Saint Mary's 'Jan Term' Speaker Series Presents Alan Jabbour and Karen Singer on Encounters with Appalachian Culture

In the 1960s, Alan Jabbour set out with his wife Karen Singer to document fiddling as a cultural tradition. His documentation turned into a violin apprenticeship in the style of his Appalachian mentors. In this immersive musical and photographic presentation, Jabbour and Singer explore, in performance and discussion, their amazing experiences with Appalachian tradition that changed their cultural understanding and reoriented their intellectual and artistic lives.

In the 2000s, the couple documented the Decoration Day ritual in the cemeteries of North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park, resulting in a report, book, and exhibit that still reverberate in the region. Decoration Day as a cultural tradition lay at the heart of a fifty-year-long tug-of-war between local people and the Federal government, which gave American political parlance the phrase “Road to Nowhere.”

The couple will reflect on their encounters with Appalachian culture in a unique musical and photographic presentation called “Life-Changing Encounters with Appalachian Culture.”

7 p.m. Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Soda Center
Saint Mary’s College of California
1928 St. Mary’s Road, Moraga, Calif. 94575

The Speaker Series is an annual staple of the College’s intense month-long “Jan Term,” when students are encouraged to step out of their comfort zones, explore new intellectual territory and take classes that often embody the Lasallian tradition of social action.

For more information, contact the Jan Term office by phone at (925) 631-4771 or by email at janterm@stmarys-ca.edu. Visit the Speaker Series online at stmarys-ca.edu/january-term.