BRATTLEBORO — From old-time fiddlers and harmonica tooters to radio cowboys, Vermont's country music legacy will take center stage when the Friends of Brooks Memorial Library presents Montpelier musician-educator Mark Greenberg's illustrated talk “Kitchen Tunks & Parlor Songs” on Thursday, May 14, at 7:30 p.m., at the Brooks Memorial Library on Main Street.
Since the 1980s, Greenberg has been interviewing and recording musicians throughout Vermont, tracing the development of the state's vernacular music from its roots in Anglo-Celtic traditions through the influences of French-Canadian emigrants and the arrival of radio and other electronic technologies.
Greenberg currently teaches courses in American music at UVM and taught American Studies and Humanities at Goddard College from 1991 to 2003.
Greenberg has documented this music on the CD Kitchen Tunks & Parlor Songs, and on the DVD The Unbroken Circle-Vermont Music, Tradition and Change.
He has also produced a CD of collections of archival recordings by two of the most popular Vermont radio and dance musicians of the 1930s through the 1960s – Don Fields and His Pony Boys: Historic WDEV Broadcasts and Last Sessions and Buddy Truax: Music Man.
In his presentation, Greenberg will play examples from his collecting and will discuss the origin and significance of the music, the impact of mass media on Vermont musical culture, and his experiences searching for old-time music in the Green Mountain state.
Writing in the Times-Argus, Will Lindner greeted the original release of The Unbroken Circle by dubbing Greenberg “Vermont's unofficial folk historian-in-residence.”
In addition to his Vermont materials, Greenberg has produced recordings for leading folk artists including Pete Seeger, Doc Watson, and Dave Van Ronk, along with radio and video documentaries for National Public Radio, the Vermont Historical Society, and others.
He was the editor of, and a writer for The JVC Smithsonian Folkways Video Anthologies of Music and Dance of the Americas, Europe, and Africa. His recordings have received a Grammy nomination, a NAIRD Award, and awards from Parents' Choice and the American Library Association.