Elizabeth City to Host Smithsonian Exhibit on Roots Music

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) June 10, 2010 -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Darrell Stover
Statewide Coordinator of MoMS and Program Officer
North Carolina Humanities Council
(336) 334-5723
dstover@nchumanities.org

Elizabeth City to Host Smithsonian Exhibit on Roots Music

GREENSBORO, NC (June 10, 2010) – Northeastern North Carolina, specifically Pasquotank County, was the first home to bebop jazz innovator Max Roach. From June 19-August 1 it becomes home to New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music, a Smithsonian Institution exhibition hosted by Elizabeth City’s Museum of the Albemarle and presented in collaboration with the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Museum of the Albemarle is the third of six sites statewide competitively chosen to host New Harmonies. Museum exhibit design chief Don Pendergraft says that “New Harmonies will renew the musical heritage of North Carolina’s earliest settled region.”

New Harmonies commemorates the legacy of American music with interactive kiosks devoted to jazz, the blues, R&B, bluegrass, country western, zydeco, Cajun, Tejano, klezmer, folk, and gospel. The exhibit traces the emergence of such genres to African influences and the traditions of early European immigrants to North America. Anne Cohn, director of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, explains that New Harmonies “tells a new American story” with displays of vintage sheet music, photographs, and instruments such as the duclimer, banjo, diddley bow, spoons, washboard, and drums. A listening station provides an opportunity to experience music firsthand by singing along with legendary performers such as B.B. King, Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, Mahalia Jackson, Bob Dylan, and Earl Scruggs.

The Museum of the Albemarle has planned an array of complementary programming to showcase northeastern North Carolina’s unique music traditions. The free events include roots music-related lectures on such artists as Max Roach and Lead Belly, a Roots Music 101 summer camp for kids, Jonkonnu mask-making and dance, and live music by the Long Family, Uphill, Paper Mountain, the C-Shells, and the Albemarle Sounds. On July 31, “Saturday Night at the Nags Head Casino,” a re-creation of the famous casino on the museum’s portico with live music and shagging, will culminate exhibit programming. See www.museumofthealbemarle.com for full details of all New Harmonies events.

New Harmonies, the first Museum on Main Street initiative to visit the state, began its year-long tour at the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History. Executive director Matt Edwards reported a 200% increase in museum visitors over last year. “I can’t fully express how pleased we’ve been with New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music,” says Edwards, noting especially his excitement when “a certain piece of music or an album cover from long ago” sparked memories and conversation. At the “banjo string-cutting” in Mount Airy, Senator Richard Burr remarked that visitors to the exhibit “are going to get a snapshot of history that is absolutely essential to their future.”

MoMS is the only means by which rural communities, where one-fifth of all Americans live, can host Smithsonian exhibitions and at the same time generate locally-conceived public events that help support the arts, culture, and businesses in their regions. Emily Shaw of the Warren County Memorial Library and project director of New Harmonies there, comments, “Growing up in a rural town, I would never imagine that something as prestigious as a Smithsonian Institution exhibit would come anywhere close to this area. The fact that this exhibit is not only came here, but was designed for rural areas, is what, in my opinion, really makes New Harmonies special. It shows that just because you live in a small town with minimal resources does not necessarily mean you have to lack in cultural resources.”

North Carolina Humanities Council Executive Director Shelley Crisp sums up the exhibit’s relevance to North Carolina in this way: “Our state has a vast heritage, and from the mountains to the sea coast, quite different heritages. Each of the six New Harmonies sites will feature musical traditions unique to their areas.”

After the Museum of the Albemarle, next stops on the New Harmonies tour are:

· The Arts Council of Wayne County, Goldsboro (August 7-September 18). Contact: Sarah Merritt, sarah@artsinwayne.or or 919.736.3300.

· Rural Life Museum at the Liston B. Ramsey Center for Regional Studies, Mars Hill College (September 25-November 6). Contact: Karen Paar, kpaar@mhc.edu or 828.689.1262.

· Don Gibson Theatre, Shelby (November 13-December 29). Contact: Emily Epley, Emily@destinationclevelandcounty.org or 704.477.6845.

The North Carolina Humanities Council is a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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