Bristol, Tenn./Va. (April 26, 2021) – Historic Downtown Bristol’s Birthplace of Country Music Museum will explore cultural festivals across the state with Pat Jarrett, Interim Director of the Virginia Folklife Program, on Tuesday, May 4 at 7:00 p.m. EDT as part of the museum’s monthly Virtual Speaker Series. The program is free and open to the public, but pre-registration is required.
“Our Virtual Speaker Series program has been a great opportunity to share a variety of great topics and speakers with our audience, and Pat’s talk is sure to be a favorite,” says Head Curator Rene Rodgers. “There are so many wonderful cultural traditions, including music, found in Virginia, and this talk will give attendees the chance to learn more about the different festivals and get a glimpse into them through the video recordings, hopefully inspiring some future road trips when it is safe to travel again!”
Since its inception in 1989, the Virginia Folklife Program has documented folklife activities, filmed musicians and festivals, and recorded traditional artists across the Commonwealth. Many of those recordings have remained on physical tapes since the time they were recorded. Over the past decade, Virginia Folklife has been digitizing these recordings in order to preserve them, making them public on its YouTube channel so the public has access to its archives. For as many hours of recordings that are publicly accessible, there remains a large quantity of taped archives that have yet to be digitized.
Due to the pandemic, many festivals across most of the state have been put on pause, so Virginia Folklife staff has used this time of quarantine to premiere many of their recordings. Jarrett will share some never-before-seen recordings of cultural festivals and discuss some of Virginia’s hidden gems during the virtual talk.
For more information and to pre-register for this free Virtual Speaker Series, visit the Events page.