2019 folklife

Bryan Bowers Band

Bryan Bowers Band

Autoharp Virtuoso/Folk
Yorktown, Virginia

For more than five decades, Bryan Bowers has been to the autoharp what Earl Scruggs was to the five-string banjo. He presents instrumental virtuosity combined with warmth, eloquence, expression, and professionalism. From his rather unglamorous beginning as a street singer, Bryan has become a major artist on the traditional music circuit. He has redefined the autoharp and is also well known as a singer-songwriter with a dynamic and outgoing personality as well as an uncanny ability to enchant a crowd.

Danny Knicely

Danny Knicely

Multi-instrumentalist and dancer
Taylorstown, Virginia

Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley has long been fertile ground for the development of old-time and bluegrass music, and the Knicelys are one of the region’s most prominent musical families. Multi-instrumentalist A. O. Knicely was a staple at area barn dances in the 1930s; his son Glen soaked up this music as a child and, along with his wife, Darlena, passed on the tradition to his son, Danny.

Deborah Pratt and Clementine Macon Boyd

Deborah Pratt and Clementine Macon Boyd

Oyster Shucking Champions
Middlesex County, Virginia

For communities on Virginia’s Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula, the oyster fishery was perhaps the largest and most influential industry from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. Men and women employed by the industry worked a variety of jobs, from boat cook, captain, and crew, to shore-based scow gangs and shuckers. Shucking in particular provided many employment opportunities for African Americans throughout the Chesapeake region. Sisters Deborah Pratt and Clementine Macon Boyd, whose parents met while working in one of the many small oyster houses that dotted the Northern Neck coastline, are two of the top shuckers in the world, each capable of deftly opening two dozen oysters in less than three minutes.

Dr. Levine and the Dreaded BluesLady with Andrew Alli

Dr. Levine and the Dreaded BluesLady with Andrew Alli

Blues
Charlottesville and Richmond, Virginia

Virginia’s female blues artists have made tremendous contributions to American music, with the likes of Ruth Brown, Pearl Bailey, Gaye Adegbalola, and others at the genre’s forefront. Following in the footsteps of these legends is Waynesboro’s Lorie Strother, who is one half of Dr. Levine and the Dreaded BluesLady along with guitarist Stephen Levine. This energetic duo performs a diverse selection of acoustic music styles. Though blues is their focus, they also sometimes surprise audiences with jazz, R&B, soul, and classic rock tunes. Lorie can't remember a time when she wasn't singing because it came so naturally. She has been performing and recording her interpretation of acoustic blues since the early 1990s. Corey Harris has called her "a real blues woman [who's] got soul," and Living Blues Magazine described her singing as "assertive, expressive and sensitive." She apprenticed with Gaye Adegbalola, a founding member of the award-winning all-woman blues band, Saffire: The Uppity Blues Women, in the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program in 2013.

Reverend Frank Newsome

Reverend Frank Newsome

Old Regular Baptist hymns
Haysi, Virginia

An elder in the Old Regular Baptist Church, Frank Newsome is a master practitioner of lined-out hymn singing, one of the oldest musical traditions in Virginia. Newsome was born in 1942 in Pike County, Kentucky, where his father worked as a coal miner. One of twenty-two children, Newsome attended Old Regular Baptist Church services as a child with his mother. He settled in Virginia at about the age of twenty and worked in the coal mines. After more than seventeen years, Newsome contracted black lung disease and left the mines. He took up new responsibilities at his church, using his vocal prowess to lead his congregation in hymn singing and as a preacher. He preaches at the Little David Old Regular Baptist Church in Buchanan County, Virginia.

J Pope

J Pope

Vocalist and Lyricist
Baltimore, MD

Hailing from the Washington, D.C. area, singer, MC, and percussionist J Pope fell in love with music at church. The semi-regular Sunday morning appearances by The Fleming Sisters inspired her desire to connect with people through musical performance. “The way they would perform, the emotion they would give, and the emotion it would evoke in the people who were there was so powerful,” Pope remembers. “They made me want to become a performing artist.”

The Legendary Ingramettes

The Legendary Ingramettes

Gospel
Richmond, Virginia

Widely celebrated as the “First Family of Gospel Music” in Richmond, Virginia, The Legendary Ingramettes have been blowing the roof off performance stages for nearly six decades. The Ingramettes were formed by Evangelist “Mama” Maggie Ingram (born July 4, 1930) on Mulholland’s Plantation in Coffee County, Georgia, where she worked the cotton and tobacco fields with her parents. Maggie began playing the piano and singing at an early age, and developed a great love for the church and gospel music. In 1961, Maggie moved herself and her five children to Richmond and created Maggie Ingram and the Ingramettes, a family singing group that became one of the most beloved group in Richmond’s storied gospel tradition.

Linda Lay and Springfield Exit

Linda Lay and Springfield Exit

Bluegrass
Winchester, Virginia

Linda Clayman Lay grew up in Clayman Valley, a tiny community named after her family outside of Bristol, Tennessee. She grew up surrounded by music in a family that treasured tunes, from old-time and bluegrass to gospel and traditional country. Her father, mandolinist Jack Clayman, formed a family band with Linda and her brothers and sisters, taking them to the places where the local musicians gathered, jammed, and performed.

Mandkhai Erdembat

Mandkhai Erdembat

Mongolian Contortion
Arlington, Virginia

Mandkhai Erdembat was born in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and traveled across the globe to perform contortion on cruise ships, at festivals, and dinner shows before moving to the United States in 2012.

Mongolian contortion has existed since the twelfth century as a dance called Uran Nugaralt, which translates to “artistic bending.” This kind of dance was prominent in the royal palaces of Mongolia before it became associated with the international success of the Mongolian State Circus in the 1940s. To this day, Mongolian contortionists are known around the world for their mastery in the field.

Junious Brickhouse and Urban Artistry

Junious Brickhouse and Urban Artistry

House Culture and Dance
Washington, D.C.

Born in 1974, Junious Lee Brickhouse grew up in a musical household in the African American communities of Virginia Beach and Norfolk. His mother, Lynda, shared with him her love of dance, teaching him routines he performed to entertain guests at neighborhood “record parties,” where adults played their favorite releases from Stax Records and other soul labels. Lynda taught Junious the funky chicken, the breakdown, and many other popular dances, while also encouraging him to create his own moves.

Whitetop Mountain Band

Whitetop Mountain Band

Old Time String Band
Grayson County, Virginia

Old time music is an ensemble-based, hard-driving form that has inspired dancers across southern Appalachia for generations. One of the epicenters of old-time music is the small community of Whitetop, Virginia, in Grayson County, home of the Whitetop Mountain Band, a family band that has entertained audiences for more than 40 years. Renowned fiddler and instrument builder Albert Hash started the band in the 1940s.

Willard Gayheart featuring Dori Freeman

Willard Gayheart featuring Dori Freeman

Appalachian Singer-Songwriters
Galax, Virginia

Willard Gayheart was born in 1932, in eastern Kentucky in the tiny mountain community of Cordia, not far out of Hazard. His was a rugged and modest upbringing in Depression-era Appalachia. At age 12, Willard was given the job of starting the fires each morning in each of the four potbelly stoves at his school. He had his teacher, Ms. Sloan, save the money he earned and slowly accumulated $3.00, enough to buy a used Montgomery Ward parlor-sized guitar. He spent the summer practicing and got to where he could accompany himself singing, and would perform as a duo with his friend, Elmer Ray Combs, for school functions.