Welcome back to Homegrown Plus! We’re continuing the series with a concert and interview featuring Grammy Award winning American Roots artists Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer together with accomplished Chinese classical hammered dulcimer player Chao Tian. The trio’s repertoire includes traditional Chinese and Appalachian music as well as contemporary and traditional music from around the world. They use instruments that include yangqin (Chinese hammered dulcimer), gourd banjo, five-string banjo, ukulele, guitars, dumbek, cello-banjo and mandolin, employing them in unusual combinations to create exciting new arrangements of old music. Cathy and Marcy join Chao in singing Chinese songs, and Chao easily adds her love of American Old-Time music to fiddle tunes and songs. As usual with Homegrown Plus blogs, you’ll find the concert video, an interview video, and a wealth of links to related collections and concerts, all right here in this blog post. Let’s get started with the concert, which is in the player immediately below!
In the interview we talked about the band members’ backgrounds and the genesis of “From China to Appalachia”: Cathy, Marcy, and Chao started out playing in jam sessions where Chao learned to love improvising, which wasn’t part of her training in classical Chinese music. In playing at jams and house concerts, she found out she could learn by ear and began to love the old-time tunes she was picking up. This inspired their whole musical project. Our interview also covered how they choose music for the trio, and some of their other projects, including “All Wigged Out,” a folk music comedy film about Marcy’s experience with cancer. Watch our wide-ranging discussion in the player below!
Collection Connections and Links
In addition to programming featuring this fabulous trio, we have many online resources related to their work together. Find some of them below!
Before putting together the program “From China to Appalachia,” the trio worked together for several years, both formally and informally. I’ve already mentioned their jam sessions, and we even have a recording made at one of the jams they played at together, AFC’s old-time summer music jam in 2018. Although we usually don’t record and post the jams (so people of all skill levels can feel comfortable playing together), at this jam we made a special recording of “Kumbaya,” which we featured in our podcast about that great spiritual. Find the podcast at this link!
Another of their activities together was to learn some material from the American Folklife Center archive for our Archive Challenge. They performed the resulting arrangement on February 4, 2023 at our showcase at the Folk Alliance International conference in Kansas City. See their archive challenge video below!
Links to More Videos and Resources
Cathy Fink, Marcy Marxer, and Chao Tian Videos
AFC’s concert and interview with Chao Tian
Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer with Sam Gleaves in the 2017 Archive Challenge Concert and Interview
Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer perform at the Library of Congress Young Readers’ Center in 2016
Selected Videos Featuring Chinese Music
Bing Xia: Traditional Chinese Guzheng Music
Ann Yao: Two Concerts and an Interview
Marjorie Bong Ray Liu: Kunqu, Multi-Art Theatrical Tradition
Nancy Yunhwa Rao: Chinese Opera Theater in North America
Selected Videos Featuring Appalachian Music
Eddie Bond & the New Ballards Branch Bogtrotters
Sheila Kay Adams Concert and Oral History
Ola Belle Reed Tribute Concert and Oral History
Selected Field Collections
Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project
Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection
Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia
Interviews at the Chinese School of San Antonio, 1982
Photos at the Chinese Music Club of Chicago, 1977
Essays and Guides
Find guides to AFC’s materials from states in the Appalachian region at AFC’s Research Guides Headquarters.
There are also specific guides to the following topics:
American Folklife Center Collections: China
Bluegrass Music: Resources in the American Folklife Center
Thanks!
As always, thanks for watching, listening, and reading! The American Folklife Center’s Homegrown Concert Series brings music, dance, and spoken arts from across the country, and some from further afield, to the Library of Congress. The idea of the Homegrown Plus series is to gather concert videos, video interviews with the musicians, and connections to Library of Congress collections together in one place for our subscribers. (Find the whole Homegrown Plus series here!)
For information on current concerts, visit the Folklife Concerts page at Concerts from the Library of Congress.