Fans of writer Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books as well as Americana music lovers can enjoy a rare, special concert this month.
“An Appalachian Celebration” will feature talented musicians and special guests in a public performance of historic Appalachian songs featured in Wilder’s books at 8 p.m. at Ingram Hall at the Blair School of Music on Vanderbilt’s campus on Saturday, April 12. Performers include Elizabeth Cook, Andrea Zonn, Matt Combs, Pat Enright and others from Nashville’s finest old-time and traditional musicians.
The concert is free and open to the public.
The songs are taken from The Pa’s Fiddle Project albums Happy Land: Musical Tributes to Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Arkansas Traveler: Music from Little House on the Prairie, both compiled by Dale Cockrell, professor of musicology at Vanderbilt. Happy Land was the first music collection included in the We the People bookshelf, the National Endowment for the Humanities collection of works which strengthen students’ understanding of American history and culture.
An expert on 19th century American popular music, Cockrell became interested in the Little House books when reading to his son. In particular, he noticed the frequency and importance of music in the stories.
Charles “Pa” Ingalls was a fiddler, and Wilder once wrote to her publisher that “there is one thing that will always remain the same to remind people of little Laura’s days on the prairie, and that is Pa’s fiddle.”
“The first thought I had was that it was too bad that all this music is here – sometimes even the best American music – and it’s not really available for kids,” Cockrell said. “Then I had one of those moments of inspiration and I thought, ‘Gee, you live here in Nashville. Why don’t you do it?'”
The decline of music programs in many public schools is causing Americans to lose touch with important parts of their past, Cockrell said.
“There are hundreds of thousands of kids reading these books,” Cockrell said. “If some of them are curious enough to listen to this music, then we have another way – and maybe an easier and more engaging way – for them to come to know their musical heritage.”
The Pa’s Fiddle Project CDs will be on sale in the lobby following the concert and all proceeds will go toward the Butch Baldassari medical expense fund. Cockrell co-produced Happy Land and Arkansas Traveler with Baldassari, an adjunct associate professor of mandolin at Blair.
The event is co-sponsored by Gaylord Entertainment and the Vanderbilt University Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities.
“An Appalachian Celebration” is part of a series of special events titled “A Place for the Humanities” in celebration of Vanderbilt University’s Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities 20th anniversary. The center promotes interdisciplinary research and study in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Because cooperative study in higher education is crucial to the modern university and the society it influences, the center is designed to intensify and increase interdisciplinary discussion of academic, social and cultural issues.
Media Contact: Missy Pankake, (615) 322-NEWS
missy.pankake@vanderbilt.edu