Event Host: Center for Folklore Studies (CFS)
Short Description: Join us as we celebrate the Center for Folklore Studies’ showcase of the Ohio Arts Council Collection at the Thompson Library.
Join us as we celebrate the Center for Folklore Studies’ showcase of the Ohio Arts Council Collection at the Thompson Library.
Guest speaker Katie Laur was the fieldworker for the Ohio Bluegrass Musicians portion of the Ohio Arts Council Projects. Her collection offers a unique snapshot of the Southwestern Ohio bluegrass scene in the 1970s. “The Bluegrass Triangle” was the area bounded by Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati; a hotbed for various kinds of revivals and innovations in string band music at the time of collection in 1977. Laur was a member of the scene herself, and the leader of the Katie Laur Band. Her collection offers extensive musings—in recorded interviews and in various print media—on a genre of music that seems to exist in a constant state of revival. The collected print materials suggest ways that dispersed and mobile "scenes" are sustained in part through the circulation of texts (articles, photos, advertisements, notices, etc.).
Katie Laur is the host of Music From the Hills of Home, a bluegrass radio program on WKNU 105.9, 89.7, and 104.1. Laur was born into a singing family in Paris, Tennessee that, like numerous other Appalachian families, moved to work in the automobile plants in Detroit after World War II. She moved to Cincinnati in 1966 and played bluegrass at Aunt Maudie’s in the early 1970s before heading out to play on the road. In 1989, Laur launched her radio program on WNKU. She now authors a column for Cincinnati Magazine and is compiling her monthly column for City Beat into a book.
For more information on this event visit the Center for Folklore Studies.
