March 22–28, 2019 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 AWP 9
Heritage music: Anna Rg spent years researching Appalachian and New England folk music and will combine
the old tunes with her own modern adaptation at this year’s Brooklyn Folk Festival at St. Ann’s Church
in Brooklyn Heights on Apr. 6.
From fi ddle America
Brooklynite brings mountain music to festival
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
She’s an Appalachian trailblazer!
A Crown Heights folk musician
will bring songs from her years of
Appalachian field research to the annual
Brooklyn Folk Festival, happening at
St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn Heights
from April 5–7. The fiddler, banjo player,
and ethnomusicologist Anna Roberts-
Gevalt, who goes by Anna Rg onstage,
will perform a blend of traditional and
avant-garde tunes from coal country
on the final day of this year’s festival,
which is sponsored by the Jalopy Theater
in Red Hook.
Roberts-Gevalt says that spending
four years immersed in the mountain
culture helped her break out of the navel
gazing urban arts scene, and connected
her to a longer lineage.
“In New York it’s very easy to get
caught up in yourself and your art,”
Roberts-Gevalt said. “It was a good reminder
that there’s these threads of life
that have been going on for so long and
will continue after our deaths, which is
kind of along Buddhist or Native American
thought.”
Roberts-Gevalt drove down to Kentucky
MUSIC
Anna Rg plays the Brooklyn Folk
Festival at St. Ann’s Church 157
Montague St. between Henry and
Clinton streets in Brooklyn Heights,
(718) 395–3214, www.brooklynfolkfest.
com. April 7 at 8 pm. $25
Sunday night pass; $40 all day, $80
three-day festival pass. Festival lasts
April 5 at 7:30 pm–April 7 at 10 pm.
in her station wagon in 2009, fiddle
and banjo in tow, and learned from
Appalachians young and old, including
the late fiddler Paul David Smith, who
spent his time passing the mountain region’s
lore on to the next generation,
while encouraging them to add their
own twists to the songs, she said.
“He was excited that the music was
changing,” she said. “The week before
he died he was asked ‘Why do you like
playing music with young people?’ and
he said, ‘Oh the young people are choosing
notes that I had never thought to
choose.’ ”
The researcher also dug up some
obscure local artifacts, including the
“crankie,” a scroll that unwinds to tell
a visual story, which she has incorporated
into performances with her band
Anna and Elizabeth, though she will
not break it out for her solo show on
April 7.
During her time in the bluegrass state,
Roberts-Gevalt saw how young songsters
connected with their heritage, which inspired
her to research her own New England
ancestry at a Vermont archive of
more than 4,000 song recordings. After
moving to Crown Heights three years
ago, she also took inspiration from the
city’s experimental and improvisational
music scene, adding a personal flavor
to her traditional catalog.
“I want to present the traditional
songs and then my response through
the arrangements and improvisations
I make,” she said.
During her show, she plans to sing
and play traditional songs from Appalachia,
along with New England ballads
and her own original material —
but rather than keep them separate, she
hopes the forms will combine into a mix
that stays true to herself.
“The long-term goal for my music is
to let it synthesize, I’m trying to let them
all marinate together,” she said. “Not
a new genre, but finding combinations
that are very personal to me.”
EMBRACE AUTHENTICITY
19
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MAY 18 & 19, 2019
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CULTURE, ART & MORE!
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Brian Geltner
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