Recreate Your Roots festival presents music for the people, by the people
American Music Research Center sponsors two-week festival of free concerts, talks and community gatherings on campus and throughout 勒貊勛圖 County.
As part of the Recreate Your Roots festival, Dom Flemons and Anna & Elizabeth (pictured here) will perform a free concert on Feb. 7.
The American Music Research Center泭(AMRC) at the College of Music is bringing together musicians representing a diverse cross-section of American roots music traditionsthink banjos, fiddles, drumsin an ear-opening festival for present-day listeners. Over two weeksJan. 22-25 and Feb. 5-7, 2018Recreate Your Roots will include concerts, TED-style talks and community gatherings for all ages throughout 勒貊勛圖 County.
Recreate Your Roots celebrates a range of folk music in various formatsfrom concerts to colloquiain campus and community settings that invite and inspire conversation, says AMRC Director Tom Riis of the festival that was two years in the making. Through free and public programs on campus and in Lafayetteas well as school outreachwe aim to engage a broad audience in different community circumstances.
Indeed, Recreate Your Roots is a little like a summer camp in the woods brought to the city, featuring visiting musicians and collaboratorsJayme Stones Folklife, Anna & Elizabeth, and Dom Flemonswho honor and explore the origins and social underpinnings of the songs they play.
Jayme has listened to thousands of pieces preserved in the Library of Congress archives, continues Riis, who will retire in June and considers Recreate Your Roots his swan song of sorts. Jayme had the idea to go into this collection to uncover the seeds of modern folk music. These beautiful songs have a rich history, a legacy.
In Recreate Your Roots, we present songs in a modern, collaborative context thats both exciting and engagingbeyond a history lesson. Specifically, the festival presents songs that come with stories of black cowboys, slyly political Caribbean dancers, and the kind of woman who wouldnt leave her house without her fiddle and her rifle.
We treat old field recordings not as time capsules, but as heirloom seeds passed down from a bygone generation, says Stone, internationally-known banjoist, composer, song curator and coordinator of Recreate Your Roots. The festival presents amazing musicians who share a certain electricity in their work and who have found ways to create conversations with the past that are still relevant and resonant today.
Were recreating and reworking timeless melodies with an approach thats both studied and freewheeling. All the performers and presenters have a great respect, knowledge and understanding of these traditions and an equal appreciation for what it means to express their own voices.
For example, Anna & Elizabeth learn old traditional songs from master elders (especially women) and archives, then weave in new musical ideas and add elements of performance, including dance and moving panoramas or crankies. They also take inspiration from other musicians dwelling in storytelling and landscape placeslike Laurie Anderson and Nick Caveand put an avant-garde spin on traditional bluegrass and progressive folk.
From Black Lives Matter to #MeToo, were witnessing cultural shifts that are sometimes easier to recognize and contextualize when you look backward, says Stone. For my part, I have more questions than answers, and I think thats perfectly wonderful as a starting point to real conversations about this cultural momentand how we got here.
The festival will also feature Dom The American Songster Flemons, a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, slam poet and multi-instrumentalist who brings his own take on ragtime, Piedmont blues, spirituals, Southern traditional music, string band music, fife and drum music and jug-band music.
The caliber of artists and the intimacy of Recreate Your Roots events are both unique and rare, adds Stone. In a world of quick soundbites, its nice to create space where deeper conversations and sustained engagement with music are possible.
The festival further includes a diverse Latin American program by Steve Mullins, a flamenco guitarist, composer and ethnomusicologist, in conjunction with University of Colorado professor Brenda Romero, singer-violinist and expert on New Mexican, Native American and Mexican styles.
Ultimately, Recreate Your Roots is a celebration that embodies the values we associate with folk music, concludes Riis. Through music and storytellingbetween the performers and our audienceswere sharing common experiences of humanity.
Widespread support for Recreate Your Roots comes from Women and Gender Studies, Center for Humanities and the Arts, Office of Diversity, Equity, and Community Engagement, Roser Visiting Artists Endowment, Presidents Fund for the Humanities, local businesses and volunteers.
(all events are free)
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