Week 7: Young Tradition Vermont to Berea connections
McKee Kentucky
Creeks
Warren Vermont
& waterfalls
One unexpected and interesting experience during this internship has been the direct connection I’ve been able to make between Berea College and Vermont Folklife. I found out shortly after starting at VT Folklife that they had a program the Young Tradition Touring Group that brings together a group of young adults to play music and tour together. Each spring, this group will travel to a particular region after spending months learning about the culture and traditional music of that place. In a stroke of almost unbelievable luck, it just so happened that the Touring Group would be touring Appalachia in the spring of 2027. This presented itself as a perfect opportunity to connect those I know at Berea, who had the resources and interest in helping plan a tour stop for the group, with those I am beginning to develop professional relationships with at VT Folklife.
I still have a few semesters left in my time at Berea, but Vermont is very much my home—it's the place I want to live and work someday. I certainly want to take advantage of the kinds of opportunities being a Berea student affords me to make professional connections in the place I plan to live in the future. It's especially cool that this connection can happen when these places that I am so rooted in are a thousand miles from one another. Connecting Vermont and Kentucky is important to me professionally as well as personally. I often think of Vermont and Kentucky as sort of cousins, the 14th and 15th states to be admitted to the union, respectively, with similar natural beauty and the culture of hill farms and union workers all contribute to my understanding of both places, yet most every time I try to explain this to others, they look at me like I may have lost my mind. They see the Northeast and Southern states as the farthest things from one another culturally and politically, but they don't yet see what I see in the more intimate moments of living in these two places.
VT and KY certainly have meaningful cultural differences, but the commonalities I see between the rural people from these two mountainous places far outweigh the differences. Having lived in both, I have a somewhat unique perspective on this matter; I see similarities in the natural landscape, both being situated in the Appalachian mountain range, and in the values of working-class rural people from the hills and mountains everywhere. I also see this connection clearly in the musical traditions; both places have similar cultural influences, Scots-Irish, Italian, etc. Vermont possibly has more French/Quebec ties and Kentucky stronger African influence, yet we still see similar folk and old-time music with various regional flavors that came to be independent of one another in both regions.
Irvine Kentucky
Mountains
Northfield Falls Vermont
& railroad tracks
I was asked by VT Folklife staff to help facilitate the connections between the Young Tradition Touring Group and those at Berea who could help make it a successful stop; this included many staff and faculty within the Music Department and the Appalachian Studies department who I have gotten to know. As a student who is from Vermont, works at the Appalachian Center, takes applied music lessons, and is part of The Folk-Roots Ensemble at Berea, this felt like a perfect job for me. The tour is still months away, but having made the introductions on the Vermont Folklife side, I’m excited to go back to Berea and help plan further in my role with the Appalachian Center and in the Music Department. My hope for this touring group is that through this experience, they will see Vermont and Kentucky as I do. Two places, kindred in spirit.
