Amythyst Kiah

Partial Transcript: Well, my name’s Amythyst Kiah. I was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And in 2006, I moved to Johnson City, Tennessee. And I’ve been living in Johnson City now for the past ten years. This will be eleven years. In May, actually, it’ll be eleven years.
So I, my musical journey, it just started when I was thirteen and my parents bought me an acoustic guitar. And my parents gave me some computer software. It was before the age of YouTube and all that kind of stuff. So I had like VHS tapes and CD-ROMS just to learn how to play guitar. So I learned by ear. And I just learned to play songs and things that I just liked. And it was a hobby for me for about ten years, the first ten years of playing guitar and singing and that kind of thing. And it wasn’t really until I was twenty-three—and by that time me and my dad had already moved to Johnson City, and I was already—I was attending East Tennessee State University.
And I auditioned for—I met Jack Tottle and Raymond McLain, who were both—well, Jack Tottle’s the founder of what’s now called the Bluegrass, Old-Time, Country Music studies. And at the time, Raymond McLain was the director at the time. So I met them, and I ended up meeting Roy Andrade, who’s over the old-time part of the program. And I met Ted Olson. So between those four, I was able to more or less help shape in my mind what I could possibly do as a performer, and also what traditional music—what it is and what it could bring to my life.
Up until that point, I had no real idea of traditional music. What drew me to taking some of the courses was that I—as I mentioned a little bit earlier, I took classical guitar in high school. And was sort of strayed me away from that was I didn’t feel like as a musician, that my way of learning was acceptable. I felt like learning to sight read and learning all those things, I felt like that was a barrier for me. And I was also like eighteen or nineteen years old, so I was sort of like—in my mind, I didn’t understand the importance of learning theory and things like that. But at the time, I just felt like I was not fully recognized as a musician because of me not knowing how to do those things.
So what appealed to me about this program was that they value learning the oral tradition, which really appealed to me. And then later on, obviously I learned about—you know, learning music theory, but a way that makes sense for the kind of music that we were doing. So I don’t have—I think before, I had a very standoffish idea about music theory. But I totally see the value of it. It’s very important, especially to communicate with other musicians about what you want.
Anyway, so I ended up—one of the courses that more or less took me into the direction of wanting to learn old-time was an American folk music class that Dr. Ted Olson taught. And we read a book that was called—one of the textbooks was Southern Music, American Music, written by Bill Malone and David Stricklin. And one of the very first line in chapter one, which was entitled “The Origins of Folk,” the first line—I can’t remember it verbatim, but it was basically saying that Appalachian music, Southern music—and Southern music as a whole—is a conglomeration of British Celtic and African origins. And then of course, you go to places like Texas and you’ve got obviously some Mexican influence in the roots of music.
But what really appealed to me was this idea that—obviously as a black woman—I grew up in white suburbia. I went to a predominantly white school. I was always kind of used to being one of the few and also being kind of in a situation where the things that I liked were—in some instances with white or black kids or people, I guess in some ways my blackness was questioned, because of some of the things that I liked and some of the things that I was interested in. And there’s these kind of cultural stereotypes attached to certain activities.
So for me, coming into this program and knowing that there’s virtually no other people of color around me in this program, in some instances, I kind of wondered—and also, my own preconceived notions of Appalachian being this music that white people participated in, and also tying in some elements in my own head associating the music with a certain kind of white person, like a white person that would exclude me, or a white person that wouldn’t see me as belonging. That sort of negative thing.
So I wasn’t so sure about entering the—how I fit in, or if I would be fulfilled, being part of this program, being part of the music. But that class really let me know that regardless of what anybody thinks, that Southern music is a music that was created by poor, rural folk. That’s who it was. And whether it was a slave or an indentured servant, or then later on, poor people that moved from slavery into segregation, poor whites and poor blacks—obviously some of the struggles—obviously there were different dimensions of how each person struggled, of course; but at the end of the day, that music was for people that were living through hard times. And this music was an escape for them. And that’s something I think anybody can relate to. And also the fact that knowing that this music doesn’t belong to a race of people. It belongs to all of us, and all of us should be able to participate in it.
And generally speaking, as I went through the program and my performance career started basically by being in the Old Time Pride Band. So over the years, as time went on, people would see me perform with the Old Time Pride Band. And then I started gaining a bit of a solo following. I would play private events, or I would—I played at The Down Home, or—so I started slowly but surely performing solo.
And I remember my dad told me, “You’re very fortunate that you’re able to accompany yourself because I think otherwise, you’ll have a hard time finding people that’ll—outside of band class—that will want to play with you.” Because again, really—not only in this genre of music but also sometimes within the sort of areas that you live in, there can be some preconceived notions about what a band, what an Americana band, or what a Southern roots band would look like. And so there’s sometimes people—I remember people asking me after I performed, like, “How did you get involved with this kind of music?” Just incredulous that I would even consider it.
And then so I noticed I have to explain myself. And I have to explain the British Celt and African influences, and to let them know that even though you don’t see people that look like me playing the music, I have just as much of a claim of it. Which I feel even weird for even thinking that I need to have an excuse to stick a claim on a music. I feel like if I like the music, I should be able to play it regardless. But having that extra dimension of knowing the truth and the history behind it, it makes it an even more interesting argument to let other people that it’s not—it shouldn’t be an anomaly that I’m playing this music.
So it’s been interesting in that I’ve kind of been able to disarm people who normally maybe would’ve had a certain preconceived notion about the music I’m playing and who can play it. And I kind of feel like in some ways I’ve been able to disarm people and get some people to open their minds a little bit more about stuff.
The Chocolate Drops—during that same time I was taking that course, I found out about them. And I was just like, okay. That kind of sealed the deal for me, when I saw three 20-something black adults playing string band music, and playing it extremely well. I was just like, okay. This all kind of makes sense now, you know?
And then I felt like—for a while, I felt like I’d kind of found my home in music, because all the stuff that I used to love to listen to, studying old-time music, it gave me an even stronger connection to who I was as a musician, because I kind of felt like I’d found a home and a—I guess a foundation from which I can—there’s always going to be a springboard of creativity and ideas. And I just felt like the variety within old-time music, and the different kinds of instruments, and the different instrumentations, and all the different genres within it—it was a very fascinating thing, because I’m the kind of person that I love a lot of variety, and I love to be open to do new things.
And so yeah, for me, old-time music is—and I’ve also always been a kind of person that’s for the underdog. I’m always for the side of the oppressed, standing up for what they believe in and being able to live their truth without feeling ashamed. And I feel like with Southern roots music, there’s a tradition within that of people breaking from the monotony of a hard life to have a connection. And I feel like now, that continues on, I think, in different ways. So yeah, it’s important to me.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. Well, one major reasons—well, actually, there’s a couple of major reasons that there seems to be this sort of, I guess—I’ll call it ignorance. And I say that not in a derogatory, pejorative way, but just being ignorant for the sake of not having the knowledge. There’s the sort of ignorance that comes in regards to knowing about the part of black history in which there’s those contributions to string band music and old-time music outside of blues. I think that it stems from a couple of things.
One of the things is that when blacks started migrating from the South into larger cities in the North, and they came upon a whole different wealth of instruments, like being able to play the piano, play wind instruments—there was a whole plethora of other instruments to learn about and play. And a lot of—especially young black people at the time decided that they wanted—they saw things like the fiddle and the banjo as a remnant of the plantation days. And they wanted to separate themselves from the old plantation days because of what it meant for a black person to be on a plantation, and they were trying to escape from that image. And so to them, the fiddle and the banjo were just seen as these objects that reminded them of a very unfortunate past. So that aspect of blacks embracing fiddle music, banjo music, died out because of that social conscience and wanting to break away from those implications.
And then also, the recording industry—like the beginning of the commercialization of music—when record executives were going out to these rural towns and holding auditions and having people come and play music that they would later sell on records, they, in their mind—they were men of their time, and they decided that, “Well, we’re going to have race records,” which is where all the black performers that were recorded were put under that catalogue. And then anything else that was rural was considered hillbilly music—which, hillbilly being synonymous with white.
And so a lot of times, if black performers wanted to make a better living, they had to drop the fiddle and banjo and switch over to playing guitar, because a record exec’s thinking, “Well, what am I going to do with a black string band? I can’t—they’re not hillbilly because they’re not white.” So a lot of players had to alter their instrumentation in order to really make a better living. So a lot of the black string bands, like the Mississippi Sheiks, just sort of—they died out from that too.
So basically, I guess the dying out of that just really had to do with black musicians trying to adapt to either a new—well, I guess in both instances—I mean, they’re similar in that the black musician had to change their instrumentation for social reasons, except one being a conscious, “I don’t want to be identified with that,” versus back in the twenties, where people were like, “Well, I just need to switch up my instruments because I want to get recorded. But at the end of all of that, it’s really just black people trying to adapt to, I guess, the market, and adapt to being able to reconcile with their own identity who they are through music.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. And the thing is, it’s all there. I mean, there’s—like I said, the book that I have, Southern Music, American Music, the authors talk about—you know, there’s just vast resources of documents and old records and thing like that, where it’s been known that since as early as, I want to say the 1700s, the banjo—or the original kind of semblance of the banjo—blacks are already playing it. And they’d been playing it for maybe a hundred years before whites started to pick up on playing it.

So once you kind of understand all of the aspects of that history, and then getting up the 1920s, and you’re like, man, what a—it’s like, what a loss, to have all of this knowledge, all this information out there, and then through the annals of time and through erasure, really, because once—oh man, I just forgot that guy’s name. I think it was—I want to say Sweeney Todd, but that’s not the guy’s name. John Sweeney, that was his name. Sorry. John Sweeney is credited with being more or less—kind of like the father of the banjo, or the one that created the fifth string, and the one that really introduced the banjo to a broader audience. And he gets—and he did bring the banjo to a broader audience. But it’s almost as if—in a lot of books and a lot of history, it’s like he’s the guy that—you know, he’s the guy that did it all, and giving no homage to—which, that’s in general with history, in any—whether you’re talking about any sort of, I guess, genre of history if you will, whether it be music or some other thing, there is this common thread of kind of erasure of any black contributions, contributions from women, or whatever. So that’s part of a larger systemic issue.

But I’m really excited to be part of a movement that seeks to—at least with the realm of music—that seeks to shed more light on the whole history, which I never thought in a million years that I would be doing what I’m doing right now. I never even intended to be a performer, whatever, ten years ago. So it’s really cool to be able to be part of this and see where it goes.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. So, I mean, there’s—and I’m going to be honest, Ted will probably be able to speak even more specifically to this than me, from the historical aspect, as far as demographics and stuff. But yeah, there were—another part of that myth also that kind of ties in with this idea of mainly—it was only Anglo-Saxon people that lived in the Appalachian Mountains—there’s another myth attached to that, where people don’t think that there was slavery in the Appalachian Mountains, and that everybody was for the Union, or they just weren’t part of it at all. And that’s not the case. There’s been documentation, like in west North Carolina and upper east Tennessee of there being slaves. I mean, obviously, there weren’t as many slaves here as there were in deeper parts of the South, but they were definitely here. Not to mention, there were Native Americans that lived here, that still live here.
So yeah, I think—what I’ve come to find is that there were travel writers and a lot of different—and they were typically white males. There were a few white female travel writers too. But when they would write about Appalachia, they would write about their encounters with white people. And it was interesting because they almost romanticized them in the same way that travel writers romanticized the Cherokee Indians when Europeans first came over and encountered the Cherokee. It was the same kind of—this sort of romantic idea of these strong, powerful people that live in the mountains, and they’re able to—whatever, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and be able to live on this rugged land, and this very strange music that they play. It was this very sort of romantic kind of thing.
And also, within that, there was this pervading idea of, wow, there are these pure white—it ties back to whiteness, again, this very—there’s these pure white people that live in these mountains. And along the same time, missionaries started coming in, bringing the settlement schools in to try to educate the people so they can become part of the Industrial Revolution because there were immigrants from Eastern Europe that—people were against foreign immigration. They were against immigrants coming over. That was a whole issue. And so when they saw these pure Anglo-Saxon people, they were like, “Oh, we should try to get them assimilated into our society, so that way, we don’t have to worry about all these Eastern Europeans coming in and taking our jobs. We can have these pure Anglo-Saxon people take the jobs instead.” So there’s that too.
And like I said, Ted will be able to probably get into more detail. But this idea of—basically, it’s this idea of tying their—the travel writers and missionaries—this idea of finding these—it’s basically this romanticized idea of these pure British people that have been untouched by society, and so they’re untouched by—and they’re not black, they’re not people of color, and they’re not Eastern immigrants. And so there’s this sort of romantic idea of this—this really kind of Anglophilia that’s attached to Appalachian people.
And so that pretty much—any other opinion of like, well, actually there were black people, or actually there were people of color here—that more or less gets negated because it falls away from that romantic aspect of having these special white people that live here. Which—I don’t know. There’s people that put a lot of value in this idea of purity, not only with whiteness but also with the music itself, and attach the music to the whiteness, like it’s this whole package of purity that has to be maintained.
Which to me, it’s—I mean, in my mind, I’m thinking, to me, I would think you would want to have more diversity. I mean, from the standpoint of—just the idea of learning more, and not so much tying your identity to this music, and just recognize how many other ways that this music can reach other people, as opposed to keeping it as a part of your identity that no one else is allowed to take part in. It just—I don’t know. It’s a very exclusive kind of way of thinking that is really unfortunate for people that have very real experiences within Appalachia, with music, with foodways. And erasing people out of history for personal reasons—or for this personal idea, this idea of purity—I feel like it’s a real disservice for everybody involved, including the people that want to perpetuate that inclusivity, because then you live in a world where people are fearful of each other for reasons that are made up in their own head and aren’t based in reality. And then you get a lot of the social issues that we’ve been having in the United States for a while. So anyway, I kind of went on a tangent there, but—yeah, so.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. Well, I know—well, obviously, at least the importation of Africans was the biggest, number one, major import of Africans coming in initially. And as far as—I mean, already being here, more or less, and then after segregation—I’m trying to think of the best way to dig into that now.
David Weintraub
Obviously, you had slaves who—the banjo was a West African instrument. And so you had slaves playing that music on the plantations, and something like that—
Amythyst Kiah
Yeah. And then—okay, so I’m just trying—I guess I kind of got—as I was talking, I kind of was losing focus of what I was actually supposed to be answering. So we’re talking about how African-Americans shaped the music while here. Yeah. I sort of went on a tangent with the other thing.
Well, I would—I mean, one of the main ways that they helped shape was just playing with other white musicians. Typically, that would happen—and there is no specific documentation during the era of slavery to pinpoint what people played with who. But based on documentation that’s been provided, there were slaves that would—well, I was about to say they were hired—but they were actually like music slaves. So they would be told to perform at different functions on the plantation. So you had that aspect of slaves that played instruments, and part of their slave work was to play at these different events.
And then you had also had indentured servitude alongside of that for a while. So you had this very strong possibility for enslaved blacks and indentured whites to be able to play together, just because they were more or less on the same level socioeconomically, to a certain extent. So there was—because there was very much a class differentiation with the music and who played it. So because of that, you had this very strong ability for players to play together.
0:28:56.2 It’s just unfortunate—it would be cool if there was actually any documentation—there may be some now that I’m not aware of. Like I said, Dr. Ted Olson may have a little more insight on that. But the way that they shaped the music alongside of that—they started to pick up and play the fiddle as well.
And just rhythmically, what African music—rhythmically, African music more or less helped shape a lot of aspects of what we hear today, like in blues music, in country music, just because—I mean, with Celtic music and with African music, there’s these distinct different rhythms. And I feel like with the African banjo and that style of playing, that more kind of syncopated rhythmic playing, like with the clawhammer banjo, combining that with the fiddle kind of created this whole different sound. And in a lot of instances—like fiddle-banjo for the longest time was—that would be considered a band, having that rhythmic back playing of the banjo with the fiddle over top. So the contribution, I would say, there would be not only the banjo itself, but also the rhythmic aspects of African music being combined with many of the elements of Celtic music. Yeah. I guess—I don’t know if that answered your question or not, but—

Partial Transcript: Oh, yeah. Well, a big one is Bill Munroe. Arnold Shultz was one of his—I guess one of his mentors. He learned singing and playing from him. And he was a black musician, black singer. So he lists him as being a major influence.
Jimmie Rodgers, when he was working on the railroad for a while, he met other black musicians that he learned to sing from and play guitar from. So he also lists black musicians as being a major part of his development.
And then the Carter family. They were friends with a guy named Lesley Riddle who traveled with A.P. Carter in the mountains. And A.P. would write down—they would go to people’s homes and collect songs. And so A.P. would write down the lyrics of the songs, and Lesley would learn to play the songs. And then by the time they would get back, Lesley would teach the songs on guitar to Maybelle. And he was a black musician. He was actually from Kingsport, and then ended up living—or he was from Burnsville, North Carolina, and eventually moved to Kingsport, Tennessee. And he was a traveling musician.
So those were three major heavy hitters in the traditional music world that cite black musicians as part of their musical journey.

Partial Transcript: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, Tommy Jarrell. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he was like—I never had a chance to meet him. I think he died a little while ago.
David Weintraub
Yeah, he died a few years back.
Amythyst Kiah
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, Tommy Jarrell was one of the fiddlers that we talked about in old-time, in some of our old-time classes that we had. He was a person—I didn’t have a chance to meet him, but I know Roy Andrade was really good—actually, that would actually be another person to talk to as well, would be Roy Andrade. He also teaches out here at the school. But he would know a lot of different stuff too, especially on the music end.
But yeah. Yeah, he was—so I’m only familiar with him through watching film and listening to some stuff, and he—yeah. He was really cool. It would have been cool to meet him.
David Weintraub
Cece Conway did some nice stuff—
Amythyst Kiah
Yeah. Yeah. She did some really—yeah. Her work of black banjo in Appalachia is such an important work. No one else has really tackled that topic. I think it—I wish it would—it would be cool if she would do a second edition or something like that. But it’s been a while since she wrote the first one, so I don’t know. I wonder if that’ll happen. It would be cool if she would extenuate that in some way.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. So minstrel shows were basically these live performances, and typically they had a bit of a theater element to them. But basically, the idea was they played music that would be considered music from the plantation or from the old South. Minstrel shows were sort of a way for people that weren’t from the South, that kind of romanticized the South, to be able to watch a show and have that romanticized idea fulfilled.
Unfortunately, the way it was done was typically it would be white performers that would learn traditional folk songs—
David Weintraub
From the black performers.
Amythyst Kiah
Yeah, exactly. They would get it from black performers, or other white performers, just depending on how—who met how, when, and all that. But the unfortunate aspect of it was for comedic performances, white people would paint their face jet black with shoe polish or something like that, and then enact what they think a black person on a plantation would act like, and for comedic relief on top of the music aspect.
0:37:37.4 And so that’s also another element that separated—that made black people want to further distance themselves from playing traditional music, because of the way that—the sort of caricature of a black person being played during these shows was—obviously it was a thing where I don’t want people to think that that’s how I am. So it’s distancing from self there, or of a certain part of history.
So I would say the good aspect about minstrel shows is that Southern music was getting a platform, which was really great, but it was done in a way that was not really—it was almost—it was at the expense of an entire race of people, because—I mean, you could play the songs without putting on blackface and without putting on an act as if you are a black person. That more or less perpetuated this idea of black people and the South and the music. So yeah, I feel like it was a way, obviously, to spread the idea of the music, but at the same time, it really caused a lot of damage, not only for people of color in regards to music but also, it painted a false image of a certain people and of the music. And yeah, so—

Partial Transcript: Yeah. That’s interesting. I guess I’ve never thought about it in that way of it being a vehicle for black people to still stay connected. That’s interesting. I’ve not thought of that or explored that. Yeah, I guess from my own personal experience, because I—I mean, I learned about traditional music through an academic—in an academic setting, so like—and I wasn’t even aware of traditional music, like as far as playing it or learning it. So for me, my experience of being introduced to it was in the academic world.
So yeah, I guess as far as the minstrel show actually, at the same time, reintroducing blacks to the music, or keeping connected to it in some way—because I guess—black people altogether didn’t stop playing music, clearly. I mean, we can see that, especially with Cece’s work—people that she interviewed that were in their eighties, and they were still playing and had been playing. They didn’t abandon their roots. Obviously, that’s still there. So I could totally see that being a viable way for some people to maybe be able to look beyond the fact that, well, yeah, these people that are portraying this music and portraying us are wrong, but that doesn’t mean that I should stop playing it, because I love it.
So I think that’s really cool that—that’s a really cool idea that completely makes sense, because that’s kind of what—as a musician, some of us decide, well, I don’t care what someone thinks of me because I’m doing this; I’m going to do it anyway. So that’s part of that creative spirit of not being afraid, even though the odds—they’re stacked against you.

Partial Transcript: Well, I can’t speak specifically on how when and how radio actors, studio recording—I can’t really remember when the radio stuff actually—like I said, Ted will be able to speak more to this, more specifically.
But I will say that overall, the technology of being able to buy records, and then being able to sit down at the radio every night and listen to songs—I mean, that, the ability to be able to—you don’t have to wait to—I can speak on it at least from a cultural aspect. You didn’t have to wait until the end of the week for the country dance or the square dance to hear music. You could literally listen to it on the radio, or if you had the money to buy a record and have a record player, listen to it at home.
That accessibility of being able to listen to music more readily—I mean, that changed the game for music in an exponential way, because then you’ve got people that are able to learn songs more or less on their own time, just like how for me, I was able to get some software. Or I can go online and look up a song that I want to learn how to play, and I can play it. Well, for them, getting that radio and hearing those songs was like, oh man, this is really cool. So you get that more readily available music.
And with technology, with the radio stations going out all over the place, everybody had access to be able to hear it. So you get people out west, the people up north listening to these radio shows. And so you’ve got people—that’s why you have old-time scenes in like Chicago, Illinois, and in Boston, is because you had people that were able to hear music in this whole new way where you didn’t have to travel to see it. So that really changed the game as far as how musicians could access and learn music.
On one hand, though, I think it ended up creating—and this is kind of a thing sometimes in old-time music, that kind of presents as a bit of a schism sometimes, with old-time musicians—is that—like when you hear the recordings, there’s some people that have a tendency to think we have to play it just like this recording. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I think there’s merit to that. But there can be this schism of if someone else decides that they don’t want to do that—which, that’s the kind of school of thought that I’m from, is that I feel like you have the liberty to make the song your own in a different way, or to look at it through a different way, creatively. And so you’ve got people that are kind of staunch in one note, versus someone like me who likes the idea of mixing different things.
And I think the advent of recording—some people will hear a recording and think that it’s static, and if you do anything outside of the recording, then it’s not legitimate. So I think that’s probably the only major issue that came out of recording a song, is because it comes across as finite. But in actuality, the person that got recorded in 1927, where did they learn that song from? How did that person before they played that song? They probably didn’t play it exactly like that, because they had no way to record it. So when you go over the mountain to play with Jimmie or whatever, and then you get back home and you play it, there’s no way you’re going to be able to play it note for note.
So yeah, I kind of ran into that issue with some people when I first started getting into old-time music, where—there’s kind of a fine line between listening to the song, and then straying away from it but also keeping the essence of the song. It’s a bit of a balancing act. You don’t want to necessarily make the song unrecognizable, because then it becomes a problem. But yeah, I think people have a tendency to get real static about the recording. But that’s kind of a minor issue. I think that just boils down to personal preference. But yeah.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. That’s another thing that happened too, that’s kind of interesting. It definitely—it took the ability to listen to music—yeah. It definitely alters the way that you can listen to it. I mean, you see a lot of people—I mean, I’m one of these people—maybe walk around with earphones in, or go out to the coffee shop and have earphones in, listening to music. And for me, getting involved with this program, the most challenging aspect for me, being in this Bluegrass, Old-Time, Country Music Studies program, was the fact that this music is social. It is a community music. And for me, music was very personal. It was something that I did in my room, by myself, for ten years. So for me, coming from that, where technology is the reason why I’m even a musician—because of the fact that I was able to be in my room and listen to music and watch videos and be able to learn that way, that’s why I’m a musician. And I think having that versatility of being able to have the technology, I certainly—I mean, obviously for me, I definitely am a huge advocate of having technology to learn music.
But I think most importantly, what I learned through this program, was that learning how to connect with other people while playing music became a very rewarding thing. It was something that—that’s what you lose when you do more or less, I guess, isolate yourself. You don’t get that ability to be able to really interact and have that connection with another musician. That’s a connection that’s different in and of itself, that you can’t get anywhere else.
0:49:49.3 And I feel like I—as I performer, I feel like I’ve—I guess I’ve just grown as a person, as for being able to engage in that way. For me, it was very nerve-wracking in the beginning, to play with other musicians. Because it was almost like—it was almost, for me, almost like stage fright in some ways, just because it was like, okay, everybody’s watching me do this thing, and then they’re going to play with me, and then, oh my gosh. You know, it was like this huge thing of really interacting with people, which was kind of interesting.
But yeah, I think it’s important that programs like this exist, because of the fact that—even though there’s nothing wrong, obviously, with learning online or listening with earbuds or whatever—but the actual live performance, in and of itself, and that live interaction, is something that I think is important for people to be able to have the option to tap into, because it’s—when you have community, you have that connection, then you have a more—you’re able to really fully engage in humanity and be able to understand other people’s struggles when you’re in a community, and being able to connect and lift each other up.
So I feel like it’s—for me, it easy to just go in my room and put my earbuds in and just ignore everything. But actually having to learn how to more or less communicate and integrate myself in that way, it makes life just that more enjoyable as a performer and as a musician.
So yeah. Anyway, I went on a tangent again.

Partial Transcript: Sure. Oh, yeah. It’s really important for people to remember the African-American contributions to Appalachian music because—it’s important for—okay, let me start over.
It’s important for African-American contributions to Appalachian music to be remembered because it creates a false narrative of who we are as a people in this region, and how that falsity can manifest itself throughout the rest of the country and the rest of the world. I think that when you erase a group of people’s contributions to something, it—when people get information, they act on that information. They create their own perceptions about that information. And so when you have two groups of people when you have black people and white people thinking that a certain kind of music is only for a certain kind of person, then you really limit—people end up limiting the scope of what’s possible in their own lives.
I mean, I feel like everybody has a personal responsibility to create meaning in their own lives. And the less information that you have about the world, the less opportunity that you have to create that meaning and to live a life in which you’re fulfilled, and to which you can live without fear, and you don’t have to make decisions based on anxiety or uncertainty. You can be sure that this happened, and this makes sense, and I want to be part of that.
And I think it’s just really—just on a basic human level, it’s a very cruel and hurtful act to eliminate somebody’s—part of their heritage and history for the sake of—whatever, record sales, or preserving a romanticized personal identity. It’s just wrong and hurtful on a very basic human level. But it also cheats people out of being able to have a fully fulfilled life. And it also perpetuates—it’s a smaller part of a larger problem of perpetuating certain ideas and thoughts, and projecting those onto other people, and those people ultimately being affected negatively by someone else’s perceived thoughts about a person.
And I think with each story that talks about African-American contributions—whether in Appalachian music, in science, in literature—with each recognition of that, that’s another layer of visibility for an African-American to see a person doing something and being like, I can do that. And then a white person seeing that and being like, wow, I didn’t realize that was possible.
Because we’re all connected, and any time you cut out a certain group of people’s history, it’s hurting everyone. Because when people think of themselves as so separate from everyone else—which, obviously everybody has differences. But when you create that cultural line with other people, it fragments society. You have factions of people that yell back and forth at each other because they don’t understand one another because they think they’re so different from each other. And you create these divisions, and you create these systematic issues.
And so recognizing African-American contributions to Appalachian music is a small part of an overall necessity of being able to recognize that these people are part of the greater community. We’re part of this greater community and always have been. And the more people recognize that, I think, the less fragmentation in society that we’ll have, because you recognize these people as human beings. Everybody wants to be respected as a human being. And so I think that ties into that.

Partial Transcript: Well, I mean, when you—it hurts us as a country to eliminate part of that historical and cultural and social tapestry because when you have people in power, people that are in a power that they’re able to oppress other people that did very well, did have some contributions, but they’re not being recognized because it would allow for some of that oppressive power to more or less be diminished—I feel like a lot of the erasure that happens in history is because of this idea of being powerful. It’s a power play. It’s a way to—the less that—in the case of black oppression, the less that everyone knows about black people in general, the easier it is to manipulate people.
It’s this idea of—for instance, a rural white person will see—even to this day, a rural white person may see a rural black person, and even though they eat the same food, they live in the same—similar conditions, in their mind, I’m better than them because I’m white.
And you can have a person in power that’s white, that has absolutely no interest in your life from a class level, but they know that you will listen to them—that they’ll listen to you because you’re a white person, and you claim that you’re a Christian, and you claim all these different things.
You know that that white person—even though economically, they’re on the same level as the black person—the white person is going to denigrate the black person and herald the white person, even though that white person, when you get their vote or whatever, their interests are not going to be for that white person that voted for them.
So what erasing certain parts of the tapestry in history, in this country—it creates a situation where the less that people know about a group of people, the easier it is to continue to perpetuate stereotypes and create excuses and reasons for not allowing certain people to do certain things.
So again, it goes back to being ignorant, not having information, not understanding, wow, they play fiddle too; wow, they like to eat cornbread and collard greens too; or whatever. Just being able to connect with the person.
If you can’t connect with someone, it’s easy to paint a certain vision about them, and it’s easy for a person in power to perpetuate these ideas. And then the people on the lower levels are like, well I’m white, so I’m going to go with this guy because he’s—I mean, they’re not thinking, “Because he’s perpetuating my fear.” They’re not thinking that way. But it’s this idea of like, this guy’s thinking my language—which is a language of fear and misinformation and misunderstanding.
So anytime you cut out a part of the tapestry in American history and culture, you are creating—there’s this confusion, misunderstanding, fear, violence, and it’s all stemmed from ignorance of not understanding who people are and how they contribute in the greater community of things.
So it’s just really important for that to be there, just from the standpoint of trying to eliminate the violence and the ignorance and the fear that people have of one another, because living in fear—I mean, we’ve seen what happened throughout Jim Crow, through the Civil Rights Movement, with the lynching. That was all based on not knowing who a person was, not knowing that that person was a person. So anytime you eliminate from the tapestry, you more or less perpetuate the possibility of misunderstanding and violence.
It’s a small thing that connects in a way broader scheme. And I kind of tend to think in the big picture of things in a lot of instances.

Partial Transcript: Well, it’s really important to me because I grew up in this sort of in-between-ness. As I mentioned earlier, my blackness seemed to always be hanging in the balance. You know, the certain types of music that I listened to, the way that I dressed, the way that I spoke—there was always a running joke of—with my white friends, like, “Oh, yeah, you’re not really black, ha ha.” There was always this kind of running joke. And then with other black people, they would think that I was acting white because of some of my attributes. So I was always in this kind of in-between stage, where obviously I was black, but it didn’t seem like I 100% fit in, in any particular slot. And so for me, music was an escape. That was when I knew I didn’t have to worry about anybody judging me or questioning me about who I was. That was sort of my haven.
And so when I finally came across this music, and then understanding the kind of inclusion, historically, that this music creates between whites and blacks, that was a moment where I reconciled who I was as a person, and that there was never anything wrong with the way I spoke, with the way that I dressed, with my interests; that nothing made me more or less black or more or less white; that this music, in and of itself, is not just black or white, and so why should I have to ascribe to any certain identity in order to prove that I’m a person of color, or that I’m not acting white? I mean, what does acting white mean? It goes back to these stereotypes, and not having information, and being ignorant.
So this music, to me, is a representation of this blend of cultural ideas, that at the end of the day have really no merit to—at the end of the day, the combination of these two musics don’t have any foundation of cultural purity or in exclusive identity. This is something that all of us have a part in. And I want to be able to show people that that’s what this is about. It’s not about excluding anyone. It’s not about tying a music with a racial identity in order to make other people feel unwanted. It’s about the music. And all of us have a part in it.
And so for me, reconciling that in-between-ness, as far as my blackness, and then coming across this music, it was just—everything just fell into place and made a lot more sense. And I just try to do what I can to more or less talk to people, and just let people know—and just try to lead by example in a lot of ways—that we’re not truly alone, I guess. I mean, that sounds kind of cliché, but yeah.