Episode 173 explores the color and fabric of folk music from two disparate regions: SE Asia and SE United States, including folk recordings from Vietnam, Cambodia and Appalachia. Most artists are unidentified, except: GB Grayson, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, and Sylvester Weaver and a few others.
“One evening, approximately 30 years ago, I went to a concert put on by the Kronos Quartet in San Francisco. At that concert, they featured the music of a Vietnamese composer. Something struck me about that music- that it had overtones of Delta Blues and Appalachian music. I approached the composer after the performance and asked if they had heard any of that music from that region before, and they replied that they had not. However, I could not shake the impression that there was a commonality between a certain strain of Appalachian Blues Folk and the Folk music of Vietnam and Cambodia.”
– Chris Cory