Music


Old-time

The Southern Highlands are steeped in a tradition of Old-time music: deeply-seated acoustic roots music that musicologist Alan Lomax wrote “give[s] the listener a feeling of security, for it symbolizes the place where he was born, his earliest childhood satisfactions, his religious experience, his pleasure in community doings, his courtship and his work - any or all of these personality-shaping experiences.”

Lomax’s description casts a wide net, but in Jackson, Swain, Macon and Graham counties, the music he describes is primarily Scots-Irish in origin. There is a much longer - and different - tradition of Cherokee music, and there are some African-American influences. Still, the “back of beyond” was settled much later and more sparsely than other parts of the mountains, and so the influences were less varied.

Today, old-time, it’s derivative, bluegrass, and it’s derivative, newgrass, can be heard live fairly readily in the mountains; but other influences and forms, ranging from electronica and fusion jazz to varied forms of classical and traditional jazz, to mighty

Resources

Mountain Acoustic Music Association
“Mountain Grown Music” from the Haywood County Public Library System
“Old-Time Music”