Even in the best of times, life in West Virginia was never easy.
And music - always an important part of life in the Mountain
State - has always been a direct reflection of that life. The
dark, bittersweet melodies, many of which were borrowed
from Irish and English tunes, were informed by dangerous,
labor-intensive jobs; hardscrabble living; geographic isolation;
a dismal economy; and, perhaps most importantly, the resilient spirit of the people.

But the music heard in the Southern West Virginia coalfields also resonated with
the sound of Eastern European instruments, African-American spirituals and
country ballads. In the early 1900s, when thousands of immigrants flocked to the
coalfields for work, they brought with them a culture of their
own. Hungarians, Italians, Poles, Greeks, Lebanese and
African-Americans lived together in the coal camps, each
with their own distinctive culture and music.