Sarah Downs / Berea, Kentucky / 2012-2013 / Topic: Modern Dance and Traditional Music
Project: Sarah's Fellowship research will make use of interview and performance recordings of Lily May Ledford and the Coon Creek Girls to develop a dance work for Berea's annual modern dance concert, Kinetic Expressions in 2014. It will include improvisational contributions from Berea College students built around the archival materials. They will be shaped, structured and, ultimately, choreographed into a completed work with portions of the audio material also serving as a soundscape. Additional research outcomes include (1) performances at schools, hospitals, and community centers in lecture demonstrations, dance playshops, and exhibitions throughout Madison and surrounding counties; and (2) Inclusion of a soundscape or "found sound" based project in the syllabus of PED 305 Improvisation and Choreography.
Sarah is Assistant Director of Dance Programs, Instructor in Physical Education and Health at Berea College. Her undergraduate and graduate study, respectively was at Eastern Kentucky University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Page McClean / Hobe Sound, Florida / 2013-2014 / Topic: Kinship and Traditional Music
Project: Page’s video documentation work involves studying the role of kinship in the preservation and transmission of Appalachian folk musical traditions. She will focus both on multigenerational families that have passed down their musical knowledge as well as situations in which a lost tradition was recovered through an alternative interpretation of kinship. As an addendum to her fieldwork with families, she will attend the Hindman Settlement School’s Appalachian Family Folk Week to explore the role that an institution can serve in supporting families in the promotion and preservation of folk traditions.
Page’s research will result in a series of filmed interviews and performances that will be available for future research use in the Berea College Archives. She will edit her research into a film that she will share with the participants of the project and will later submit to film festivals. Page also presented at the 2015 Appalachian Studies Conference.
Page is a visual anthropologist who has engaged in ethnographic and visual research in Europe and the Americas. In addition to her video work, she is a singer-songwriter and an acoustic guitarist. She currently works as an educator and a writer in Colorado.
- Page McClean's 2015 Appalachian Studies Conference Presentation"Family Music: The Role of Kinship in the Preservation and Transmission of Traditional Music in Kentucky."
This presentation will share my findings from ethnographic field research conducted in 2014 across the state of Kentucky. Through participant observation and interviews, my research focused on the role that kinship can play in preserving and passing on a variety of traditional musical styles. While kinship can be interpreted as blood bonds, one essential finding of the research was the broader notion of what anthropologists call “fictive kinship.” My research explores the ways in which music can help create kin, and also the deep bonds shared through music when playing with one’s own family. The research was designed to document not only multi-generational musical families, but also those where a tradition was lost, or recovered after a gap in transmission. I looked also at the role that institutions can play in fostering and supporting musical traditions both new and old, and at ways these musicians interpreted what it means to preserve and transmit their music, which is as varied as the geography of the state.
