
The Mountain Grrl Experience
Clip: Season 2 Episode 20 | 3m 51sVideo has Closed Captions
The Mountain Grrl Experience addressed the need for female representation in bluegrass.
The Mountain Grrl Experience addressed the need for more female representation in bluegrass music.
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Kentucky Edition is a local public television program presented by KET

The Mountain Grrl Experience
Clip: Season 2 Episode 20 | 3m 51sVideo has Closed Captions
The Mountain Grrl Experience addressed the need for more female representation in bluegrass music.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipBreaking bluegrass music.
Two Eastern Kentucky musician saw the need for more female representation in the industry and took matters into their own hands as a festival grew out of that idea.
It became even more than they could have imagined.
More in our weekly Arts and Culture segment we call Tapestry.
And the Mountain Girl Experience is a three day event that is held here in Pikeville, Kentucky, where we celebrate the artistry, the creativity, the resilience and strength of Appalachian women.
And this is an event that is for everyone.
It's the mountain girl experience.
But that doesn't mean it's just for girls.
Yeah, it's definitely all genders, all genres of music.
It's for everyone.
We we are just here to celebrate women.
Some people message sometimes are like, What's a mountain girl?
I'm like, Mountain Girl is a total state of mind.
Black Mountain girls just get things done.
Know for us, it started out of how do we give Appalachian women who are we're going to disavow managed region an opportunity that people away from here get or in bigger cities.
Playing music in a male dominated genre that bluegrass kind of is.
Sometimes there are not that many female musicians on the bill, and I thought it'd be cool to switch that up and maybe make an event where it's all female musicians.
You know, there may be male band members, but but we wanted to make sure that the women are in the lead up front.
The idea was just for a show and it somehow became this whole other thing.
I mean, we have a lot of workshops that go on, so we don't want to just have performance, but maybe help somebody get started on something like that on their own.
Lots of kids workshops.
On learning to play Appalachian Instruments like Dulcimer is learning to play rhythm instruments, learning to flat foot dance.
So we're trying to, you know, preserve our Appalachian culture as much as possible.
And then we have art as well.
And it's given women a lot of women, an opportunity.
They've told us they've never had an opportunity to showcase their art anywhere before.
We are just trying to provide different modalities for women to share their creativity, maybe to gain some confidence, to share their creativity if they haven't done that before.
Done having to do.
The part of the event that I think that we're most proud of is that we wanted to turn our passion for the arts into something that had a greater meaning.
So we've worked really hard to raise awareness for domestic violence.
It's one of the biggest issues that we face, and it's one of the most silent issues that we face.
And we are always making charitable donations to that because this is we don't make a profit here.
The profit that we do make goes right back into a turning point to help with domestic violence survivors and resources for them.
We have a legacy of strong Appalachian women that came before us.
You know, our mom is in our mamas and our our great grannies and so forth.
And this event is put on by a number of very strong Appalachian women who work together.
And, you know, we want, again, to be that role model for other young people to see us working together and what we we are putting on and know that maybe they could do something like that someday, too.
Festival raised about $2,000 for turning point domestic violence services in Martin County, and organizers are looking forward to growing further.
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