As black as the nearby parking lot asphalt, the skull doormat is a good sign you’re standing in front of a recording studio. Osceola Studios sits inside a rust-colored brick building, bound by railroad tracks and a concrete plant at the end of a strip mall on a service road near downtown Raleigh. Even with […]
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Posted inMusic
Dig in to decades of recordings, photos and more from folklorist Bill Ferris
More than 1,000 audio files are now available for streaming from the collection of noted Southern folklorist, documentarian, author and teacher William R. Ferris. Made available by the National Endowment for the Humanities and presented by the Southern Folklife Collection, “From the Piedmont to the Swamplands: Preserving Southern Traditional Music” is a decades-long overview of […]
Posted inArt
Dixie Be Damned, a radical history of Southern resistance movements, challenges mainstream progressive narratives
DIXIE BE DAMNED: 300 YEARS OF INSURRECTION IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH Saturday, June 20, 8 p.m. So & So Books 704 N. Person St., Raleigh 919-426-9502 www.facebook.com/soandsobooks Beyond Civil Rights Movement-era sit-ins, North Carolina has never been known as a hotbed of political resistance, but a new book by local authors unearths a hidden history […]
Posted inMusic
For six decades, folklorist Bill Ferris has broken some of the country’s biggest racial barriers. Now, he’s sharing the South’s story with the world
If the American South remains a provincial punch line for the world at large, no one bothered to tell the 9,000-plus students from 128 countries that Bill Ferris spent six weeks teaching late last year. They all enrolled in what UNC-Chapel Hill calls a MOOC, or a Massive Open Online Course. The program explored oral […]
Posted inCulture
Halloween special: The day it rained blood and guts in North Carolina
In 1850, a strange package arrived at the office of the North Carolinian. It contained a letter and what appeared to be the rotting organ of an animal. “The piece which was left with us,” the editors wrote in March, “has been examined with two of the best microscopes in the place,” and certainly contained […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Oakleaf Chef Brendan Cox revisits Chatham Rabbit, an heirloom dish
On a clear May night, I met some folks* at Oakleaf restaurant in Pittsboro to eat some Chatham Rabbit. One hundred years ago in the surrounds of Pittsboro and Siler City, rabbits were an enormous cash crop, though they were never farmed. Local boys and their dogs caught them, using traps made of gum tree […]
Posted inFood & Drink
The secrets behind the 1950s Miracle Kitchen of the future
The 1957 promotional film is in black and white. The YouTube print is of a low quality, washing out the spokesmodel’s face to just eyebrows, nose and lips. Dressed in a backless evening gown with modest heels, she walks languidly across the screen to begin her pitch. “Welcome to the RCA-Whirlpool Miracle Kitchen,” she says […]
Posted inMusic
Two weeks without the Possum, Part Two: Tom Maxwell considers George Jones’ vocal poignancy
Editor’s Note: Country legend George Jones died two weeks ago, on April 26, 2013, in Nashville. Longtime area musicians John Howie Jr. and Tom Maxwell provided reflections on Jones. Below, Maxwell, meditates on Jones’ voice and why it had the impact it did. Meanwhile, Howie presents an overview of Jones’ life from the perspective of […]
Posted inArt
The ghost and Squirrel Nut Zippers
It was dark when our van pulled up in front of the enormous French Quarter mansion on Esplanade Avenue. Karen Brady, Kingsway Studios’ house manager, came out to help us load in. I looked up at the verandah’s iron railing. “What’s the name of your spook?” I asked, hoping to have guessed correctly. Karen stopped […]
Posted inNews
Survival training
On Oct. 10, 2006, our 3-year-old son Esten was diagnosed with leukemia. As has so often happened during this experience, we dodged a bullet: He has acute lymphocytic leukemia, with more than a 90 percent chance of complete remission. Other forms of the disease, such as acute myelogenous leukemia, have a much lower survivability rate. […]
