<< Back 5/1/02 Folk dancing takes center stage By Michael Beadle The nation’s oldest continuous folk festival turns 75 this summer, and to gear up for the festivities, organizers are presenting a Folk Heritage Celebration Series to help people share and understand the honored cultural traditions of dance and music that are unique to this region. The Mountain Dance & Folk Festival, an annual celebration of Western North Carolina’s music and dance heritage, began in Asheville back in 1928. Founded by the legendary Bascom Lamar Lunsford, the festival has continued to raise awareness for the Southern Appalachian style of songs and dances that draw on centuries of Scottish, English, Irish, Cherokee and African cultures. This year’s festival will be held Aug. 1-3 in the Diana Wortham Theatre at Pack Place in downtown Asheville. To give the public some of the flavor of the festival, folk music and dance experts in the region have scheduled four events which spotlight music and dance traditions of Western North Carolina. These events are free and open to the public. The first in the series, a celebration of fiddle tunes and folk recordings, was held last month at Warren Wilson College. On Thursday, May 2, at 7 p.m., at the Mountain Heritage Center on the campus of Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, the second installment of the Folk Heritage Celebration Series will focus on dance. “The Past Present & Future of Southern Appalachian Dance Traditions” will include demonstrations and discussions on traditional Cherokee dances and Scots-Irish dances of the Southern Appalachian region. Barbara Duncan, folklorist and educator at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, will facilitate the event. Duncan, along with Phil Jamison, Bo Taylor, Arnold Ferguson, Joe Edwards and Joe Sam Queen will offer presentations and discussions for audience members eager to learn authentic, traditional dance styles of this region. The presenters offer a wealth of knowledge on the subject of Southern Appalachian dance. Phil Jamison is a former member of the Green Grass Cloggers. Joe Edwards, a flat-foot dancer, will be accompanied by his two grandchildren, Haley and Colten Edwards. Master Cherokee dancer Bo Taylor, who has won numerous dancing competitions, will lead a presentation on Cherokee dances. For Joe Sam Queen, a Waynesville architect and director of the annual Smoky Mountain Folk Festival at Lake Junaluska, teaching Southern Appalachian dance is part of the legacy of his late grandfather, legendary square dancer Sam Queen. Sam Queen helped Bascom Lamar Lunsford organize the very first Mountain Dance & Folk Festival and later helped Lunsford found the National Folk Festival, which is now held at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. “I’m proud to be a part of this to celebrate 75 years of Bascom’s festival,” said Joe Sam Queen. Those who come out to Thursday night’s Folk Heritage Celebration at Western Carolina will see how American dance traditions have been influenced by African, European and Native American dance. The big circle dance, for example, is considered a very important dance form for the Cherokee and a starting place for many of the Southern Appalachian folk dances. “It really is a melting pot American form,” Queen said. Some of the calls in Southern Appalachian dance are symbolic of democratic, egalitarian ideals of this country, according to Queen. For example, the traditional dances usually start with everyone holding hands in a big circle, each person equal and part of the whole. Then as part of a big circle dance, the caller, or the one who leads the instructions for the dance, gives a call, “Right hands across with a how do you do and left hands back with as good as you.” This welcoming handshake in the dance offers each person in the circle a chance to meet and greet everyone else individually in the circle — again, symbolic of the equality that is celebrated in Southern Appalachian dance. When the dance divides up into figure fours — two pairs of coupled men and women, the dance turns to a kind of courtship where the woman leads in a dance step and her male partner must follow or with a woman dancing with another man who isn’t her partner while the man holds steady. The caller instructs, “Lady round the lady and the gent goes slow, lady round the gent and the gent don’t go.” Queen teaches old-fashioned Southern Appalachian dance each summer at Friday night street dances in downtown Waynesville in preparation for the Smoky Mountain Folk Festival on Labor Day weekend. The town blocks off a space in front of the Haywood County Courthouse, brings in some bleachers and hundreds of people turn out to hear a local string band, watch a local clogging team and then participate in the dances that Queen and his wife, Kate, lead. It’s one way of maintaining a treasured tradition that has been carried on for generations in the mountains and valleys of Western North Carolina. Queen, like many folklorists and lovers of indigenous traditions, can feel the encroaching homogenizing pop culture overpowering the unique traditions of this region. Instead of square dancing, which was once all the rage among young people, many of today’s youth are turning to MTV, raves, club dances and techno music. Meanwhile, traditional dancing can seem antiquated to some. But Queen has hope that Southern Appalachian dance will endure with festivals, street dances and public lessons for young and old. “It’s survived by people doing it,” he said, adding that it needs to have wider venues so people can experience it. That is why Queen has been promoting the Mountain Dance & Folk Festival this summer. He has also been teaching square dancing to fourth-grade students at Waynesville’s Central Elementary School as part of the Curriculum, Music and Community program, which includes lessons on traditional Southern Appalachian dances, ballads and folk music. Thursday’s event at Western Carolina University will include clogging, discussions about the footwork in the dances, and demonstrations in figures and calling. Twin brothers Trevor and Travis Stuart will play traditional fiddle and banjo tunes for the dances. At the end of the evening, there will be two audience participation demostrations. One will be a traditional Cherokee dance led by Bo Taylor. The other will be a traditional square dance led by Joe Sam Queen. Next up in the Folk Heritage Celebration Series will be “A Celebration of Musical Families of Madison County,” Saturday, May 18, at 7 p.m. at Owen Theatre on the campus of Mars Hill College in Mars Hill. Loyal Jones, author of Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s biography, Minstrel of the Appalachians, will be the facilitator. Participants will include Loyal Jones, Sheila Adams, Jerry Adams, Lena Jean Ray, Donna Norton, Sam Adams and Melanie Rice. Then, the fourth and final installment of the series will be “Ballads to Bluegrass — A Mountain Music Sampler,” on Monday, May 27, at 7 p.m. in the Community Room of the Keith House of the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown. Folklorist David Brose will be the facilitator. Participants for this event will include David Brose, Betty Smith, the Snowbird Band and others. The Folk Heritage Celebration Series is sponsored by the North Carolina Humanities Council, the North Carolina Arts Council, and Mast General Store. All Celebration Series events are free and open to the public. For more information about the Folk Heritage Celebration Series or the Mountain Dance & Folk Festival, call 828.258.6101 or go to the website at www.folkheritage.org.