The Arts Alliance Mountain Empire has partnered with the Birthplace of Country Music Museum and the William King Museum of Art to present its 2016-2017 Speaker Series. Five speakers will present six talks around the common theme: “Art in Appalachia, Appalachia in the World.” A number of events will be held over the course of the series including a film screening of “Banjo Romantika: American Bluegrass Music & The Czech Imagination” at the museum on Tuesday, February 7 at 7:00 p.m.
Filmmaker and ETSU professor Shara Lange will lead the discussion of the documentary “Banjo Romantika” which broadcast on PBS across 40 states in the country. Czechs first heard bluegrass during World War II when the Armed Forces Network broadcast American music for soldiers. The music represented freedom to dissatisfied Czechs living in a communist state. Inspired by classic American bluegrass sounds, an assortment of musicians from across the formerly communist Czech Republic have melded the past, the political, and the present into lively musical tradition entirely its own.
Click here to view the entire listing of AAME’s Speaker Series events.