KEYRIS MANZANARES: From the banjos of bluegrass, to the first twangs of country, and the early drops of hip-hop.

the soundtrack of America has roots here in the Commonwealth.

We're taking a look at music, its ability to heal, to connect cultures, and to bring joy to those who experience it.

You're watching VPM News Focal Point.

Production funding for VPM News Focal Point is provided by The estate of Mrs. Ann Lee Saunders Brown.

And by... ♪ ♪ KEYRIS MANZANARES: Welcome to VPM News Focal Point.

I'm Keyris Manzanares, in for Angie Miles.

Virginia artists have made major contributions to the nation's music culture.

Our state is known for blues, jazz, folk, rock and roll, and for being the birthplace of country.

Over the years, artists from the Hampton Roads area have produced chart-topping hits.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of hip-hop.

Next, I bring you a story about people working to preserve Virginia's hip-hop history.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Virginia hip-hop artists from the 757 area have contributed immensely to the evolution of hip-hop sounds and culture.

THEODORE JAMISON: Well, the influence of hip-hop in the area is huge, it's prevalent, it's everywhere with our artists like Pharrell, Timbaland, Missy, they're like global icons.

Right?

CYMANDYE RUSSELL: Definitely Virginia exemplifies the core of what hip-hop is for the fact that, you know, we respect the culture.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Theodore Jamison and Cymandye Russell are hip-hop lovers and charter members of William & Mary University's Hip Hop Collection.

They say Virginia has influenced the heartbeat of the genre.

To celebrate hip-hop's 50th birthday this year, Jamison and Russell collaborated with the University to host an event in Norfolk, bringing together local artists.

The library at William & Mary holds the most comprehensive special collection dedicated to Virginia hip-hop culture and history.

Jay Gaidmore is the Director of Special Collections at William & Mary.

He says the Hip Hop Collection was started by Kevin Kosanovich, a graduate student who was writing his dissertation on hip-hop history.

JAY GAIDMORE: The collection includes posters, photographs, flyers, brochures, newspaper articles, magazines, t-shirts, anything related to Virginia hip-hop history and culture.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: It also includes this flyer that got Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo of The Neptunes recognized at a Virginia Beach High School talent show in 1992.

THEODORE JAMISON: If we don't have anything to say, hey, this happened, this flyer or this date where hip-hop was still moving forward, then that history would be lost or erased, and we can't have that.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Reporting for VPM News Focal Point, I'm Keyris Manzanares.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: The Hip Hop Collection at William & Mary is the only one of its kind in Virginia.

If you have an item to donate like a CD, record, or photograph, contact the University's library or keep an eye out for campus events that celebrate the music.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Hip-hop is just one type of music that Virginia is known for.

Many legends called the Commonwealth home, including big band singers like Pearl Bailey and Ella Fitzgerald, folk artist, Ralph Stanley and current stars, like Jason Mraz and the Dave Matthews Band.

We asked people of Virginia to name some musicians from the state and here's what they told us.

GRAYSON MILLER: One of my favorite artists, actually, is from Richmond, but I saw her in Charlottesville this past year.

Lucy Dacus, she's awesome in the indie scene, but that's really one of my favorite people to listen to.

TYRONE PAYNE: Actually, Chris Brown is from my hometown, Tappahannock, so him, Missy Elliott, of course, Timbaland.

Pharrell came from... Pharrell, so it's about... From Virginia, yeah, those most three or four that I know.

TINA GREEN: I do know the band Gwar is from here.

They usually, or used to, play at least once a year, they would do a big kind of thing.

Dave Grohl is from here, so he played with Nirvana.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: We know music can also build understanding and make us feel good and it can be used to help those struggling with addiction.

One therapist in Roanoke has spent decades using music's healing powers to help clients.

I spoke with him for this report.

JIM BORLING: How recovery is going for you?

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Linda MacDermott and her music therapist, Jim Borling have been meeting for 20 years.

Each one of their sessions starts like this, setting an intention.

LINDA MacDERMOTT: My first session was, I have a hole in my soul and I feel like I just feel like I have a hole in my soul.

And so kind of that was the intention to see what's going on.

That's the best I could do.

So I grew up, through my childhood every type of abuse that can happen, happened.

And I learned at the age of probably 10 and a half, 11, to keep a liquor bottle in my room.

Because when I drank, did a shot of liquor, I didn't have to feel what had just happened or deal with that.

So that continued on.

The main drugs I used were marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol.

But I wasn't opposed to trying anything else as well.

But that was my staple drugs.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: MacDermott says she never thought music could be a healing agent until she met Borling.

JIM BORLING: I'd always been interested in music as a child, and I can tell many stories of even being a child when I felt the expansiveness of music.

I didn't have the vocabulary to describe that but I realized there's something really special here.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Borling has been a music therapist for close to 40 years.

He specializes in the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music which was developed by music therapist, Helen Bonny.

JIM BORLING: So the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music is in its simplest terms, it's the combination of non-ordinary states of consciousness.

And we could say that's deep relaxation kind of an expanded sense of awareness, an intention that is a purposeful reason for entering into a session.

Music, which is basically classical music that may be Beethoven or Bach or Mozart, could be Chopin or Sibelius or some intentional contemporary music.

And the interaction of the guide and the traveler or the therapist and client in a way that encourages the spontaneous flow of imagery from within.

(soft music) KEYRIS MANZANARES: Borling holds contracts with local recovery facilities in Roanoke, Virginia where he helps those battling addiction with the emotional and spiritual aspect of their recoveries.

JIM BORLING: So we're really working with expanded layers of healing that are profound and particular, to the human experience.

It might even take you to elements that we could call transpersonal that is connection with something greater than ourselves.

I can tell you that people with addictions are absolutely searching for that.

LINDA MacDERMOTT: Sometimes when it would get really intense the music would be like these drums and really loud and you could just feel it through your whole body.

I mean, I remember we had an hour session and I think it went over a little bit and I thought we were only doing it for five minutes.

It was just incredible.

So there's a lot, if you're open to it and you can just relax and bring it in.

And then, what it does is it just kind of stays with you.

In the next two or three weeks you can feel the difference in the shifts.

What it means to me, to the core is it saved my life.

Emotionally.

It saved my life emotionally.

It gave me a place to start in a safe environment and a safe place to start being able to look at some things and to be accepting and to meet who Linda was.

I didn't know who Linda was.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Reporting for VPM News Focal Point, I'm Keyris Manzanares.

♪ KEYRIS MANZANARES: Recent studies show that music can have a profound healing effect on people.

Not only can it shape our personal and cultural identities, it can regulate mood.

A 2022 review of music therapy found it can also be used to help address serious mental and substance abuse disorders.

ANGIE MILES: VPM News Focal Point is interested in the points of view of Virginians.

To hear more from your Virginia neighbors, and to share your own thoughts and story ideas, find us online at vpm.org/focalpoint.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Folk traditions celebrate the practices, beliefs, and customs of a people's culture.

For over 20 years, the Virginia Folk Life Program at Virginia Humanities has sponsored an apprenticeship program, which pairs several master artists with practitioners who are hoping to perfect their craft.

News producer, Adrienne McGibbon, met up with the musicians chosen to participate this year to hear how they're keeping traditions alive.

♪ ♪ DENA JENNINGS: It's breath, you know, it's the air I breathe.

♪ When we study the music itself, what banjo tunes are, you hear that not only in Black American music, but you hear it in music throughout the Caribbean and from West Africa.

You hear those same melodies, those same rhythms, those same tones.

♪ COREY HARRIS: When Blues was at its inception, it was a form of news, of information, of a way of telling people what's going on around the block, and we have lost a lot of that.

♪ LAMONT PEARLEY: My goal always is to put the Blues people's story in a proper context and to inspire and advocate for individuals or collectives of any particular folk group to tell and present their story and tradition.

♪ KATY CLUNE: The Virginia Folk Life Apprenticeship Program receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts and we have the honor and joy of giving funding to pairs of people.

Usually two, sometimes the teams are bigger who are deeply committed to sustaining a cultural tradition.

♪ We're really excited this year to support Dena Jennings, Corey Harris and Lamont Pearley.

This is a kind of a powerhouse of a team.

We were surprised to see Corey Harris show up in the applications as both a mentor and an apprentice.

He was seeking to work with Lamont Pearley in the Piedmont Blues tradition, but also seeking to work with Dena Jennings and learning how to build a gourd banjo.

DENA JENNINGS: I'll take out a gourd out of one of these bags and I remember growing that gourd.

I remember where it was on the vine.

It's like, ‘Okay, come on, we're going to make an instrument.

I bring a traditional Black Appalachian style that the Blues is a cousin to or a part of, but it has its own little flavor.

It's straight from the mountains of Appalachia.

♪ That's the beauty of this circle is that I hope to learn from Lamont a better understanding of the Blues people because I know that's related to Black Appalachia, but I'm not always sure how.

♪ COREY HARRIS: People die, generations die, but it's the stories that endure and it's those stories that we use so that we can cooperate and so that we can make culture and do things.

DENA JENNINGS: Hold it as straight up and down as you can.

COREY HARRIS: Thinking about the Story Gourd Workshop, it just makes me contemplate the power of the stories that we have that are holding us up.

LAMONT PEARLEY: It felt like it went quicker and a little easier down...

So the three of us collectively are looking to kind of not only bring it together, but give it its proper context in spaces that it's appreciated and then in spaces that dont necessarily understand that the nostalgia of our tradition, culture, and heritage as it is practiced is somewhat disrespectful or insensitive is a better word.

COREY HARRIS: It tends to not look at it as something that is like living and real in the present time.

It's made into a commodity that can be like opened, and unboxed at will and then sold and then closed again and put up on the shelf instead of something that's like you have to use every day.

LAMONT PEARLEY: So we just kind of want to put these things in the proper context and just play, right?

♪ DENA JENNINGS: You know, as soon as emancipation came, Blacks were looking for their families.

So we've been searching for one another for a long time through our stories, through our music, through our collaborations with one another.

LAMONT PEARLEY: My family's movements, our family's movements made what we know to be the Great Migration.

We are descendants of the Great Migration and the music traveled with our family, which is why it's important for us to circulate it and pass it down.

DENA JENNINGS: And if we don't do it, someone else will pick it up and tell our story, which is not our story.

You know, so we have to carry it.

♪ For me, successful documentation is listening to these gentlemen play the instrument that they made.

Just hearing them play it and it becoming part of them, part of their story, part of their song.

♪ KATY CLUNE: We also have Maurice Sanabria and Kily Vializ who are working on Mayag üez style, Puerto Rican plena hand drumming.

(Kily speaking Spanish language) MAURICE SANABRIA: My mentor, Kily, is one of the leading plena practitioners on the island.

So this instrument has multiple names.

The one we use in class with my mentor and the one used in my hometown is "pandereta".

♪ So the apprenticeship is really meant to share knowledge, build a traditional art, and create capability and capacity for artists in Virginia.

(Kily speaking Spanish language) In my case, it's Mayag üez style plena and we do it through Zoom because it's the only resource I have to connect with the mentor that I picked 'cause there are no mentors in Virginia that can teach me this art form.

♪ I've started my journey kind of behind the scenes.

My dad is the lead singer-songwriter for the band, but my dad is getting older, you know.

(Maurice singing Spanish language) So I need to build a skill set because this is an art that I want to continue to practice and to promote.

♪ We've gotten an excellent response in places where this type of music is not common.

♪ It's traditional music.

It was born out of poverty, it was born by African descendants living in Puerto Rico in the sugar cane plantations.

So this is blue collar people playing this to forget their suffering, to talk about their stories, and it was kept alive through oral tradition.

♪ Even though we're from very different walks of life when we go on these trips, we could see the connections because not only are we expanding the horizons of the people that hear us, but we're expanding our own horizons.

♪ KATY CLUNE: Ultimately, cultural expression helps remind us of our connections.

♪ If you peel back enough layers, we're all connected and share similar foundational roots.

♪ COREY HARRIS: 'Cause I feel like when we do things like this, we come together.

The riches that we get from it is not just in the moment, but it continues to reverberate after we've gone.

♪ KEYRIS MANZANARES: The current class of apprentices will spend the year exploring and honing their skills.

Their work will culminate with performances at the 2024 Folklife Festival.

For more information on the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program, go to our website, vpm.org/focalpoint.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Music has the power to change lives and one Virginia nonprofit is hoping to do just that by exposing young people to music.

Joining us is Carol Minter, executive director of Soundscapes, an education program based in Newport News.

Thank you for being here with us, Carol.

Could you tell us about Soundscapes?

Soundscapes is a youth development organization that uses music as our tool to develop critical life skills in young people in our community and our target audience is students from early childhood all the way up through adulthood.

And we do that through three types of programs.

We have daily afterschool music programs for students where we work with students for two hours every day after school.

We have the Peninsula Youth Orchestra, where we work with more intermediate and advanced student musicians, and we have three summer camps where we work with students over the summer as well.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Where did the idea for Soundscapes originate from?

Our co-founders, Anne Henry and Rey Ramirez were the ones who started it back in 2009.

And their idea was to start a music program that would give students something positive to do particularly in those after school hours.

And the whole idea was to bring about social change through music.

And that's exactly what we're trying to do with Soundscapes.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Could you tell us why your organization believes that music education is so important?

Music is really the ideal vehicle to bring about important life skills for young people.

It's something that young people are able to connect with.

People just naturally love music.

They feel comfortable with music.

They listen to music for fun.

And students, while they're learning music, they're going to fail.

They're going to come upon a challenge and they're going to have to keep trying.

And that perseverance is a really critical skill for them.

And so we just find that music education not only is the ideal tool for these kinds of life skills, it also develops creativity and it helps with social and emotional well-being as well.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Thank you for joining us, Carol.

CAROL MINTER: Absolutely, thank you for having me.

(upbeat music) ANGIE MILES: You can watch the full interview on our website.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: For almost a century, the small southwestern city of Galax, Virginia has played host to one of the largest festivals of traditional music in the country.

And as multimedia journalist, Billy Shields reports, some of that music comes from places you might not expect.

♪ BILLY SHIELDS: Welcome to Galax, Virginia where music spills out into the street.

Galax has also hosted the annual Old Fiddlers Convention.

TOM JONES: 1935, like I say, it started out with the Galax Moose Lodge and the PTA, and then they dropped out of it and then basically, the Moose took it over.

A couple years, they had it for two times per year and now it's grown so much that basically we just only have it one week long.

♪ BILLY SHIELDS: It has brought together all kinds of musicians from all over the world for 87 years, skipping only two years due to the Second World War and COVID.

TYLER HUGHES: This is actually one of the longest running music festivals in the Commonwealth of Virginia, if not the entire Southeast.

So we're celebrating these sort of traditions that have been taking place generation after generation.

TOM JONES: Approximately 1,100 individual participants, ♪ 127 bluegrass bands registered, ♪ and 66 old-time bands registered to play.

♪ BILLY SHIELDS: It takes place at a campground but it's not just a place to camp and jam.

♪ There's a stage for competition.

The audience and the participants are often one and the same.

TYLER HUGHES: Well, I think the reason why so many people travel from literally all across the world to a place like Galax in southwest Virginia is because of the community that surrounds this music.

This is a type of music that you can just pull up a chair, you can walk out to any of these jams this evening with your guitar or your fiddle and sit down and make new friends.

TARA LINHARDT: This convention's not about fiddlers.

It's not about contests.

It's about, you know, fellowship and friendship and enjoying music and culture and good times together.

♪ BILLY SHIELDS: There are strict rules governing what represents an old time band, but as one group proved this year, ♪ there are a lot of types of traditional fiddle tunes.

Meet the Swanky Kitchen Band from the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean.

Band leader Samuel Rose went to last year's convention.

SAMUEL ROSE: I didn't walk with my fiddle 'cause I didn't know what I was walking into.

I thought I was going to be a spectator, and I realized that I wasn't bringing anything to the party.

♪ BILLY SHIELDS: He brought his fiddle this year ♪ along with a full band.

KAREN EDIE: We are the last remaining band in Cayman that does our Indigenous music.

So it's really a lot on our shoulders to ensure that it's carried forward for the generations to come.

♪ BILLY SHIELDS: And so far as the crowd reaction goes, well, everyone in Galax was a Kitchen music fan that night.

SAMUEL ROSE: It's just a privilege to be amongst so many wonderful musicians.

And so for us, it was just an opportunity to showcase and share our heritage with the audience, all of whom have been so warm and so welcoming to us.

So it was very humbling to go on the stage and to receive that warm applause, to hear the cheers.

BILLY SHIELDS: Regardless of what tradition you come from for the thousands of people who come here, ♪ the Fiddlers Convention is a great opportunity to hear champion fiddlers, cut a rug or grill outside.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Music brings us hip-hop hits and a hope for healing, a way to step back in time and stay with the beat.

We hope you've enjoyed our exploration of some of Virginia's musical contributions.

For more on these stories, including the full discussion with Carol Minter about music education through Soundscapes, visit our website at vpm.org/focalpoint.

Thank you for joining us, we'll see you next time.

Production funding for VPM News Focal Point is provided by The estate of Mrs. Ann Lee Saunders Brown.

And by... ♪ ♪