"Appalachia: Music From Home" is a wonderful collection of today's mountain music. Mountain music is the foundation of Old-Tyme and Bluegrass Music that originated from these ancient mountains.

This collection, that is a companion to the 4-part PBS Special "Appalachia: History of Mountains and People" and includes music from a variety of artists.

The album consists of 20 tracks that cover modern mountain music from Bluegrass Music's Blue Highway Band and Ralph Stanley to the styles from Dock Boggs and Molly Slemp. There is old and new including traditional songs like "Susanna Gal" and "Rock Andy" and Nashville's Darrell Scott performing a highlight piece on the album, "Banjo Clark."

Mountain music started long before the coal mining days, transitioned through it and reflects on that history today. Before the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) brought electricity to the region, there was music. As a result, the music is acoustic consisting of banjos and fiddles, guitars and mandolins and held together with a upright bass. Washerboards, harmonicas and other instruments frequently found their way in and out of the music over time.

Mountain music has a soul of its own. It was played on the front porches of homes on the hills and in the hollers. It was family and social music without the fancy polish of today's Nashville sound. This was music from the hearts and souls of the people who worked the fields and the mines in the region. It was a way to bring folks together. That soulful "alive" essence of the music is what made it real and that reality still exists today.

"Appalachia: Music From Home" is not only music from home but is also a snapshot of time made by the people who live there and created the music. It is a page of history that illustrates the history of the immigrants who moved into the region, the country and rural attitudes of the mountain man and the soul of the families and social community that exists today. It has endured through ecological disaster, the Civil War, mining, logging and more. It endures because of the people. Those people are the artists contained within the 20 tracks of this collection of Mountain Music. A wonderful expression for our time.

 

"Will work for music."