Hayes School of Music

Music Humanities Community Conversations Series 

The Music Humanities Community Conversation Series provides a forum for students, faculty, and staff at Appalachian State University and community members to engage current topics in music humanities through invited talks and workshops given by scholars, artists, and cultural leaders from Appalachian State and the surrounding region. Read more about our upcoming events below!

• The events are free and open to the public.
• Events will be in Schaffel Recital Hall or Rosen Concert Hall in the Broyhill Music Center:
• Attendees may park in the Schaefer Lot, Broyhill Lot, or Peacock Lot for free from 5:00pm to the end of the event.  The Broyhill Music Center is at 813 Rivers St, Boone, NC, 28608. 
• For more information, contact Dr. Jacob Kopcienski, via email at kopcienskija@appstate.edu or by phone at 828-262-7385.
• This series is sponsored by the Hayes School of Music, with several events generously co-sponsored by the Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University.

“I Shall Not be Moved”: African American Music, Community, and Memory in Western Watauga County

• Thursday, April 23, 6:00-7:00pm. Free and open to the public!
• Q&A and reception to follow
• Schaffel Recital Hall, Broyhill Music Center

Seminar Presentation

Though the Western North Carolina community of Beaver Dam is viewed today as overwhelmingly white, a sizeable Black population lived, worked, and worshipped there during the early-to-mid twentieth century. Their vibrant musical life centered around Mount Olive Baptist Church and the occupational lives of Black lumberjacks, miners, homemakers, and farm laborers, influencing the repertoire and style of well-known white mountain musician Frank Proffitt.

Drawing from a set of musical recordings that feature the singing of Mount Olive church members in the early 1960s and are housed in the Folk-Legacy Records duplication project at the American Folklife Center, alongside ethnographic interviews with Joan Moore, last living member of Beaver Dam’s historic Black community, this presentation illustrates the profound presence and influence of African American musical traditions in an area whose white mountain musicians have received extensive attention but whose Black musicians’ stories have been frequently overlooked.

I consider these issues of erasure and rural Appalachian Blackness through the works of bell hooks, Edward J. Cabbell, and Karida Brown. This research contributes to a growing body of scholarship surrounding Black Appalachia, a topic that fields such as sociology, history, and folklore have begun to address but that ethnomusicologists have not yet extensively studied.

Presenter Biography

Olivia Phillips is a traditional musician, educator, folklorist, and ethnomusicologist from Watauga County’s Beech Mountain Community. She is a PhD candidate in Folklore at Indiana University, where her dissertation research examines the past and present role of traditional singing in the Beech Mountain community in shaping the ways that both residents and “outsiders” conceive of local identity. Olivia has forthcoming publications in the Journal of American Folklore and the Appalachian Journal. She has served as artist outreach coordinator for the Music Maker Foundation’s Carolina Music Makers Fund, folklife intern for the North Carolina Arts Council, and a field researcher for Traditional Arts Indiana. She holds an MA in Ethnomusicology from IU and a BM in Vocal Music Education from East Tennessee State University. Olivia currently serves as managing editor for the Journal of Folklore Research and teaches an Appalachian Music course at Appalachian State University.