of farmed oysters nearly tripled between 2005 and 2006, and growers predict continued increases during the next growing seasons. Among those leading the charge toward this new form of aquaculture is Dudley Biddlecomb of Fair Port, Virginia. Dudley has been in the oyster business for his entire life, and still lives beside his family’s oyster beds on the farm where he was born. Dudley’s grandfather dredged oysters late in the 1800s, and the Biddlecomb family’s state lease goes back to 1920s. Over the years, Dudley experimented with a variety of methods of planting oysters until he came upon this new, innovative technique. Dudley has become a major advocate and teacher of this new oystering technique, and is a dedicated voice in cleaning up his beloved Bay.

George Butler

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:34:23 +0000

Boat Builder
Reedville, Virginia

For more than one hundred years, the Butler family has been handcrafting wooden boats in Reedville. Situated between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers on Virginia’s Northern Neck, Reedville was established in 1874 as home base for a large menhaden fishery. George Butler’s grandfather, Sam Butler, purchased the site on which he would establish the Reedville Marine Railway boatyard in 1906. In the 1970s George joined the family business. He draws from three generations of shared knowledge to build both commercial and pleasure boats using traditional Chesapeake designs and methods. Butler does not use drawings or plans but rather draws upon experience and familiarity with the waters of the Bay. He has built all sizes and types of boat from the Chesapeake deadrises used for crabbing, oystering, and fishing to large charter boats. He typically uses white cedar and oak in the construction of his highly desirable wooden boats. Today, George runs the boatyard and represents the finest of maritime craftspeople. Virginia’s former Commissioner of Marine Resources, William Pruitt, once said his favorite skiff “was a Butler skiff and it was the best boat in the world.” George passed on the tradition of boat building by participating in the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program, and now his son Wesley is also part of maritime life, working on tug boats out of Reedville, and also helping his father build boats.

Grayson Chesser

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:33:19 +0000

Decoy Carver
Sanford, Virginia

Grayson Chesser epitomizes the carving traditions of Virginia's Eastern Shore. The son of a game warden and hunter, and with family roots on the Eastern Shore dating back to the mid-1600s, he spent much of his childhood duck hunting in the marshes around the Chesapeake Bay and collecting hand-carved decoys. Today he is one of the most respected decoy carvers of his generation, having learned carving at the feet of masters Cigar Daisy and Miles Hancock. "The kids I went to school with," Grayson often tells, "they all wanted to grow up to be the next quarterback for the Baltimore Colts. Me, I always dreamed of being a decoy carver and goose guide." Today he makes a living by carving decoys and running Holden Creek Gun Club with his wife, Dawn. Chesser’s decoys are highly valued on the collector's market, but his preference is still to carve decoys for hunting purposes. In 1995, Chesser wrote the definitive guide to decoy carving, Making Decoys the Centuries-Old Way. He became a game warden himself and has a lifetime of experience both hunting and regulating the hunting grounds of the region. Chesser has paid homage to those who taught him in his youth by participating in the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program. His interest and commitment to teaching the nuances of this tradition are what make him such an invaluable part of the carving community and are part of the reason why he was honored with the first-ever Virginia State Heritage Award in 2009.

Dale Jett and Hello Stranger

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:22:52 +0000

Carter Family Legacy
Hiltons, Virginia

Dale Jett is a native of Scott County, in deep Southwest Virginia. The son of Janette Carter and the grandson of A. P. and Sara Carter of the legendary Carter Family, his roots have been steeped within the heart of his family's musical heritage. Dale began playing guitar in his late teens when Elizabeth Cotten taught him his first chords in her unique style—left handed, upside down. Later, he added his own style of autoharp playing to his repertoire. His fine singing is powerful and compelling, yet at the same time delicate and haunting. Like his grandfather, Dale is also a collector of songs, and his performances encompass a unique combination of traditional songs and Carter Family standards as well as other material that extends beyond conventional country. Hello Stranger features Dale, his wife Teresa Jett on bass, and Oscar Harris on guitar, mandolin, and autoharp. Together they have played throughout the United States and have even appeared on the Grand Ole Opry.

Nat Reese

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:21:47 +0000

Coal Camp Blues
Princeton, West Virginia

Nat Reese is a stunning acoustic-blues singer who, at age eighty-six, plays with relentless passion and soul. Reese was born in Salem, Virginia, in 1924, but soon moved with his family to the coal camps of West Virginia. Nat learned songs from itinerant black musicians who rode the rails from one mountain coal camp to another. Such camps were essentially company towns divided into "colored," white, and Italian sections, and the musicians played venues across the sections, developing repertoires tailored for different audiences. As such, young Nat was exposed to the blues at rowdy mostly-black juke joints and to country music at mostly-white honky-tonks. He first performed publicly at age nine, and had a long string of performances at regional coal camps such as Black Bottom, Fireco, Pineville, and Welch. He later sang with the gospel quartet Kings of Harmony, and in 1939 joined the Harmonizing Four Gospel Quartet. Nat performed regularly with multi-instrumentalist Howard Armstrong until Armstrong’s death in 2003. Nat is a national treasure, and he will be joined in Richmond by gifted harmonica player Phil Wiggins for what truly will be one of the most memorable sets of the festival.

Matthew Bright

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:21:44 +0000

Clawhammer Banjo
Big Stone Gap, Virginia

The “clawhammer” banjo style is an essential aspect of old-time music, an ensemble-based, hard-driving music form that has inspired dancers across southern Appalachia for generations. Unlike the more popular bluegrass style which moves the banjo into the forefront, the clawhammer technique essentially preserves the banjo as a rhythm instrument, with the player’s thumbs bouncing off the short fifth string and stroking down on the others. Matthew Bright is a young musician from the Flatwoods community in Wise County, Virginia. He began playing bluegrass banjo as a kid when his dad bought him an old Sears and Roebuck Silvertone banjo. By age fifteen he was playing bluegrass gigs with his cousin Fiddlin' Dale Kennedy's band. When he was twenty he first heard a clawhammer banjo on a recording of his grandfather, Tom Bright, and the Bright Brothers band. Matthew quickly picked up the old-time banjo and has since won numerous banjo contests. Uncle Dave Dougherty, banjoist for the Stoneman Family, took Matthew under his wing, helping to further develop his playing. In 2008, Matthew began hand-building banjos of his own.

Ron Short

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:21:09 +0000

Appalachian Songster
Big Stone Gap, Virginia

For the past thirty years Ron Short, a native of the Appalachian Mountains of Dickenson County, has been the creative force behind Roadside Theater, an internationally known touring theatre based on the history and lives of Appalachian people. He has performed in eighteen Roadside touring productions, and has written the scripts and musical scores for a dozen musical plays that the company has toured across the United States and in Europe. His music is grounded but unique—influenced by the power of a cappella Old Regular Baptist, lined-out hymns, and the timelessness of the Scots-Irish fiddle tunes and frailed banjo styles of central Appalachia. Short has recorded and produced many albums of music and story (Wings to Fly, Cities of Gold, Singing, and Mountain Tales and Music), and most recently Appalachia: Music From Home, a collection of music to accompany the award-winning PBS series Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People. But it is live performance that Ron truly loves, and where all the elements of culture, story, and music come together.

New Harvest: Scott and Mike Mullins

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:21:05 +0000

Church of Brethren Gospel
Clintwood, Virginia

The traditions of “white-spiritual” music thrive in Southwest Virginia. Scott and Mike Mullins were raised in Clintwood, in the coalfields of Southwest Virginia. Born into singing families, their repertoire has consisted of spiritual and gospel music. Scott’s late father, Billy Gene Mullins, was a coal miner, a musician, and Freewill Baptist minister. For more than sixty years, the members of the Mullins Family have sung at local pie suppers, tent revivals, funerals, memorial services, and countless other kinds of community gatherings in Dickenson County. Despite their prolific presence in the region, the Mullins Family and the entire singing style of the Church of Brethren had gone almost completely unheard outside the coalfields, until the Virginia Folklife Program produced the Mullins Family Anthology. The anthology includes more than sixty years of material from a variety of formats, such as homemade 78 rpm recordings and 45 rpm recordings. Scott and Mike Mullins carry on the traditions of the Mullins Family, playing their unique style of Appalachian Gospel, performing original and traditional songs from the family’s history.

Molly Slemp

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:20:19 +0000

Appalachian Ballads
Big Stone Gap, Virginia

The traditional music of Southwest Virginia is held in good keeping by a number of young artists who infuse it with new energy and vibrancy. Sixteen-year-old Molly Slemp of Wise County has been singing since the age of three. Molly sings mountain ballads and coal mining songs with a voice that is arresting and textured beyond her years. Her rendition of the “West Virginia Coal Mining Disaster” was a standout cut on the award-winning compilation Music of Coal.

Frank Newsome

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:19:13 +0000

Old Regular Baptist Singing
Haysi, Virginia

The singing of the Old Regular Baptists is one of the oldest and deepest veins of American spiritual singing traditions. This hymnody, with its elaborate, lined-out, unaccompanied singing is prevalent throughout the coalfield region of central Appalachia, but is barely known outside this region. It cannot be heard on television or radio, and is largely unavailable on recordings. Elder Frank Newsome, of Little David Old Regular Baptist Church outside of Haysi, Virginia, is one of the great masters of this singing style, which he uses to inspire his small but spirited congregation every Sunday. Frequent Little David attendee Dr. Ralph Stanley has been so enamored with Newsome’s singing that he regularly invites him to sing at his annual music festival. Frank’s singing has touched the hearts of many, and in 2009 he was honored with the first ever Virginia State Heritage Award.

Northern Neck Chantey Singers

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:17:58 +0000

Menhaden Fishing Chanteys

Menhaden fishing has been a significant economic engine on Virginia’s Northern Neck since shortly after the Civil War. Menhaden are bony, oily fish in the herring family. Unfit for human consumption, they have had many practical uses in products such as fertilizer and animal feed, paint, cat food, and fingernail polish. Reedville, Virginia, has long been the center of the menhaden processing industry, although the industry has declined in recent years. Menhaden travel in large schools and are most efficiently caught in nets. Traditionally, the work of pulling up these large heavy nets was carried out predominately by African American crews, hauling thousands of tons of menhaden every year. Drawing upon the deeply-rooted African American work song tradition employed for many types of manual labor, the workers accompanied the back-breaking hauling with call-and-response-style singing. These work songs, known as chanteys, provided the net workers with energy, camaraderie, distraction, and spiritual encouragement. In the mid-twentieth century, hydraulic power blocks to pull up the nets replaced the large fishing crews and eclipsed the unique musical tradition that accompanied their work. The African American tradition of chantey-singing is being kept alive by the Northern Neck Chantey Singers, former watermen who perform around the country. We are fortunate that seven of the members of this group, led by Elton Smith, Jr. of Shacklefords, Virginia, carry on this storied singing tradition, keeping these chanteys alive.

Todd Meade and Twin Springs Bluegrass Band

RVANews staff — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:17:27 +0000

Bluegrass from the Coalfields

Todd Meade is a most impressive old time and bluegrass fiddler, carrying on the musical heritage of the Big Moccasin area of southwestern Virginia. Todd has played extensively with bluegrass bands throughout the region, including Dr. Ralph Stanley and His Clinch Mountain Boys, Carolina Road, and Appalachian Trail. He broke on to the national scene at the 2008 Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America 25th Annual National Convention, where he was nominated for Bass Fiddle Performer of the Year. Todd’s group Twin Springs Bluegrass Band plays hard-driving bluegrass faithful to tradition but with a youthful vibrancy and spirit.

Sibirskaya Vechora

RVANews staff — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 01:11:43 +0000

Listen

[audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/SibirskayaVechoraUntitled.mp3|artists=Sibirskaya Vechora|titles=Untitled]

Traditional music from Siberia
Krasnoyarsk, Siberia

From the Dean's Desk »

The music of Ukraine and Belarus, which directly had an effect on traditional music of Krasnoyarsk in Russia, could come off as being harmonically strange to us westerners. A melody as natural as the earth, however, is a sure sign of a music that has progressed through the tradition of the culture, and that this folk music has. Never contrived but perhaps jarring compared to western music could describe any eastern folk music, but with so little information available on Sibirskaya Vechora, we’ll go with that.

Professional bio

Settlers from the Ukraine and Belarus who migrated to western Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought striking harmony singing, folk dances and music made on the hurdy-gurdy, accordion and guisli – musical traditions that have been kept with care by this intriguing ensemble direct from the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia.

Sand Mountain Sacred Harp Singers

RVANews staff — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 01:09:37 +0000

Listen

[audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/HowLong.mp3|artists=Sand Mountain Sacred Harp Singers|titles=How Long]

Shape Note Singing
Sand Mountain, Alabama

From the Dean's Desk »

Sacred Harp is an old method of music notation used for singing hymns, a method that was largely wiped out and replaced by European hymn styles in most of America in the nineteenth century. Just about everywhere except Sand Mountain. This music is not meant to be performed (peculiar, then, that they would perform at a festival) and is much more raucous than your gentle, beautiful, church hymn.

Watch a related video on YouTube (Note: those featured in the video are not Sand Mountain Sacred Harp Singers — this is just intended to give an idea of what they sound like.)

Professional bio

For generations, families from the Sand Mountain area of northeastern Alabama have raised their voices in song, carrying on the tradition of glorious, unaccompanied four-part harmony singing from The Sacred Harp, a beloved southern shape note songbook first published in 1844 and still sung from today.

Benedicte Maurseth

RVANews staff — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 01:00:47 +0000

Listen

[audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/BenedicteMaursethSessel-Hallingen.mp3|artists=Benedicte Maurseth|titles=Hallingen]

Norwegian Hardanger fiddle
Hardanger, Norway

From the Dean's Desk »

The Hardanger fiddle — played expertly and beautifully by Maurseth — has twice the amount of strings as a traditional fiddle and is right out of Norweigan folk traditions. Maurseth also sings staggeringly well and puts her entire body into a performance. She’s an award winning and internationally acclaimed musician, and we’ll all see why when we’re under her spell.

Watch her on YouTube

Professional bio

Traditional songs and the haunting sounds of the Hardanger fiddle from Norway’s charming, charismatic “2007 Young Folk Musician of the Year.”

Virginia Rocks

RVANews staff — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 00:59:06 +0000

(Featuring Deke Dickerson (pictured) & The Ecco-fonics, Daryl Davis, The Dazzlers, Jess Duboy, Clint Miller, and more)

Listen

Deke Dickerson
[audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/DekeDickersonPutMeDown.mp3|artists=Deke Dickerson|titles=Put Me Down]

Daryl Davis
[audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/DarylDavisDarylsBoogie.mp3|artists=Daryl Davis|titles=Daryl's Boogie]

The Dazzlers
[audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/DazzlersGeeWiz.mp3|artists=The Dazzlers|titles=Gee Wiz]

Rockabilly reunion

From the Dean's Desk »

It’s a Virginia Historical Society museum exhibit brought to stage. Leading rockabilly artist Deke Dickerson and Virginians will show why the genre was a hit among young people in the 50s. Rockabilly — a genre that became an often overlooked style of rock ‘n’ roll — merged country, swing, and more into the electric body shakin’ teen rebellion movement. Like Fiddle Journeys, who knows what’s in store when all these musicians come together?

Watch them on YouTube

Professional bio

A highly flammable mixture of country, blues and gospel, rockabilly music exploded on the scene in the 1950s to announce the birth of rock and roll. This reunion of great Commonwealth rockabilly musicians, both past and present, celebrates Virginia’s role in the creation of a quintessentially American music.

No BS! Brass Band

RVANews staff — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 00:12:02 +0000

Brass Band
Richmond, Virginia

From the Dean's Desk »

What can I say? They’re a local favorite who can pack a punch, their jazz and New Orleans influences clashing with rock, punk, kung fu, and more. They led a parade at last year’s festival and this time — right along with the release of their newest album — are promoted to a stage act. A parade or two might still be in store…

Watch them on YouTube

Professional bio

Richmond’s favorite New Orleans-style brass band infuses the music with its own unique grooves and musical sensibilities, and delivers exactly what its name promises.

Andes Manta

RVANews staff — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:43:26 +0000

Listen

[audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/AndesMantaElPajonal.mp3|artists=Andes Manta|titles=El Pajonal]

Andean
Hudson Valley, New York

From the Dean's Desk »

Bridging the native music of Ecuador and the Andes Mountains to North America, the four men of Andes Manta each specialize in tons of traditional instruments, such as those that look like panflutes, guitar, mandolin, and an endless lineup of percussion. Bringing the traditional sounds to life in a modern context that seems to share characteristics with Caribbean and Brazilian music, the group is at once a cultural lesson and a testament to how small the world really is.

Watch them on YouTube

Professional bio

With a mastery of more than 35 traditional instruments, including a dazzling array of panpipes, the four Lopez brothers from the mountains of Ecuador bring vibrant, haunting indigenous music from South America’s Andes Mountains.

Bonsoir, Catin

RVANews staff — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:43:05 +0000

Listen

[audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/Bonsoir_Special.mp3|artists=Bonsoir, Catin|titles=Special]

Cajun
Lafayette, Louisiana

From the Dean's Desk »

Learn your two-step dance moves now. The four women of Bonsoir, Catin play traditional cajun music that will take you to the Louisiana bayou, their accordion and violin mingling with vocals full of twang.

Watch them on YouTube

Professional bio

For some French-speakers, this band’s name may raise eyebrows, but among Cajuns, “catin” is a term of endearment, not a word referring to “ladies of the evening.” To say “Bonsoir, Catin” in Louisiana is to wish someone “Goodnight, Doll” – although even this playful usage of catin hints that the doll in question might be a feisty woman who would prefer to laissez les bons temps rouler into the wee morning hours.

Honoring their deep family and community musical roots, the members of this all-women band express the unabashed energy, intensity and raw emotion that is the hallmark and heart of Cajun music. The group has a broad and deep repertoire that reflects the many facets and decades of Cajun music into the present day. Singer and accordionist Kristi Guillory is equally capable of a raucous growl or sorrowful ballad. Guillory, who earned her M.A in folklore and works a day job as an archivist, has unearthed a number of nearly forgotten Cajun classics and has added a few of her own numbers to the group’s ever expanding repertoire. Her grandfather, guitarist Jesse Duhon who had played with Octa Clark and the Dixie Ramblers inspired Guillory to play music. She carries his legacy well. Christine Balfa Powell is the daughter of one of Cajun music’s most revered players and musical ambassors, the late Dewey Balfa, with whom she began playing music with as a teenager. A wonderful singer and guitarist, she is dedicated to preserving traditional culture. Breaux Bridge native Yvette Landry has been called the “queen of Cajun bass.” This has as much to do with her musical prowess as it does with her former role as Crawfish Festival Queen. She also comes from a deep musical family; her grandfather Lucien Landry of The Louisiana Six was well known throughout the region. Fiddler Anya Shoenegge Burgess doesn’t have direct Cajun roots, but since migrating to Arnaudville, Louisiana, where she owns and operates a violin shop, she has absorbed Cajun music and culture to her core. When not performing with Bonsoir, Catin, she plays with the Magnolia Sisters.

Boukman Eksperyans

RVANews staff — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:42:45 +0000

Listen

[audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/Boukman_FightLikeaMan.mp3|artists=Boukman Eksperyans|titles=Fight Like a Man]

Haitian Mizik Rasin
Port au Prince, Haiti

From the Dean's Desk »

Haitian mizik racin (“roots music”) sprung up around 1987 after a long dictatorship when the people of Haiti were allowed to freely practice the vodou religion. Enter Boukman Eksperyans, who would let their music be shaped by vodou, African and Haitian rhythms, and American rock and roll, and would become national treasures and cultural symbols for suggesting an uprising against military coups d’etat. Like modern African music, there’s layer atop layer of percussion and vocals, and some ripping Hendrix-style guitar.

Watch them on YouTube

Professional bio

Boukman Eksperyans, one of Haiti’s most beloved musical groups, is carrying a message of hope and survival to the world in the aftermath of this year’s catastrophic Haitian earthquake. With a sound rooted in traditional Haitian music with its strong West African influences, but performed with rock instrumentation, Boukman Eksperyans has created a music that is modern yet proudly traditional.

Boukman Eksperyans first came together following the overthrow of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the early 90s. Led by the charismatic Theodore “Lolo” Beaubrun, Jr, it created a musical movement called mizik rasin (roots music). Drawing upon compas, a popular Haitian dance music, and Haitian Vodou, a religion of the African Diaspora with strong West African elements, the Boukman sound blends ceremonial drumming, chant and dances from the traditional Vodou with elements of rock and R&B. It also expresses the deeply-rooted Caribbean tradition of using music as a vehicle for social and political commentary.

Members of the Beaubrun family form the core of this 11-piece group whose joyous vocal harmonies, driving rhythms and passionate performances have engaged audiences around the world. For all its celebratory color on stage, the Boukman Eksperyans message is serious and spiritual. The band’s songs have long served as rallying cries against all manner of ills imposed upon the Haitian people. At the 2010 Richmond Folk Festival, the group will perform special sets of music focused on Haiti’s recovery process, and ask audiences to keep Haiti in their hearts and minds.

Capoeira Luanda

RVANews staff — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:42:19 +0000

Brazilian capoeira
New York, New York

From the Dean's Desk »

Capoeira is as close to dance fighting as you can get. Slaves in Brazil used to practice this dance in the fields to disguise their preparations for fighting, and in the 1860s the Brazilian government sent capoeiristas to the front line in the war against Paraguay. Always accompanied by music (usually the one-stringed berimbau and singing), the acrobatic dancing duos will stun you with their flips and near misses.

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Professional bio

NEA National Heritage Fellow Jelon Vieira leads an ensemble showcasing tradition of capoeira, an exciting Afro-Brazilian fusion of acrobatics, dance and martial arts that developed in slave and Maroon communities in the northern Brazilian state of Bahia.

Donald Harrison & The Congo Square Nation

RVANews staff — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:41:45 +0000

Listen

[audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/DonaldHarrison_SpiritsofCongoSquare.mp3|artists=Donald Harrison & The Congo Square Nation|titles=Spirits of Congo Square]

Jazz & Mardi Gras Indian Traditions
New Orleans, Louisiana

From the Dean's Desk »

“Big Chief” Donald Harrison Jr. is a saxophonist, singer, percussionist -- whatever it takes to play the styles of music he frequents like jazz, traditional Mardi Gras Indian music, smooth jazz, and hip-hop. With The Congo Square Nation, the Big Chief dresses in big, feathery, and traditional garb while singing and chanting over bouncy Mardi Gras beats. This one will be a guaranteed party.

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Professional bio

Called “The King of Nouveau Swing,” jazz saxophonist Donald Harrison has been hailed as “one of the most important musicians of the new millennium.” Harrison’s unique approach to jazz merges acoustic swing with New Orleans R&B, hip-hop, second-line and reggae. As Harrison said in a recent interview, “I travel through so many different styles of music, it’s all part of me.” Not only can he play it all, but Harrison also composes in classic jazz, R&B, smooth jazz, hop-hop and classical idioms. He is a committed teacher who has nurtured some the brightest young players in jazz.

Harrison emerged from the deep “straight-ahead” jazz tradition in New Orleans that links King Oliver to Charles Mingus. At a young age, he emerged as one of the most exciting players in modern jazz. His life’s musical journey found him playing with Roy Haynes at age 19, before going on to work with Jack McDuff, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Terrence Blanchard, as well as a version of the Headhunters. Uniquely, Harrison has performed as a hip-hop MC and, during a stint living in Brooklyn, was an early mentor of rapper The Notorious BIG.

Even as the influence of his music has spread, Harrison has remained deeply connected to New Orleans, a place where contemporary jazz expressions are strongly linked to, and nourished by, the city’s unique and rich folk culture. As a boy, Harrison was schooled by his father in Mardi Gras Indian tradition, with its spectacular hand-sewn costumes, elaborate rituals, music and processionals. The late Donald Harrison Sr. was a legendary “Big Chief” of the Creole Wild West, the Cherokee Braves and the White Eagles tribes, before founding the Guardians of the Flames in 1988. A champion of the Indian tradition, he passed along his love of it to his son.

Like his father before him, Donald Harrison, Jr. is a “Big Chief” of a New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian tribe, the Congo Square Nation, which will join him at this year’s festival. In and out of full Indian regalia, the group will create an exciting musical interplay between New Orleans folk tradition and the contemporary jazz idiom that Harrison has come to epitomize.

Ensemble Shanbehzadeh

RVANews staff — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:41:34 +0000

Listen

[audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/Shanbehzadeh_TifounLaymer.mp3|artists=Ensemble Shanbehzadeh|titles=Tifoun Laymer]

Bushehri Music & Dance of Iran
Paris, France

From the Dean's Desk »

From Bushehr in southern Iran -- and before that, east Africa -- originates the music that Saeid Shanbehzadeh and son Naghib practice around the world, whether in performance or political rally. The reedy sound of the goatskin bagpipe may be your prime focus, but listen for rhythms in the percussion from which reggaeton and other contemporary danceable beats could be derived.

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Professional bio

Perched on the edge of the Persian Gulf in southwestern Iran is the ancient port city of Bushehr. For centuries, it has been a crossroads of trade and culture where Persian, Sufi, Arab, Indian and most strikingly, African, musical traditions have blended to create a unique musical culture. Led by the amazing Saeid Shanbezadeh, this ensemble brings the trance-inducing rhythms, songs and dances of Bushehr to Richmond, offering a rare glimpse of a fascinating, little-known musical tradition from the Persian Gulf.

Acknowledged as one of the Bushehr’s finest musicians and musical scholars, Saeid Shanbehzadeh is a master of the neyanban (double-reed bagpipe). Studying under the old masters of Bushehr, he began at age seven to learn the wedding music, love songs, and religious pieces common in the province. He first mastered percussion and singing, then the double flute, the neyanban and traditional dance. Swirling across the stage, falling into trance, and throwing the pipes on top of his head, Shanbehzadeh’s dynamic performances inexorably draw audiences into his musical world. Now living in France, he has become a voice of the Persian community there, speaking out against the current Iranian regime and drawing its ire for his refusal to keep silent.

Banning Eyre, host of National Public Radio’s “Afropop Worldwide” described a recent, rare U.S. performance by Ensemble Shanbehzadeh as “a mesmerizing set of what may be called the hidden Afro-Persian tradition…transfixing.” Saeid will be joined by his gifted teenaged son, Naghid, on the tombak (Persian goblet drum) and Habib Meftah Boushehri on various other percussion instruments.

Fiddle Journeys: 400 Years of Tune Migrations

RVANews staff — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:41:10 +0000

(Featuring with Brendan Mulvihill, Lester McCumbers, Charlie “Possum” Walden and Jim “Texas Shorty” Chancellor)

Listen

Brendan Mulvihill: [audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/BrendanMuvihillTheMorningDew.mp3|artists=Brendan Mulvihill|titles=The Morning Dew]

Charlie Walden: [audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/CharlieWaldenDundeesHornpipe.mp3|artists=Charlie Walden|titles=Dundees Hornpipe]

Texas Shorty: [audio:http://media.rvanews.com/FolkFestival/audio/TexasShortyLastWaltz.mp3|artists=Texas Shorty|titles=Last Waltz]

Irish, Virginia, Missouri and Texas fiddle

From the Dean's Desk »

This group will be an interesting “meeting of the minds.” They all have their own bag, like Mulvihill’s Irish playing and McCumbers’s down-home old-time fiddling, and to see them all collide (read: collaborate) should be a treat. In its various forms of music, the fiddle is often the show stopper, spotlight stealer, and the soloist extraordinaire. Does anyone even know what four fiddlers fiddling sound like?

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Professional bio

Tracing the movement, transformation and evolution of fiddle tunes – from Europe to colonial America, through westward migrations and immigration to the present day – reveals much about the American experience. Master fiddlers from different regions and musical traditions share tunes and tales in this fascinating time travel.