Old picture of the Floyd Country Store

Since 2016, the Handmade Music School has been an essential force in preserving and spreading excitement around traditional Appalachian music. Best known for its private and group classes in old time and bluegrass, as well as traditional Appalachian music and dance, the 501(c)3 non-profit has a core mission of spreading the joy of traditional music to as many people as possible, regardless of income and ability. Following this goal in 2018, the school started its Share the Music scholarship program for music lessons, classes, workshops, and camps. This year, the Handmade Music School is excited to announce its latest project, an online interactive history of Appalachian music called “Music of Our Mountains.”
Music of Our Mountains is a free educational resource that explores the rich, disparate roots of traditional Appalachian ‘mountain music’ as well as the characters, cultures, and conditions from which it emerged. The project website, musicofourmountains.com, is a living document made up of recordings, photographs, stories, scholarly texts, and maps. (left: Alfred Reid and fellow musicians) These resources work together to provide an exciting and vivid understanding of the music that the Handmade Music School strives to preserve.
The structure of Music of Our Mountains is twofold. On the website’s main page, visitors will find a presentation of multimedia features that parallels an interactive Story-Map. The Map and Features together create a tour-like context for the viewer that serves as a curated guide through the content that exists within the Collections. It’s a virtual archive containing published essays, historical photographs and recordings, interviews, and new contributions. Contributions can be made by musicians, scholars, historians, or anyone with relevant stories, photos, and/or recordings to share. Public participation is welcome and encouraged.
The music at the heart of the project, known as ‘mountain music’, was born from the coalescence of traditional English, Scots-Irish, German, French, Spanish, African, and Indigenous cultures in the American South. (right: Posey Rorer)  Despite their differences, the coexistence of these groups led to the creation of a music that made no delineations between origin and race, absorbing anything in its path. As it spread, mountain music proved to be a prolific tool for community building. It is at the heart of the Floyd Country Store’s historical and modern relevance. For over a hundred years the Store has been a hub for music and dance for the local community and beyond.
As Music of Our Mountains explores, the history of Appalachia and mountain music is a vast story of people, cultural persecution, and upheaval. It’s a story of geography, a great migration, and industrial exploitation; and it’s a story that stretches from Louisiana and the Ozarks all the way to the mountains of New England and beyond to Québec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, the northernmost point of old world emigration to the Americas.
Music of Our Mountains seeks to enrich the current dialogue on Appalachian music and culture, and provide a platform for a multi-view examination of the people, places, tunes, and roots that provided the initial pulse from which country music was born.  (left: Ernest Stoneman and his family)
The first phase of Music of Our Mountains focuses on the Blue Ridge Plateau, including Floyd County, Virginia, and surrounding counties such as Franklin, Grayson, Carroll, and Patrick. This first leg of exploration examines the most prominent subjects of the region up through the Great Depression of the 1930’s. It highlights the contributions of Southwestern Virginia artists, the ethos, and the recording boom that launched the country music industry. Here, the project lays the foundation for future phases that will delve into the history and the traditions of this music before the advent of recording technology. It then moves forward into the Folk Revival era and contemporary contributions to the greater folk community.
Many of the recordings and published materials are available at County Sales, online at countysales.com, now part of the Handmade Music School, located across the street from the Floyd Country Store. This project further contributes to the Handmade Music School’s goal of preserving traditional Appalachian music and its recorded history. (right: Albert Hash)
Music of Our Mountains is made possible by Virginia Humanities and private donors. To make a donation, visit musicofourmountains.com/donate. Donations are tax-deductible. To explore the project or learn more about it, visit musicofourmountains.com. Submit a contribution or start a conversation at musicofourmountains.com/contribute.

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