In southwestern Virginia, traditional forms of Appalachian culture are celebrated along the Crooked Road, an 333 mile driving route that includes many milestones in the history of American popular music. The designated stops along the Crooked Road include recording studios, birthplaces of famous musicians, and key moments in performances for public audiences. The road also includes sites of musical festivals, including the Redbud festival each spring in Honecker, a town located along route 76. The Crooker Road recognizes music known by various names, including country, folk, bluegrass, traditional, or Appalachian. In 1976, as cyclists rode through the mountains of Virginia during the Bikecentennial, they often observed local musicians playing along the route. This tradition continues, as music remains integral to the identity and beliefs of Appalachian Virginia as well as contributing to the recreational tourism industry. An appreciation of the complex history of this music provides insights into the synthetic nature of Appalachian culture in the past as well as the present.
Welcome to episode 28 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the town of Honaker, located just over 520 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and just under 30 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. Research for this episode was contributed by Kaitlynn Harless and Grace Kostrzebski, and the script was drafted by Kaitlynn Harless. I am your narrator, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte.
Appalachian music, like all aspects of culture, reflects a synthetic integration of styles, influences, and legacies. In Virginia, this synthesis draws upon the stages of population movement which shaped the entire region. As the English moved west in the eighteenth century, they displaced Native American communities, while also encouraging migration by European settlers from the northeast. English, Scottish, and Irish immigrants moved into the region to clear lands for farming and grow food for their families and crops for cities. In the nineteenth century, Polish, Italian, and other southern and eastern European immigrants entered the region initially to work on farms and then to labor in coal mines. African American slaves were forced to work in the fields of larger plantations and households owned by white settlers. After the Civil War, many of these African American farmers entered into sharecropping arrangements, while others established family farms, opened businesses, or joined the industrial workforce. In the twentieth century, the population of Appalachia continued to change, becoming more white in composition as other European populations entered the region and the proportion of African Americans declined in relative terms.
These demographic patterns shaped the musical culture of Appalachia. Music from traditional cultures of England, Ireland, Scotland, and other European populations reflected the continued influence of European settlement across the local region. These traditions were preserved in churches, through community and family networks, and in cultural practices such as folktales, songs, and dances. Even though generations have passed since these European settlers reached the Americas, the continuities in traditions are evident to observers of these cultural practices in the present day.
Yet it would be a mistake to assume that Appalachian traditional music is entirely or even primarily a white European cultural artifact. This music has always blended together multiple influences, as the culture of the dominant European population was complicated and enriched by influences from other sources. This blending of cultures is most evident in the ways that the banjo, now identified closely with traditional or folk music, in fact illustrates the direct and prolonged impact of African American culture from its African origins through slavery to the era of segregation.
The banjo originated in West and Central Africa, as a musical instrument constructed from gourds, animal skins, strings, and wood. Enslaved Africans brought the instrument into the Americas, and similar instruments became part of musical culture across all of the regions where Africans were forced to labor for white owners. Thomas Jefferson noted that the enslaved people on his plantation played the banjo, and he explained: “The instrument proper to them is the banjer, which they brought hither from Africa.”
The banjo entered into white American musical culture through minstrel shows in the nineteenth century. White performers put on “blackface” and sang songs and played instruments adapted from slave communities. These white musicians often practiced with Black performers, whose style and techniques shaped this appropriation of a traditional culture. Minstrel shows were an expression of white supremacy, as the physical appearance of performers as well as their exaggerated gestures were intended to mock and demean African American culture.
The fusion of musical styles also occurred through the mutual interactions between white and African American musicians in adjoining communities throughout Appalachia. White musicians adapted their music to the banjo, thus broadening its appeal and extending its influence across cultures. Even as race relations deteriorated in the early twentieth century, with white enforcement of Jim Crow segregation, cultural practices shifted and expanded in ways that deepened musical expression in the Appalachians.
The life and musical career of “Dock” Boggs illustrates these complex patterns and their continuing impact into the present. Born on February 7, 1898, Moran Lee “Dock” Boggs grew up in a coal mining community in Norton, Virginia, close to the Kentucky border. At the age of twelve, Boggs joined the workforce as a coal miner.
Even as he labored in the coal mines, however, Boggs spent considerable time with musical performers traveling between towns in the region. As later recalled, Boggs frequently walked with a Black musician named “Go Lightning” who lived in Dorchester,a mining community for African American workers, located near the white coal town of Norton. Boggs recalled, “He was very nice and kind and I’d beg him [to play music] – I was just a little boy, of course music always thrilled me when I was a boy.”
Go Lightning and other traveling musicians played music for money while they traveled the roads. Boggs never had any money to give Go Lightning, but as the two walked along country roads, Go Lightning taught Boggs how to pick the banjo. He also taught Boggs the music and words for songs central to the Black community, including the ballad of John Henry, a folk hero renowned for using his hammer to race a drilling machine to construct a railroad tunnel. Boggs later recalled how Go Lightning introduced him to this ballad: “I learnt it partly, learnt some of the words from him.”
Despite rigid segregation in Virginia laws, Boggs’ spent considerable time interacting with Black musicians, as he attended their concerts and observed their techniques. Boggs recognized how the style of these musicians differed from the musicians in his family and in white communities: “I heard this fellow play the banjo … And I said to myself … I want to learn how to play the banjo kinda like that fellow does. I don’t want to play like my sister and my brother.”
In 1918, Dock Boggs married Sara Boggs. Faced with the demands of supporting his family, Boggs increased his musical touring across the region. He established a reputation as a distinctive performer in part because his style of playing the banjo was influenced heavily by African American musicians.
After playing primarily locally for parties, dances, and other events, Boggs was positioned to take advantage of a change in the commercial music industry. In the 1920s, as phonograph records became more popular, producers from east coast cities, particularly New York, manufactured a market for “commercial hillbilly music,” which was another term for the banjo and fiddle music found in Appalachia. Producers traveled into rural areas and held competitions for local musicians to perform. Musicians traveled from far and wide to attend the competitions with the hopes that they could travel to New York City, record their music, and become famous musicians. At a competition in his home town of Norton, Boggs caught the attention of producers, and soon he was on his way to New York City to make commercial recordings.
The recording industry in the late 1920s developed the consumer market for “pioneer” music from Appalachia with the pitch that these recordings were a direct continuation of eighteenth century English, Scottish, and Irish ballads, songs, and dance tunes. This marketing ignored how much Appalachian culture had changed over the centuries by depicting a kind of “primitive” and thus “timeless” backcountry myth. This marketing also ignored how this music always reflected the integration and intersection of multiple cultures, particularly the role of African instruments, such as the banjo.
Boggs completed several recorded sessions in New York City as well as in Atlanta and Chicago. Despite some initial success, Boggs struggled to make a living from recordings, especially with the costs of travel to larger cities. By the 1930s, Boggs had abandoned performing and returned to work in the coal mines. In addition to the financial challenges of sustaining these recordings, and the economic collapse of the Great Depression, Boggs’ career also illustrated the tension in Appalachian musical culture between religious and secular traditions. Music was, and is, central to the expression of many forms of mainstream Christianity in the Appalachian region. Yet the sacred message of hymns performed in church often diverged from the secular themes of songs performed in dance halls, saloons, and concert venues. A family friend recalled that Sara Boggs repeatedly tried to divert Dock from his secular performances, which she associated with drinking and occasional violence. These efforts to limit his performances to church music were contrary to Boggs’ own approach to music: “Dock’s mind and heart and voice was not limited to Sunday. He sang about everything. Music was life to him. Life was music.”
For many years, Boggs appears to have ceased his musical performances, spending most of these years working in coal mines in Virginia. After the end of the war, however, Boggs resumed his banjo playing, and once again was well positioned when shifts in the music market brought renewed attention to traditional music. The folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s led musicians to travel to more remote parts of the United States in search of traditional music and musicians. Pete Seeger helped launch this revival with his performances of protest songs, many of which originated in the coal mines of Appalachia. His brother, Mike Seeger, traveled to the region to learn more about this music, which is when he met Boggs. Seeger conducted multiple interviews with Boggs about his life and music, and he recorded Boggs playing some of his songs. After this exposure to national markets, Boggs toured extensively in the 1960s, including a performance before an audience of 10,000 at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island.
Boggs became popular among the folk music revivalists because of his unique style of playing the banjo. Many recognized the differences between his style and other white mountain musicians. Boggs shared stories of how he learned to play the banjo by emulating Black musicians during his youth. He also performed African American folk songs, including the song “Oh Death” which became one of the more famous recordings during the folk music revival.
After years of working with Mike Seeger and other revivalists, Boggs passed away on his birthday in February 1971. Recordings of his music as well as interviews with Seeger are available from the Smithsonian Folkways collection, thus illustrating the long-term impact of this effort to preserve cultural expressions across the United States.
In recent decades, similar efforts to preserve cultural forms contributed to the growth of arts tourism, which brings visitors to sites important in the history of the region. Established more than twenty years ago, the Crooked Road celebrates and recognizes music and musicians across southwestern Virginia. Museums, historical markers, and concert venues along the 333 miles of the Crooked Road provide more information about the music and musicians which have shaped Appalachian culture. The Crooked Road intersects with Route 76 in two locations, a section south of Breaks Interstate Park and another section near Mount Rogers. The Barter Theater in Abingdon, which opened in 1933, hosts musical and theater performances just a few miles from Route 76. The Galax Old Fiddler’s Convention, which has been running continuously since 1935, is about 25 miles southeast of Route 76. The Floyd Country Store, which features weekly concerts in a building that has been home to a store since 1910, is about 20 miles south of where Route 76 passes through Christiansburg.
Cyclists along Route 76 have many other opportunities to listen to music that has continuities with the traditional music associated with Dock Boggs and generations of musicians. Annual festivals, such as the Honaker Redbud Festival, often include performances in many musical formats, often by local performers. Special events, such as the Trail Days celebrations in the Appalachian Trail towns of Damascus and Troutville, may include live music performances along with vendors, food, and other special activities. Many towns have regular concerts during the week featuring a range of local artists. Finally, as cyclists ride by homes, community centers, or churches along Route 76, they may hear the sounds of traditional musical instruments, such as a banjo, guitar, or accordion, as well as vocal accompaniment and the sound of boots, clogs, or sandals dancing on a wooden floor. Many of the traditional songs heard at these festivals, concerts, and other events trace their origins back to the early days, when musicians such as Dock Boggs and other musicians performed for audiences across Virginia and elsewhere in the United States.
You have been listening to episode 28 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the town of Honaker, located just over 520 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and just under 30 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. Research for this episode was contributed by Kaitlynn Harless and Grace Kostrzebski, and the script was drafted by Kaitlynn Harless. I am your narrator, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte. To learn more about the stories in this episode, visit our website or follow us on social media, all accessible from the homepage for this podcast.
