0 Comments Searching for Bascom Lamar Lunsford and Other Tales on Hoobellatoo

‘On the Trail of Bascom Lamar Lunsford’ is the story of Chris King’s journey to find the history of the Appalachian song collector and performer who also founded the ‘Mountain Dance and Folk Festival’ the first folk music festival in the United States.

One voice seized me more than the rest. Over a simply picked banjo, the voice sang mournfully about a mole in the ground. Elsewhere, the same voice preached, over that same simple banjo, about dry bones. Like so many folk tunes, these told strange, elliptical stories, dense with images, exploding with emotion. Like:

    I wish I was a lizard in the Spring
    If I's a lizard in the Spring
    I'd hear my darlin' sing

Or:

    Dry bones in that valley
    got up and took a little walk
    now the deaf can hear and now the dumb can talk

The words became printed on my memory…

There’s a lot of other neat stuff at Hoobellatoo as well, profiles of traditional musicians, stories from road trips, photos and recordings from a long running music session Chris King found while trying to track down Lundsford. The site describes itself in part as “…a multimedia documentary endeavor named after a simple West African concept, “beautiful people..” I’m not sure exactly how to describe it but it’s very cool.

Hoobellatoo – On the Trail of Bascom Lamar Lunsford

www.hoobellatoo.org

Bascom Lamar Lunsford on Wikipedia.