Music from the true vine of Southern roots to sound at Wheaton
Monday, September 1999
Five-time Grammy nominee Mike Seeger will talk about and demonstrate his work in keeping alive the traditional home music of the South in a lecture and recital on Thursday, Sept. 30 at Wheaton as the college kicks off its annual Jane E. Ruby Humanities Lecture Series.
Seeger’s lecture and rectial will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Cole Memorial Chapel. The event is open to the public without charge.
Fidelity to traditional sounds has set Seeger apart from other performers since he began touring the United States and abroad in 1960. Like earlier traditional musicians, he seeks out his own vision of the music by creating within its traditions, making his music uniquely his own. As he sings the old songs, he plays in a wide variety of traditional styles, accompanying himself on an array of instruments, including banjo, fiddle, guitar, trump (jaw harp), mouth harp (harmonica), quills, lap dulcimer, mandolin and autoharp.
As a founding member of the New Lost City Ramplers, Seeger played an integral role in helping to revive interest in a variety of traditional musics, now played by thousands of young musicians across the country. Since his first recordings with the Ramblers in the late 1950s, he has recorded nearly 40 albums.
Seeger began playing instruments in his late teens and learned from such well-known stylists as Maybelle Carter, Dock Boggs and Cousin Emmy. His love for traditional music has inspired him to produce documentaries and to organize many tours and concerts featuring traditional musicians and dancers. He has been a member of the board of directors of the Newport Folk Festival and advisor to the Smithsonian and the National Folk Festival.
Seeger has been honored with five Grammy nominations, most recently for Southern Banjo Sounds in 1998 and Solo: Oldtime Country Music in 1991. In 1995 Mike received the Rex Foundation's Ralph J. Gleason Lifetime Achievement Award, established by the Grateful Dead to recognize "those who exemplify the qualities of talent, vision, innovation that Ralph so tirelessly supported." In the words of the award citation, Mike Seeger ". . . remains one of our great musical and cultural resources. To see him perform is to experience the richness of our traditions." He has also won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Smithsonian and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Seeger's lecture-recital kicks off the sixth year of the Jane E. Ruby Humanities Lecture Series, which brings prominent lecturers to campus. Past Ruby lecturers have included noted evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, novelist and Wheaton alumna Alexandra Marshall and author and illustrator David Macauley. The lecture fund was established in 1993 by the estate of Jane E. Ruby, former provost and professor of history emerita at Wheaton.