New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music
September 25 – November 6, 2010
Weizenblatt Gallery, Moore Auditorium
Liston B. Ramsey Center for Regional Studies at Mars Hill College
Listen to America’s music and hear the story of freedom. It’s the story of people in a New World, places they have left behind, and ideas they have brought with them. It is the story of people who were already here, but whose world was remade. The distinct cultural identities of all of these people are carried in song-both sacred and secular. Their music tracks the unique history of many peoples reshaping each other into one incredibly diverse and complex people – Americans. Their music is the roots of American music.
New Harmonies features interactive kiosks devoted to American music genres such as blues, country western, folk, and gospel music. Kiosks display instruments as varied as fiddles and banjos, accordions and drums, vintage sheet music, and program bills. A listening station provides an immediate opportunity to experience the music firsthand. In addition, each host site will develop programming and activities to complement the exhibit—lectures, films, and performances, oral histories, and photo essays about home-grown musicians and local musical traditions.
Hours: Tuesday- Friday, 11am – 5pm, Wednesdays until 7pm, Saturday and Sunday, 12pm – 4pm, Closed Mondays.
More about New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music
Mars Hill College is one of six sites across the state that will host Museum on Main Street, a Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) in 2010. New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music offers rural communities access to first-rate exhibits from the Smithsonian and gives North Carolina the opportunity to collect and showcase its distinct musical traditions, sacred, and secular.
“With New Harmonies, our state can flex its musical muscle,” says NC Humanities Council’s Darrell Stover, Statewide Coordinator of MoMS. “North Carolina is rich in musical heritage – old-time rockabilly, jazz, Piedmont blues, traditional gospel, hip hop, bluegrass much more – even auctioneering is song. We have it all, and New Harmonies allows us to put our unique musical legacy on brilliant display.”
The exhibit at Mars Hill College is coordinated through the Liston B. Ramsey Center for Regional Studies, in partnership with the Big Ivy Community Center, the Big Ivy Historical Society, the Wolf Laurel Historical Society, and the Dry Ridge Historical Museum. Dr. Karen Paar, Director of Ramsey Center, said: “We in the Ramsey Center are very excited about the opportunity to host the ‘New Harmonies’ exhibition. We look forward to working with other groups in our community to promote this wonderful exhibition and to plan related events that celebrate our region’s rich musical tradition.”
According to Paar, the ‘New Harmonies’ exhibit will come to Mars Hill at a particularly appropriate time. In 2010, the planned focus for the Ramsey Center programming and archival work is the Bascom Lamar Lunsford collection. The collection, which includes the personal notes, handwritten music, and instruments of the famous Appalachian folklorist and musician, is a perfect complement to the Smithsonian exhibit.
Museum on Main Street is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and the Federation of State Humanities Councils. Support for MoMS has been provided by the U.S. Congress.
