Take a Look in the BookSights & Sounds

Legendary Ingramettes: Take a Look in the Book – album out now

The Virginia Folklife Program is so proud to announce the release of Take a Look in the Book, the new album from The Legendary Ingramettes. Six decades of music, sixty-five …

Sights & Sounds

Richmond Folk Festival Highlights – 15th Anniversary

As we look back at the 15th Folk Festival in Richmond we can’t help but take pride in the stunning success of this event! This was another great year, and …

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Remembering Helen White

The Virginia Folklife Program is deeply shocked and saddened at the news of the passing of our good friend Helen White. Helen channeled her tireless passion for the music and …

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Remembering Gerald Anderson

I’m sure we join so many throughout Southwest Virginia and beyond in our sadness and shock to learn of the passing of Gerald Anderson. Gerald was a fine luthier, player, …

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Sherman Holmes Project: The Richmond Sessions

The first solo recording in his more than fifty-year career, Sherman Holmes’ The Richmond Sessions carries on the spirit of the revered Holmes Brothers by reimagining songs and making them …

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Frank Newsome: Gone Away with a Friend (Free Dirt Records)

On Gone Away with a Friend, Frank Newsome sings a more than four-century-long American tradition into the present. His arresting style—the lined-out hymn singing of the Old Regular Baptists from …

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2019 Apprenticeship Showcase Highlights

We are so grateful to artists and audience who braved the forecast and came out for the 2019 Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Showcase. The event featured a remarkable program switching seamlessly …

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Master Artist Spotlight: Mark Cline

Mark Cline is a master artist in the 2019-2020 class of apprenticeship teams in the art of roadside attractions and fiberglass sculpture. In this feature Richmond-writer Don Harrison takes an …

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Junious Brickhouse and Tyrone Edwards

Born in 1974, Junious Lee Brickhouse grew up in a musical household in the African American communities of Virginia Beach and Norfolk. His mother, Lynda, shared with him her love …

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Luz Lopez and Princey Reyes

Luz Maria Lopez was born in the small town of Morocoy, in the state of Quintana Roo on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula after her parents moved there from Michoacán. Her mother …

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Mark Cline and Brently Hilliard

Known as the “P.T. Barnum of the Blue Ridge,” Mark Cline is keeping alive the vanishing tradition of the roadside attraction—those haunted houses, singing caverns, historical parks, and outsized food …

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Brian Calhoun and Adam McNeil and Jake Hopping

Brian Calhoun grew up in Rockbridge County, an area rich with many fine players of bluegrass and old-time music as well as a wide variety of acoustic styles. Already a …

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Ronald Dixon and William Hinkle

Stained glass master artist Ronald Dixon grew up viewing stained glass art from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in his native Northern Ireland, spending hours in local cathedrals while his …

Sights & Sounds

Emily Spencer and Lisa Ring

Returning to the Folklife Apprenticeship Program in 2019 is the beloved Grayson County clawhammer banjoist Emily Spencer. The clawhammer banjo style is an essential aspect of old time music, an …