Join us for an afternoon of music and conversation: 

2:00 - 2:45 p.m. Pop up exhibit: banjo-related highlights from Wilson Library Special Collections
3:00 - 3:30 p.m. Talk: "Building the Southern Folklife Collection: Its Origins and Development" with Steven Weiss 
3:30 - 3:45 p.m.  Introduction to historic banjo music with Kristina Gaddy and Lee Bidgood
3:45 - 4:30 p.m. Historically inspired banjo performance: The 2025 publication of the “Go Back and Fetch It” collection (Gaddy and Giddens, UNC Press) offers new opportunities for “Recovering Early Black Music in the Americans for Fiddle and Banjo”  through study, reflection, and performance. This presentation brings the musical and contextual information in this collection into dialogue with western art musicians’ practices of historically-informed performance. What can we in the “String band” world learn from folks who focus on revival of music from the 17th and 18th century? What does a focus on people of color, and locales in the Caribbean and rural North American contexts bring to our understanding of and performance of music from what Lingold (2023) calls the moment of the “African Atlantic” at the intersection of colonialism, enslavement, and nation-building? The performing group includes East Tennessee State University faculty Roy Andrade and Lee Bidgood, as well as ETSU Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Roots Music Studies students Preston Alexander and Reid Warren. ​

These events are free and open to the public.