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Lunsford Festival Gearing Up for 57th Year

Music and Dance Festival Will Have a Different Site This Year

Mars Hill, NC (09/13/2024) — The 57th edition of Western North Carolina's second-oldest folk music festival returns to the town of Mars Hill and the Mars Hill University campus the first weekend of October in a new location. The Bascom Lamar Lunsford Mountain Music Festival kicks off on Friday, October 4, 2024, with a ballad swap in the university's Moore Auditorium from 7 until 9 p.m. The festival continues on Saturday, October 5, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., at the soccer field along the Dr. W. Otis Duck Memorial Greenway near Mars Hill Elementary School. Shuttles will be available on Saturday to take visitors to the Lunsford Festival and the Madison Heritage Arts Festival, taking place in the same location. Admission to both festivals is free.

Friday night's ballad swap will cap off an evening of festivities in downtown Mars Hill which begins with the town's First Friday event from 5 until 8 p.m. The ballad swap is a free concert of ballads featuring the region's best-known ballad singers, including Sheila Kay Adams and Donna Ray Norton. Madison County is known worldwide for its ballad-singing tradition and many of the singers who participate are eighth- or even ninth-generation ballad singers.

Saturday's Lunsford Festival performances include Laura Boosinger, Bayla Davis and Cary Fridley, Rhiannon Ramsey, Roger Howell, and the Bailey Mountain Cloggers, among many others. The festival stage will host musicians from the region sharing fiddle and banjo tunes, dance steps, and songs.

A highlight of the festival is the presentation of the Bascom Lamar Lunsford Award, presented yearly to "an individual who has made significant contribution to the folk, musical, and/or dance traditions of the southern mountain region." This year's recipient is Danielle Plimpton, longtime director of the Bailey Mountain Cloggers of Mars Hill University. The award presentation will happen at 11:40 a.m., just prior to the cloggers' performance.

Both the Lunsford Festival and the Heritage Arts Festival usually take place on the university campus, but due to construction of the university's new campus center, the festivals have moved to the field along the greenway. There is no parking available at the site, so visitors may park at the university and walk along the greenway, or park at the Ingles Markets on N.C. 213 and take the free shuttle. Shuttles will run from 8 a.m. until 5:30 p.m.

The Lunsford Festival is named for Bascom Lamar Lunsford, a musician and folklorist who dedicated his life to the music of Southern Appalachia. Lunsford was born on the campus of Mars Hill University, and donated his vast collections of material about Southern Appalachian culture to the school's Southern Appalachian Archives.

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