Living Traditions Festival

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Courtesy of Floyd Center for the Arts

This year’s Living Traditions Festival to be held rain or shine from 10am to 6pm on August 24th is a free event sponsored by Skyline National Bank and presented by the Floyd Center for the Arts in partnership with the Floyd Country Store’s Handmade Music School. Held both outdoors and inside the art center’s 1940’s-era dairy barn, festival-goers will enjoy two stages of musical performances, art exhibitions, open workshops, kids activities, artisan vendors, food, and dozens of demonstrations.

“In addition to the nearly 70 artists who are returning for a second year, we are excited to welcome many new partners for the first time,” says Keela Dooley Marshall, Executive Director of the Floyd Center for the Arts. Floyd’s own Contra Dancers, Historical Dancers, Quilters, Blue Ridge StorySpace, and ShapeNote Singers are joining to help make the festival a true celebration of local arts and cultural heritage.

The Handmade Music School and the Old Church Gallery will feature music of the legendary Floyd County string band The Korn Kutters with two of the musicians who played with the original band, George S. Slusher and Mac Traynham. The Old Church Gallery will share background on the Korn Kutters a well as their 1930s forerunners, Floyd County Ramblers. The Korn Kutters were recorded by the Library of Congress in 1978.

Another new Floyd musical guest this year is the Little River Missionary Baptist Church choir. The choir will bring heartwarming and uplifting traditional and contemporary gospel music that, in the words of Dylan Locke, Executive Director of the Handmade Music School and owner of the Floyd Country Store, “will get you up clapping your hands and stomping your feet!”

Other musical favorites include Willard Gayheart & Scott Freeman, Larry Sigmon & The Virginia Girls, New River Wranglers Stringband, and Handmade Music School students. Performing at the festival for the first time, The Lua Project will weave sounds of Mexico and Appalachia to form a rich musical tapestry of musical styles from different continents and centuries. 

On the indoor stage, audiences will see, learn and be invited to join in contra dancing, historical dancing, flatfoot dancing, shape note singing, and storytelling. A special ticketed storytelling performance of “The Heron’s Journey” by Adam Booth, West Virginia’s 2022 Folk Artist of the Year will kick-off the festival at 6p on Friday, August 23 at the June Bug Center.

For more information, a full list of performances, schedule of events, and tickets to the Friday kickoff event, visit www.floydartcenter.org. The Floyd Living Traditions Festival is made possible by Skyline National Bank, Mid Atlantic Arts’ Central Appalachia Living Traditions program & Mid Atlantic Tours program of Mid Atlantic Arts with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Floyd Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram, and Floored LLC.