This film introduces Elizabeth LaPrelle and Elsa Howell, who received a Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship in 2022-2023.
Through their singing and their reverence for the whole context of these songs, Elizabeth and Elsa bring Appalachian ballad singing into the present day, finding new relevance and meaning in the form for 2023.
“Ballad singing is an incredibly sophisticated art form that has gone on here for a long time, and it’s still happening. People are still teaching it, learning it-it really is just so satisfying,” Elizabeth said.
To Elizabeth, and now also to Elsa, learning to sing these ballads also includes honoring the experience of the earlier women who learned and taught their verses. As Texas told Lomax in a 1946 interview, “I have a perfect mental picture of every song I sing. I have a perfect picture of every person-most-that I’ve learned from, very few people I don’t remember. When I sing a song, a person pops up, and it’s a very beautiful story.”
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Credits:
Filmed and edited by Pat Jarrett
Produced by the Virginia Folklife Program of Virginia Humanities with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts with additional support from the J & E Berkley Foundation. Directed by Katy Clune and Pat Jarrett
24 июл 2023
