Carolina mountain home: place, tradition, migration, and an Appalachian musical family

Carolina mountain home: place, tradition, migration, and an Appalachian musical family

Bluegrass music

Families

Folk music

Folk songs, English

Jackson County (N.C.)

Old-time music

Prince family

Skagit County (Wash.)

Snohomish County (Wash.)

Ferguson, Robert Hunt

2004

Starnes, Richard D., 1970-

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/

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manuscripts (documents)

Text

61819

https://southernappalachiandigitalcollections.org/object/61819

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This thesis examines musical community in southwestern North Carolina and seeks to establish the region as one of the most influential areas of mountain music. Too often do scholars focus their attentions on other regions of Appalachia as being the center of gravity for mountain music while neglecting the under appreciated coves of the southwestern counties of North Carolina. The Queen family of Jackson County serve as a vehicle to demonstrate the rich musical communities of southwestern North Carolina. Through the Queens, this thesis details important events and people in mountain music from 1900 to the present. The Queen family and their relatives began the century much like other rural southern Appalachian musical families. Music served as entertainment, prayer, and a community builder. In the late 1970s the Queens were increasingly recognized for their contributions to mountain culture, specifically music. This recognition eventually gained a national stage, thus demonstrating the region's important contributions to mountain music. Transplanted mountain musical communities in the Pacific Northwest further substantiate the claim that southwestern North Carolina and its families played major roles in the perpetuation of mountain music. Beginning around 1900 and continuing through the 1970s,large numbers of people from western North Carolina, including some of the Queens, migrated to Washington state. Most migrants followed the logging industry and settled along the Skagit and Sauk River valleys. Tarheels remained close and developed mountain musical communities similar to the ones they had known in southern Appalachia. Today the Darrington Bluegrass Festival and the Queen family in Skagit County are testaments to the mountain musical influences North Carolinians transmitted to the Pacific Northwest.

2014-05-08

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North Carolina, Western

Appalachian Region, Southern

16,356 KB(file size)

xii, 97 pages(pages)

Western Carolina University Restricted Electronic Theses and Dissertations