Rural Remix

All across Appalachia, communities have historically leaned on music to help get work done. Whether tending the garden or marching along the picket line, music has been a way to keep people motivated and rally them around a cause. In the small town of Lansing, North Carolina, community organizers recently hosted the first annual Fly Around Music and Arts Festival. The event was a celebration and continuation of a months-long effort to recover from Hurricane Helene, which hit western North Carolina in 2024.Fly Around Fest took its name from the song “Fly Around my Pretty Little Miss,” a traditional tune recorded by old-time giants Frank Blevins and Ola Belle Reed, who were both from around Lansing. With a nod to the area’s musical roots, the festival was a testament to the endurance of a community bound together by interconnected traditions of community work and music making.

In this final episode of the 2025 season, Ash Hanson and Anna Claussen dive deep in conversation with Kyle Mesteth. Kyle is the founder of Ground Control, a skate park and community center in Pine Ridge, SD, whose mission is to provide a space where skateboarders, artists, and creators come together to dream, collaborate, and bring their visions to life. Ground Control works to inspire self-expression, fuel innovation, and build a community that pushes boundaries in art and movement, and Kyle shares how he creates a collaborative leadership environment that supports everyone to "bloom where they are planted." 

Este episodio explora los sentimientos de soledad comunes en la experiencia de los inmigrantes rurales y presenta estrategias probadas para su inclusión. Las historias que se presentan en este episodio ofrecen una vía para alejarse de las políticas y prácticas de exclusión y avanzar hacia culturas de pertenencia que fortalezcan a toda la comunidad.

Este episodio analiza las diferentes barreras lingüísticas que enfrentan los inmigrantes al adaptarse a la vida rural estadounidense. Las historias que presentamos muestran cómo, al añadir el idioma a las dificultades de acceso que enfrentan casi todos los estadounidenses rurales, los desafíos de la vida se intensifican. Estas historias también ofrecen perspectivas sobre la fortaleza que se puede alcanzar en las comunidades multilingües.

Este episodio explora el proceso de adaptación a la vida en un nuevo lugar, conservando las costumbres que nos hacen sentir como en casa. Las historias que se presentan en este episodio abordan los desafíos de la asimilación y ofrecen ejemplos de una mejor manera de hacerlo: preservar las culturas personales, aprender de otras y encontrar oportunidades interesantes para combinar lo antiguo con lo nuevo.

Este episodio analiza la participación de los inmigrantes en la economía rural. Las historias que se presentan explican la influencia de las industrias en la determinación del lugar de asentamiento de los nuevos inmigrantes y ofrecen perspectivas sobre el costo de alcanzar el sueño americano como recién llegado.

Este episodio desmiente conceptos erróneos comunes sobre la inmigración en las zonas rurales de los Estados Unidos. Las historias presentadas en este episodio describen los patrones de inmigración a los EE.UU. a lo largo del tiempo, los factores que influyen en la difícil decisión de un inmigrante de abandonar su hogar y resaltan las contribuciones vitales que hacen los inmigrantes cuando encuentran nuevos hogares en las zonas rurales de Estados Unidos.

On this episode, we’re taking a look at how farmers and gardeners are helping maintain the region’s biodiversity. Our first stop? A seed swap.With the summer gardening season at its end, many growers throughout Appalachia are turning their attention to seed saving. It’s a practice where gardeners select the seeds from their best crops, and then save them over winter to plant the following spring. This past April, we visited the annual Appalachian Seed Swap in Pikeville, Kentucky.  We learned how important seed saving and swapping are for maintaining Appalachia’s biodiversity. And for creating a tasty meal.Next, we travel to Richmond, Kentucky where Brian Chadwell is growing something unexpected. He’s a fourth generation farmer and he’s using his family's land to grow rice.

In this episode of Beyond the Clock, our hosts Ash Hanson from Department of Public Transformation and Anna Claussen from Voices for Rural Resilience engage in deep conversation with rural Texas-based artist, Viktor le. Ewing Givens, aka Southern Android, who weaves poetry and ritual into his place-based creative work. Through unspoken language, layered memories, exploration of death and release, ancestral play, and acts of repair, Viktor invites us to examine our relationship with time and place and call in our past, present, and future kin to rematriate our connections to place. Find out more about Viktor's work at http://www.southernandroid.com.

Ginny Hawker is a singer and mentor in the Primitive Baptist tradition, an acapella style with roots in Appalachia. This style of singing inspired bluegrass legends like Ralph Stanley, along with country stars like Patty Loveless and Ricky Skaggs. Hawker is passing this music tradition on to a new generation.