Center for the Study of the American South

Summer Season Music on the Porch

Summer is the season we enjoy celebrating the tradional music of the south at Music on the Porch. This year we are pleased to bring Jeff Sebens, an instrument maker and musician, and Betty Vornbrock and Billy Cornette, down from the cool hills of North Carolina to the Piedmont. Join us on the porch Thursday, June 7 at 5:30 p.m.

Jeff Sebens makes a variety of stringed instruments, including lap dulcimers, hammered dulcimers, mandolins and guitars in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  He is also an accomplished musician.  Here is a link to Jeff playing one of his handcrafted intruments.

Betty Vornbrock is an accomplished fiddler in several different traditional styles. Besides the music of the Appalachian Mountains (her first love), she has studied Shetland, Scottish & Irish fiddling, Western Swing and even Eastern European dance music. She has also recorded with Western Swing guitarist Bill Necessary, and singer-songwriters Tim Henderson and Bill Ramsel. Betty has co-produced a twin-fiddle album, “Side by Side”, with Kentucky fiddler J.P. Fraley, with whom she has won top twin-fiddle honors at Fiddler's Grove Festival for their haunting and beautiful harmonies.

Billy Cornette has been a great fan of folk & traditional music most of his life. Born in Kentucky to a family of fiddlers and musicians, he was exposed to a variety of country musicians & early Bluegrass greats. While attending the university in the early '60's, his interest in folk music led him to the guitar. After moving to Virginia in 1989, he decided to connect back to some of these roots by teaching himself fiddle and renewing his interest in guitar. He & Betty met in 1990 at a local jam session, and he's concentrated on playing back-up guitar to her fiddling ever since.

Concerts are held at the Center's office, the Love House and Hutchins Forum, located at 410 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill and are free, and open to the public. There is limited seating on the porch, but lots of lawn. Bring a blanket, picnic, and enjoy an early evening of wonderful music, and engaging discussion.

Professor Jocelyn Neal named new Director of the Center for the Study of the American South

UNC College of Arts and Sciences has selected Professor Jocelyn Neal to become the new Director of the Center for the Study of the American South effective July 1, 2012. Jocelyn Neal is Associate Professor of Music and Adjunct Associate Professor of American Studies. Her primary areas of research are commercial country music and American popular music. She is the author of The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers (Indiana University Press, 2009), which won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. Since 2009, Professor Neal has served as co-editor of Southern Cultures, a noted journal published by the Center for the Study of the American South. She has been a Fellow at the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory and has served as chair of the Popular Music Group for the Society of Music Theory.

Professor Neal replaces Professor Harry Watson, a major historian of the antebellum South and Jacksonian America, who has directed the Center since 1999. The College is grateful to Harry for his extensive service in developing the Center into a leader in the field.

SOHP on WUNC-FM Friday Mornings this past March

Each Friday morning this past March, WUNC’s Eric Hodge of "Morning Edition was joined by Seth Kotch from the Southern Oral History Program. Kotch and a team of oral historians recently completed a new series of never-before-heard interviews with activists, leaders and lay-people about the Civil Rights Movement. They listened to and talked about these very additions to the collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. The interviews will also be archived at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. Listen to the conversations here.

SOHP's Community Partner Hits the Airwaves

One of SOHP's community partners, the Jackson Center's Fusion Youth Radio, was selected by Youthcast to be featured in their bi-weekly podcast.Fusion Youth Radio (FYR) is the Center's new, live, radio program on WXYC 89.3 that is rooted in the idea that our youth must work together to take active roles in shaping the futures of our communities.