Communities That Can Support Artists & Free Culture

New articles have been slow this week, as we are working on an exciting grant opportunity -- of which we will offer more news soon.

Until then, we recommend that folks visit The Boiled Down Juice to read a thorough discussion of the recent exchange between NPR Music intern Emily White, of the “I Never Owned Music to Begin With" editorial, and the response by musician James Lowery (of Camper Von Beethoven, Cracker).

Though these pieces may have already virally inserted themselves into your digital life, it's worth reading how BDJ editor Meredith Martin Moats presents this tension between the Free Culture Movement and the need to treat artists (and their creative property) with respect and decency. The piece concludes by posing a provocative question about how, as artists and audiences, we should act as members of a kind of digital "commons." 

In the debate over these pieces, that kind of broader perspective is missing; we can argue Spotify percentages, but the deeper, more systemic problem is how we envision ourselves as in a community with these artists.  Ms. Moats offers some initial actions that anyone could take to foster this ethic, and she is asking for her readers to add to this effort.

Introducing A New Series: Notes From The Field

Square dance caller T-Claw with the Hogslop String Band, Nashville; Jennifer Joy Jameson

Art of the Rural is excited to announce Notes From The Field, a new series that applies the lessons of ethnography and folklore studies within the contemporary frame of rural and rural-urban experience. 

In addition, we are also pleased to welcome Jennifer Joy Jameson to our staff. Currently based in Nashville, Jennifer has worked for a number of museums, festivals, and folk art programs. She is a recent graduate of the Folk Studies MA program at Western Kentucky University and previously studied folklore and ethnomusicology at Indiana University. Though she is involved with many projects, AOTR readers may be familiar with our previous coverage of her exhibition "Yours For The Carters": The Vintage Sound Collections Of Freeman Kitchens.

Jennifer's projects are emblematic of a new generation of folklorists and advocates of vernacular culture -- a movement that works both within, and beyond, the traditional boundaries of the university or the archive. This wave of writers, artists, and curators has consistently presented, across all kinds of interdisciplinary lines, the sheer necessity and vitality of rural art and culture. Jennifer's introduction to this series is included below:

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As a folklorist, I study and advocate for the unofficial or non-institutional aspects of culture. These often materialize in the form of artistic or expressive traditions held and passed on among a community or culture, such as crafts, musics, stories, foodways, beliefs, rituals, and customs. I’ve come to engage with these everyday arts through the practice of ethnography, in which I spend time observing, inquiring about, and at times, participating in, a community’s cultural traditions in an effort to document them, and better understand their social context.

Although The Art Of The Rural is no stranger to considering the work and viewpoints of folklorists, ethnomusicologists, and anthropologists, the Notes from the Field series seeks to serve as a focal point on AOTR for engaging with rural arts and culture through a contemporary ethnographic perspective. Other AOTR writers trained in folklore/folklife studies have already contributed to this discourse, and will continue to do so.

Painter & singer Roy Harper at a wax cylinder recording at the National Folk Festival: JJJ

Daniel Frazier at Freeman Kitchens' Drake Vintage Music & Curios, Drake, KY; JJJ

Folklorists typically find themselves working within a canon of folk and traditional artists and their communities—the weavers, the fiddlers, the storytellers, or the altar-makers. With Notes from the Field, I hope to present a discourse for a more open-ended view of what constitutes these key cultural concepts of “community” and “tradition.” How can we consider D-I-Y zine culture and quilting as equal parts folk art? And with the broadening of communication through the Internet, what do these more emergent cultural traditions mean for rural America? Just how rural are rural arts these days (and what can folklore tell us about it)? As a Southern Californian living in Nashville, Tennessee, I find myself wondering how our more canonical folk and traditional arts are playing out in urban settings, and among younger, or revivalist sets. Exhibit A: A friend of mine from Nashville circulates a zine he made as an instruction manual on how to call old-time square dances.

While Notes from the Field may not be able to offer the depth of a complete ethnographic study, this series will offer dispatches from visits with featured artists, musicians, and communities—in their own contexts. When I’m not able to travel, I will point the way to projects involving some type of ethnographic practice. I also look forward to bringing other voices into the series, through interviews or guest posts—and like Kenyon Gradert’s Course on Midwest Culture series, I’ll look for your feedback and ideas in cultivating a dynamic conversation about the ebb and flow of folklife, in and of, rural America.

Vendors selling fried apple pies, Horse Cave Heritage Festival (KY); Jennifer Joy Jameson

Selling handmade canes on the side of the road in Leiper's Fork, TN; Jennifer Joy Jameson

Bringing It To The Table

Arkansas State Folklorist Mike Luster at the Roundtable; Jennifer Joy Jameson

By Rachel Reynolds Luster, Contributing Editor

Last month Art of The Rural joined a host of artists and cultural workers from around the country in Fox, Arkansas for the 2nd Annual Meadowcreek Roundtable. The gathering brought together people working in the fields of folklore, literature, film, ethnomusicology, ethnobiology as well as others with an interest in community action, bioregionalism, social justice, and local food systems.

The original concept for this retreat was born from conversations following a panel presentation at the American Folklore Society Annual Meeting in 2010 where I, my husband Mike Luster, and our friend and colleague Meredith Martin-Moats of The Boiled Down Juice presented a panel entitled, Community Based Folklife Practice.

We called for an interdisciplinary holistic approach to community renewal and sufficiency, and a lively conversation followed for nearly an hour after the panel. That discussion bore an online component, the Community-Based Folklore Practice Facebook group, which broadened the conversation to include additional artists as well various voices from around the nation and across multiple disciplines ranging from community-engaged design to peace and justice activists alongside the many folklorists working in the public sector, and the Meadowcreek Roundtable was created to serve as the physical manifestation of that open conversation.

We call it the Roundtable because we firmly believe that some of the best conversations come at the table, or in preparing and enjoying meals. For three days we gather, we talk, we cook, we eat, we play music, we walk and swim. This year we enjoyed several wonderful films including Witch Hazel Advent by Fayetteville, Arkansas, filmmaker Sarah Moore Chyrchel. There are babies and dogs there too.

Angel Band by The Meadowcreek Singers by joyamerica

More than anything, we try to identify what we see that we’d like to change in terms of cultural practice and/or its impediments, the funding structures that dictate what work is fundable, how culture (whether it be rural/urban, fine/traditional) is represented in media, where we might draw inspiration from one another and those “doing it right” across the country and how we can contribute to, in Gandhi’s phrase, being the change that we want to see. And then we go home and set out to do it, renewed and inspired. This year was no exception.

The American Folklore Society has generously supported the retreat for the past two years. This year, The Arkansas Folklife Program at Arkansas State University and that school’s Heritage Studies Department sponsored the event as well. Thus far, we’ve been able to keep the gathering free for attendees including registration, lodging, food, and childcare. We prepare the meals together from scratch and everyone chips in to do whatever else needs doing. It’s a truly beautiful thing in a lovely place. The Boiled Down Juice has also posted a story about the Meadowcreek Roundtable that offers a more in-depth discussion of the Meadowcreek property and its history and links to many of this year’s gathering’s attendees, their organizations and their work.

Here's two of this year's participants reflecting on the experience:

For me, the Meadowcreek Roundtable has been an incredibly important resource. The meetings have fostered invaluable and directive conversation with peers and senior colleagues that have stayed with me long after the weekend of the roundtable. For two years, I've come in with ideas and questions about how to carry out meaningful cultural work. Each time, I have come away with substantial mentorship, leading me to ask deeper questions about the intersections of folklife and cultural sustainability, and encouraging me to proceed boldly. - Writer and Folklorist Jennifer Joy Jameson

I came away from the Meadowcreek Roundtable retreat inspired and full of new ideas. In fact, on the drive home, a fellow attendee carpooling with me and I conceptualized a creative collaboration for our own community which we are in the initial stages of implementing. Without a designated time and place for such creative incubation to occur, I doubt we would have seen this project materialize, let alone make it to fruition. - Filmmaker Sarah Moore Chyrchel

If you and your organization would like to support or participate in next year’s gathering please contact us. We’d love to have you at the ‘Table.

A Carter Family Flash Mob & The Winding Stream

photograph from The Winding Stream

Last week a flash mob convened at the Portland, Oregon Saturday Market and sang the Carter Family classic "Will The Circle Be Unbroken." 

These singers and musicians gathered to celebrate the work of the Carters, and also to raise awareness of The Winding Stream -- a documentary that charts the course of country music through its founding family and the lives of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. Director Beth Harrington is currently leading a Kickstarter campaign to help with the editing and post-production work on the film. There are only eight days remaining in her campaign, so readers who taken interest in our previous coverage of the film have an opportunity now to contribute to the telling of this story. 

What's exciting about Ms. Harrington's project is how, with an arc that continues through Johnny Cash, we see the music of Clinch Mountain transcending rural/urban and traditional/contemporary boundaries -- offering the work of A.P, Sara, and Maybelle as a part of an inheritance accessible to all listeners, whether they live in Appalachia or New York City or London.

This quality is best demonstrated in The Winding Stream trailer, which is included below:

Related Articles:
Following The Winding Stream
In Brief: Carolina Chocolate Drops (filmed for The Winding Stream)

The Carter Family Fold and Johnny Cash's Last Performance 

Freeman Kitchens, The Carter Family, and Drake Vintage Music and Curios

Rural America Election Cycle: Backroads To Backbone

The Romney campaign at Scammam Farm in New Hampshire; Joe Readle, Getty Images

Thanks to Matthew Glassman of Double Edge Theatre for sharing news of this Ari Shapiro's NPR piece on the presidential campaigns that are moving through his region of New England. 

The Rural America Election Cycle is in full swing, that period where regions of the country traditionally given a backseat by policymakers and the news media become the staging area for patriotic and pastoral demonstrations. In this perennial moment of national yearning and uncertainty, both political parties accomplish turns of phrase like this recent articulation by Mitt Romney, reported by NPR:

"In the days ahead, we'll be traveling on what are often called the backroads of America," he said. "But I think our tour is going to take us along what I'll call the backbone of America."

Regardless of the rhetoric, rural Americans will cast the decisive votes in this fall's election, a point Mr. Shapiro conveys with clarity. Here's a selection from the transcript, which includes a framing perspective on the race by Dee Davis, President of The Center for Rural Strategies:

Romney and President Obama are both, let's be honest, city slickers. That's a big change for the American presidency, says Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies.

"If it's [Ronald] Reagan on a horse or [Bill] Clinton, the man from Hope [Ark.], there's always been this kind of visual narrative or this story that to be president you had to be able to handle the wilderness, be comfortable outside of the city. It's just part of the lore," he says.

You're not likely to see Romney or Obama in a cowboy hat very often. But both men are trying to appeal to the folks who live in small towns, traditionally Republican strongholds.

ArtPlace: Creative Placemaking In Rural America

Roadside Culture Stand, The Wormfarm Institute; Katrin Talbot, Verse Wisconsin

Over the past few years we've frequently linked to the work of ArtPlace, a collaborative organization comprised of a number of foundations, federal entities, and banks that operates with a mission to promote creative placemaking across the United States. Unlike other organizations with interest in this term, ArtPlace emphasizes the role of the rural in contemporary American art and culture.

Last week ArtPlace announced 47 new grants, eight of which were specifically allocated, as large grants, to rural projects. In their announcement, "Creative Placemaking: Not Just For Cities,"  we learn of how these eight projects promise to manifest cultural and economic sustainability for their regions:

For decades, rural communities in the U.S. have seen steep declines in population as the next generation of youth follows employment to larger metropolitan areas. For these small towns and counties, there is a deep need to attract and retain talent – and art often “punches above its weight” when it comes to making places more vibrant so that people want to stay, says Carol Coletta of ArtPlace.

“Creative placemaking isn’t just for cities,” explained Coletta.  “These rural arts projects demonstrate that smart investments in art, design and culture as part of a larger portfolio of revitalization strategies can change the trajectory of communities and increase economic opportunities for people, whether the setting is rural or urban.”

Please find the supported projects below, with links to their work, and an informational trailer for the project. Much more information on ArtPlace can be found here:

Art-Force Program – $485,000 – Public Art Collaborative – Siler City, Greenville and Sanford, NC

Artists, art, and design are at the center of manufacturing renewal in three North Carolina communities through this cross-sector program that places artists in residence at under-capacity manufacturing plants and supports the production of artist-conceived and designed works.

Artsipelago – $250,000 – Quoddy Tides Foundation d/b/a Tides Institute & Museum of Art – Eastport, ME

Betting on art as the centerpiece of an economic comeback, Artsipelago will rebrand and connect a number of established efforts as well as develop artist live/work space and studio space to drive arts participation and ultimately talent retention in this rural, multicultural, coastal archipelago.

The Higher Ground Project – $273,000 – Higher Ground Coalition/The Appalachian Program at Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College – Cumberland, KY

This participatory community arts project and the coalition behind it will transform spaces to catalyze economic development by connecting art, design and commerce in a rural Appalachian coalfield county.

Paradise Garden Revival – $445,000 – Chattooga County, Georgia – Summerville, GA

The restoration and rehabilitation of the home studio and outdoor art environment of famed American folk artist Howard Finster in Summerville, Georgia will create an exciting anchor to increase cultural tourism and entrepreneurial economic development.

Sitka Arts Campus – $350,000 – Alaska Arts Southeast, Inc. (AAS) – Sitka, AK

Alaska Arts Southeast will transform a closed National Historic Landmark college into a multidimensional arts campus, bringing new life to rural Southeast Alaska.

Magic City Lofts – portion of $1,000,000 – Artspace – Minot, ND
In Minot, North Dakota, Artspace is developing a mixed-use arts facility that will bring new vibrancy to the cityʼs flood-ravaged historic downtown and create a new art gallery featuring Native American artists.

Wormfarm Institute’s Food Chain – $75,000 – Wormfarm Institute – Sauk County, WI

Marrying the local food movement with the arts, Wormfarm Institute will create an arts-infused caravan of mobile farm stands delivering a marketplace of food, art, and ideas throughout its eight-county region

Related Articles:

The NEA And Creative Placemaking In Rural America

Weekly Feed: Skip James at 110, Art of Regional Change, Choctaw Code Talkers, Appalachian Steel Drum, and the town of Hannibal, Missouri

Here are stories we shared this week on our Arts and Culture Feed:

• Skip James would have turned 110 this week. To celebrate, the Alan Lomax Archive's Facebook page shared a series of live performances and rare photos, including this clip from the 1966 Newport Folk Festival. Listen to, and view, a wealth of material by Mr. James and thousands of other musicians at the digital archives of the Association For Cultural Equity.

• The Humanities Institute at UC-Davis this week published a feature on the work of The Art of Regional Change, an interdisciplinary project that, as they describe themselves, "brings together scholars, students, artists, and community groups to collaborate on media arts projects that strengthen communities, generate engaged scholarship and inform regional decision-making." We've written before about the work of ARC -- but this feature discusses their more recent Restore/Restory project based in rural Yolo County. Here is an excerpt:

This diverse array of people is co-creating a site-based audio tour and a series of media pieces curated on an interactive public history website. Thanks to a grant from the UC Humanities Research Network (UCHRI), this work will be showcased in a series of “twenty-first century Chautauquas” hosted this fall. jesikah maria ross borrows the term from the rural popular education movement of the late 1800s that centered on discussion of art, culture, and contemporary issues. ross believes that Restore/Restory invites the public to think about “big humanities questions around culture, justice, truth, diverse perspectives, beauty. It’s allowing us to take these questions and anchor t hem physically to a piece of land, and…have people dialogue about it.”

Two of these Chautauquas will take place in late October on site at the Cache Creek Nature Preserve. These events will debut the website and audio tours and will bring the public in direct contact with the storytellers on the land. For example, nature and culture walks will lead guests through the preserve as they hear the history of specific sites from different perspectives. A tour of the gravel bars might pair a geologist and a lifelong miner to share their differing expertise on the gravel in the creek. Another group may hear a tribal member talking about the tending and gathering gardens inside the preserve alongside an ecologist talking about the ecological habitat.

•  Native American Public Telecommunications shared word this week of the broadcast of Choctaw Code Talkers:

In 1918, not yet citizens of the U.S., Choctaw members of the U.S. American Expeditionary Forces were asked to use their native language as a powerful tool against the German Forces in World War I, setting a precedent for code talking as an effective military weapon and establishing them as America's original Code Talkers.

For further information, folks can visit the Choctaw Code Talkers Association, which hosts a wealth of information; please find the trailer for the documentary below:



• The Washington Post put together a glimpse into how the arts -- as practiced by local residents and formerly urban newcomers -- is transforming the town of Hannibal, Missouri. Of course, Hannibal is the hometown of Mark Twain, so there is a rich legacy of the arts in the region, but this influx of creative activity has also helped to bolster the local economy. Here's a selection from the article:

Twain still is the main attraction for the half-million tourists who visit Hannibal each year, but now they get a bonus: A growing number of artists, many of national and international repute.

“The downtown storefronts are filling up with artists,” said Gail Bryant, director of the Hannibal Convention and Visitors Bureau. “That’s certainly part of the draw.”

During the past decade dozens of artists ranging from painters to potters, weavers to photographers have come to Hannibal, attracted to the breathtaking river scenery, the charming — if often dilapidated — old homes, a welcoming community and a ready-made base of visitors. It also helps that Hannibal, smack-dab in the middle of the nation, is within a day’s drive of countless art shows and fairs crucial for making ends meet.

Lisa Higgins, of The Missouri Folk Arts Program, expanded on this piece through her comments in the Feed:

It's a culturally rich town. We just did a community scholars workshop with field trips there, especially within the African American community. There's more to Hannibal than Mark Twain, and then, there's Mark Twain. The Hannibal Arts Council is also a dynamic and thriving org.

 • In "Freedom Gardens, The Seeds of Survival," Michael Tortorello of The New York Times produced an excellent feature on the history of the heirloom seeds and Juneteenth gardens within the southern African-American community. Agriculture holds a rich, though complicated place in this contemporary dialogue:

The broader truth is that gardening is a lost tradition in many African-American communities. The National Gardening Association doesn’t tally the number of black gardeners — nor, it would seem, does anyone else. The government survey that tracks farming demographics, the Census of Agriculture, offers mostly discouraging data about black farmers. In the last survey, African-American operators controlled only 33,000 of the nation’s 2.25 million farms — less than 1.5 percent.

An outstanding slideshow also accompanies this piece.  

• Lastly, The Smithsonian Folklife Festival shares news today of a musical conversation between Appalachia and Trinidad:

Ellie Mannette, considered the “Father of Modern Steel Drums,” has brought West Virginia University into the steel drumming tradition. In 1991 he was offered a guest semester staff position at West Virginia University, which turned into a permanent job within the music department. Here, Mannette continues to pass along his love for pan building and playing to interested students.

Originally from Trinidad, Mannette was born in 1927 and started playing steel drums in 1937 when he was eleven years old. The first band with which he played was called New Town Cavalry Tamboo Bamboo. He went on to perform with a number of other bands until he joined TASPO, or the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra, in 1951. After migrating to the U.S., he helped the U.S. Navy Band and then started an inner city children’s music program with a focus on steel drumming in 1967.

There is much more to explore on the groundbreaking work of Ellie Mannette online. Below we'll share a recent short-from documentary on Mr. Mannette's life and music: