The Bluegrass Music Symposium
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
This schedule is subject to change. Please continue to check as the conference dates approach. Changes will not be made without permission of the presenters affected. Unless otherwise noted, events will take place in the Kentucky Library and Museum, (See www.wku.edu/Tour/campusmap.html, building #1.)
Thurs., Sept. 8: Pre-Conference Special Events
2:00 PM
Bluegrass on Three Continents: A discussion session and meeting with WKU students and international symposium participants, including Sab Watanabe, Paolo Dettwiler, and others. Location: Kentucky Library and Museum, Gallery K-L
Sponsored by the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology, Department of Communication, Department of Journalism and Broadcasting, and Department of Music, WKU.
3:30 PM
The Station Inn: The Influence of a Performance Space On the Evolution and Spread of Bluegrass Music. A panel discussion organized by Dale W. Johnson, including Marty and Charmaine Lanham, Roland White, and others.
location: Orientation Room, Kentucky Library and Museum.Reception opening the exhibit Bluegrass Images 1968-2005, photographs by Carl Fleischhauer and Charmaine Lanham will follow the Station Inn panel. Garden Gallery, Kentucky Library and Museum.
7:30 PM
Concert: J.D. Crowe and the New South, Van Meter Auditorium, WKU (see www.wku.edu/Tour/campusmap.html, building #43). Free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Cultural Enhancement Committee, Western Kentucky University. (For band profile, see end of schedule.)
Friday, Sept. 9
7:30 AM
Press book table set-up: University of Illinois Press, University Press of Kentucky, University Press of Mississippi, University of Tennessee Press.
Conference registration: foyer, Kentucky Museum & Library.
Continental breakfast, Gallery K-L, Kentucky Museum & Library
8:15-8:30 AM
Welcome, Gallery K-L
8:30 AM-5:00 PM
The Pioneer Log Cabin adjacent to the Kentucky Library and Museum will be open all day as a comfortable area for attendees to socialize and pick. This is the small log structure behind the museum -- not the two-story log Felts House in front of the museum. (Go out the glass front doors of the museum visitors entrance and keep angling left around behind the building till you see it.)
8:30-10:10 -- Styles and Definitions (Gallery K-L)
Joti Rockwell, What is Bluegrass Anyway?: The Genre Debate, Categorization, and Contemporary Bluegrass at the Boundaries
Gregory N. Reish, Hillbilly Music and the Roots of Bluegrass Guitar
Philip Nusbaum, Bluegrass: New Fans, New Players and New Paradigm
Toru Mitsui, 32-bar Form, Chromaticism and Tonality
8:30-10:10 -- Images and Reflections Pt. 1: Who We Are, What We do, Why We Do It (Orientation Room)
Stephanie P. Ledgin, Is It Bluegrass? The Controversy: What We Can Learn From Bill Monroe and Elvis Presley
Tom Kopp, The Appeal (or Potential Appeal) of Bluegrass: A Motivational Theorist’s Perspective
John Stiernberg, The “O Brother Phenomenon”: Trend or Spike?
Peter Feldmann, The Big Bang of Bluegrass: The Application of Cosmology to the World of Music
10:30-12:10 -- People of Bluegrass Music (Gallery K-L)
Matt Meacham, Toward a Conceptual Geography of John Hartford’s Musical Career
Murphy Henry, Gloria Belle: Carving Her Own Path
Ivan M. Tribe, Melvin Goins: An Underappreciated Life in Bluegrass Music
Jon Weisberger, Devil in Disguise: J.D. Crowe as Alt.Country Pioneer
12:15 -- Lunch (catered on site, Gallery K-L)
12:30 -- Lunchtime presentation
Marian Leighton Levy, “What Have They Done to the Old Homeplace?”: A Post-Feminist Reading of Women and Bluegrass
1:30-3:10 -- (Gallery K-L)
Preview of Saturday Workshop
James E. Akenson and Pam Petty, Integrating the Bluegrass Tradition Into the K-12 Curriculum
Sense of Place Pt. 1: Dear Old Southern Home
Bill Brown and Michael Fleming, North Georgia Bluegrass Music 1950-2000
Josh Beckworth, The Musical Progression to Bluegrass and the Influence of Popular Culture in Ashe County, NC
Joyce Compton Brown and Amanda Nicole Wood, From Cotton Mill Colic to High Lonesome Harmony: Bluegrass and Mill Town Identity in an Appalachian Outmigration Community
1:30-3:10 -- Images and Reflections Pt. 2: Looking Back, Looking Ahead (Orientation Rm.)
Fred Bartenstein, Bluegrass Generations
Don Kissil, The Past and Future of Bluegrass Festivals
Doug Benson, The Northern Perspective: Reminiscences from a Canadian Fan/Activist
Bob Turbanic, Wheeling Park High School Bluegrass Program: Why Bluegrass Matters
3:25-5:00 -- Sense of Place Pt. 2: Far from My Old Kentucky Home (Gallery K-L)
Clifford Murphy, Bluegrass in New England – How It Got There, and Why It Stayed
Kenichi Yamaguchi, The Bluegrass Music Scene in the Detroit Area
Lee Bidgood, Czech Bluegrass as Music in Intercultural Microdiscourse
Toshiyuki Tsuda, How the Bluegrass Community Came to Grow in Japan
7:30 -- Keynote Address
Neil Rosenberg, “How Will I Explain About You?: Intellectual and Academic Uses of Bluegrass.” Free and open to the public, Garrett Auditorium, WKU.
(See www.wku.edu/Tour/campusmap.html, building #42.) A biographical profile of the keynote speaker follows the conference schedule. This address is sponsored by the Kentucky Humanities Council, and the International Bluegrass Music Association.
9:30 -- ASCAP reception and picking party, Holiday Inn - University Plaza (registered participants)
Saturday, Sept. 10
8:00 AM
Registration: Kentucky Library and Museum foyer.
Coffee, juice, and pastries (Gallery K-L)
8:30 AM-5:00 PM
The Pioneer Log Cabin adjacent to the Kentucky Library and Museum will be open all day as a comfortable area for attendees to socialize and pick. (Directions above, in Friday schedule.)
8:30-10:10 -- Documenting the Process (Gallery K-L)
Carl Fleischhauer, Picturing Bluegrass: Photographing the Genre, 1968-1986
Anthony Harkins, The Hillbilly in the American Imagination
Rodney F. Moag, Toward a Model of the Development of Bluegrass as an Independent Musical Genre: Texas as a Case Study
9:00-12:00 -- K-12 Teacher Workshop (Orientation Room)
Bluegrass in the K-12 Classroom. James Akenson and Pamela Petty. Designed specifically for K-12 teachers, this event is scheduled in conjunction with the Bluegrass Music Symposium, but is separate from it. Separate preregistration is required; for more information contact Lynne Ferguson Lynne.Ferguson@wku.edu.
10:30- 11:45 (Gallery K-L)
Recording Bluegrass: Issues and Reissues: A Panel Discussion, Charles Wolfe, Facilitator. (Participants to be announced)
12:00: Lunch (catered on site, Gallery K-L)
12:30: Lunchtime presentation
Mayne Smith, Hindsights
1:15-3:00 -- Bluegrass Scenes (Gallery K-L)
Thomas A. Adler, Bluegrass Music and the Evolution of the Rural Country Music Park
Ira Gitlin, The Parking-Lot Vernacular
David B. Pruett, Smokin’ Grass without Prejudice: Kentucky’s Bluegrass Connection to Nashville’s MusikMafia
Jonathan T. King, Improvising Bluegrass in the Urban Country
3:15-5:00 -- Bluegrass Worldview (Gallery K-L)
Richard C. Stern, Dr. Ralph Stanley: Bluegrass Theologian
Paul E. Koptak, Rhetorical Identification in Bluegrass Gospel Singing
Kevin Kehrberg, Hymnody in Overdrive: Style and Originality in the Gospel Quartet Compositions of Bill Monroe
Takashi Morioka, The Concept of “High Lonesome"
J. D. Crowe and the New South
When the Symposium organizers considered who might be an appropriate performer to lead off the historic Bluegrass Music Symposium at Western Kentucky University, one name quickly rose to the top of the list. James Dee “J.D.” Crowe is truly a legend, both here in the Bluegrass State and throughout the world of bluegrass music.
His pioneering work with Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys, begun while he was still a teenager in the mid–1950s, contributed to scores of bluegrass classics and set a standard to which legions of banjo players and harmony singers still aspire. The Rounder Records debut he recorded in 1975 with his trailblazing band, The New South, is widely recognized as one of the genre’s most important recordings and continues to inspire new generations more than a quarter of a century after its release. Subsequent albums have explored both hard–driving bluegrass and creative country blends. With the Bluegrass Album Band, he reintroduced audiences to the songs of the first generation’s masters in a series of influential albums that spanned more than a decade and a half. He’s earned Grammy and IBMA awards, been honored by his native state and acclaimed around the world. Today, his name is synonymous with unsurpassed mastery of bluegrass tradition, bold innovation, the nurturing of fresh talent and an uncompromising devotion to musical excellence.
J. D. continues to lead a hard-working bluegrass band that has earned comparison with the greatest of the New South’s earlier lineups. Dwight McCall, Harold Nixon and Rickey Wasson all grew up musically within a hundred miles of Crowe’s long time home ground of Lexington, Kentucky. With a compelling blend of youth and experience, tradition and creativity, this is a band straight from the heart of bluegrass today.
The conference planners are grateful to the Cultural Enhancement Committee of Western Kentucky University for making this concert possible in conjunction with the Bluegrass Music Symposium.For more information, see www.jdcrowe.net.
TBMS Keynote Speaker Neil V. Rosenberg: A Profile
A native of the western U.S., Rosenberg has a BA in History from Oberlin College and the MA and PhD in Folklore from Indiana University. He is Professor Emeritus of Folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland, where he taught from 1968 to 2004. He is a Fellow of the American Folklore Society, and recipient of the Marius Barbeau Medal for lifetime achievement from the Folklore Studies Association of Canada.
He has specialized in the study of contemporary folk music traditions, investigating the ways in which popular music influences and is influenced by local and regional folk music traditions, and examining the processes of cultural revival. He has conducted research on these topics in Canada and the United States, focusing upon the lives and music of professional, semi-professional and amateur old-time, bluegrass, country and folk musicians. In the course of these studies he has developed an interest in specialized research techniques such as discography and oral history.
A performing musician since childhood, Rosenberg utilizes his skills and experiences in bluegrass, country, folk, jazz, classical and experimental music to gain a closer understanding of the processes he studies.
His books include Bluegrass: A History (1985), the definitive work on that form of music; Transforming Tradition (1993), a collection of studies on North American folk music revivals; and Bluegrass Odyssey: A Documentary in Pictures and Words (2001), co-authored with photographer Carl Fleischhauer of the Library of Congress. Now in press is his book with Charles Wolfe, The Music of Bill Monroe, a bio-discography that updates his long out-of-print Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys: An Illustrated Discography (1974).
He has published over sixty articles and review essays. Recent publications include studies of the music of Canadian fiddler Don Messer and African American singer Huddie Ledbetter ("Lead Belly"). In press is an article on the connections between the Carter Family and bluegrass music. He has also written album notes for some forty recordings, including the Anthology of American Folk Music, for which he won a Grammy in 1998.
We thank the Kentucky Humanities Council and the International Bluegrass Music Association for supporting Neil Rosenberg’s participation in the Bluegrass Music Symposium.