Appalachia in Other Musics

Having grown up on a farm one the edge of a village in western North Carolina’s Madison County, I have often felt my identity as a songwriter from Appalachia to be somewhat tenuous. Because of where and how I grew up, I can, as a person, easily lay claim to the descriptor Appalachian, but I am uneasy as an Appalachian songwriter. Am I allowed to identify myself as that if I do not write within the realms of traditional or bluegrass? These are the genres that are validated as Appalachian, but they are not the genres in which I write or by which I am moved when listening to music. At the same time, however, I am moved by Appalachia. Where is the Appalachian, or what is the Appalachian, in the other musics which I write and to which I listen? The question I explore in this paper is how Appalachia is imagined and represented in musics that are not necessarily related to traditional and bluegrass—Americana and rock-and-roll, for example, whatever those terms can be taken to mean. How might these images and emotions and sounds be validated as Appalachian