JOHNSON CITY – Kalia Yeagle, a musician and artist, will present “Tradition, Innovation and Power: The Women of American Folk Music” in a talk at East Tennessee State University early next month.
The event, free and open to the public, is part of the “Women on Wednesdays” lecture
series sponsored by the ETSU Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. It takes
place on Zoom (817 3675 0048) at noon on Wednesday, Feb. 1.
“Women have always been central to old-time music – in the home and on the stage –
and as instrumentalists and singers, preservers of this music, activists, promoters
and cultural memory keepers,” organizers said. “Too often, however, the story of American
folk music has been told primarily through a white male lens, leaving a wealth of
stories and sounds in the shadows.”
Yeagle, a lecturer in Bluegrass, Old-Time and Roots Music at ETSU, is a scholar of Appalachia who has studied the region’s rich heritage with
a special interest in early country music’s pioneering female artists.
The “Women on Wednesdays” series is designed to raise awareness about research, scholarship
and community engagement conducted by women at ETSU. In addition, it provides a venue
where women on campus and in the community can discuss and support each other’s work,
and it gives students an opportunity to meet faculty who could become mentors for
their studies.
For more information, contact Dr. Judith Slagle, interim director of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at ETSU, at (423) 439-4125.