Rural Remix

Honoring ancestors is a human tradition that crosses all cultures. In the southeastern United States, this often takes the form of Decoration Day. That’s when families come together in specially decorated cemeteries to celebrate their roots—sometimes with music and prayers, and almost always with storytelling and a feast.In rural Pickett County, where Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau and Highland Rim collide, one family maintains one of Decoration Day’s oldest traditions: a swept graveyard. Reporter Lisa Coffman takes us to the 200th anniversary of their Decoration Day.

This episode explores alien movies set in the Western United States and the mythology of the American West. Through deep dives into a variety of fascinating films, the spectacle, intrigue, and vastness of this unique landscape is analyzed (Nope, 2022; Asteroid City, 2023). The West’s violent history of expansion and colonization is also highlighted as aliens can become symbols for both colonizers and the oppressed (Cowboys & Aliens, 2011; District 9, 2009). Learn more!

Welcome to Crop Circle Cinema. This episode discusses the paranoia embedded in rural alien movies. What do aliens reveal about our anxieties around the government, neighbors, strangers, and friends? Who do we believe? And who can we never trust? Films discussed include: Signs (2002), Independence Day (1996), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Faculty (1998), The Vast of Night (2019), World’s End (2013), Cowboys & Aliens (2011).

In our latest episode, we talked with Tiffany Joy and Shiloh Delaronde of the Appalachian Rekindling Project. The Appalachian Rekindling Project is based in southeast Kentucky and southwest Virginia. Its mission is to restore Indigenous relationships with the land, support cultural revitalization, and foster ecological care in Appalachia. In the interview, Joy and Delaronde share about their work around seed saving and other growing practices.

In the pottery world, there’s lots of different ways that makers can fire their work. Thanks to modern technology, most kilns can be fired by just one person over the course of a day. And some kilns don’t even need human supervision. But other, older methods are still around. And for those, it takes a village. In the mountains of western North Carolina, around a dozen potters recently gathered for 10 days for a wood firing, a method that’s been used for millennia.

In this episode, Anna Claussen (Voices for Rural Resilience) and Ash Hanson (Department of Public Transformation) talk with Central Iowa muralist and organizer Siriaco “Siricasso” Garcia about the power of art to bring visibility to diversity in rural communities. Siricasso shares how he turned to the canvas to process personal hardship and express experiences too often judged or silenced because, as he says, “the canvas always talks back.” His vibrant work highlights the beauty, resilience, and rich diversity of rural Iowa in bold and healing ways -- with projects like “Middle of Nowhere Festival”-- and challenges systems of oppression by encouraging us to claim our stories as our own brand -- creating space for others to feel seen, connected, and not alone.

Cherokee people have been making pottery in the mountains of western North Carolina for nearly 3,000 years. But after centuries of colonization and targeted, cultural oppression, there are relatively few Cherokee potters carrying on the art form today. Thanks to a community-led pottery workshop, a new generation of Cherokee potters is emerging. They’re sustaining age-old traditions, while building a contemporary practice of their own.

For most studio potters, making a new piece starts with opening a fresh bag of commercially produced clay. But Naomi Dalglish and Michael Hunt of Bandana Pottery have a different process. They produce their own clay bodies out of local clay dirt from their community in Bakersville, North Carolina. “A really wonderful side effect is our connection to the place and people where we live. Not just to the geology, but also to the community,” Hunt said.

Anna Gomez, Federal Communications Commissioner, advocates fiercely for First Amendment rights. During her visit to Fleming-Neon, Kentucky, she addresses the importance of protecting free speech amid increasing government censorship. Gomez highlights the vital role of local journalism in democracy and shares insights on how storytelling fosters community healing. The discussion emphasizes the need for civic engagement and the intertwined relationship between faith, freedom, and rights, rallying support for local voices and press freedom.

 In this episode we travel to Westel, Tennessee, home to fiddle maker Jean Horner. For more than seventy years, Horner built instruments that traveled across the country—Carnegie Hall to California, the Grand Ole Opry to the Smithsonian. Two factors shaped Horner’s fiddles. The first was his deep roots in the Cumberland Plateau. The second? His fascination with great Italian violin makers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Jean died this past January at age 91, an acknowledged master of his craft. Reporter Lisa Coffman interviewed him at his workshop in 2023. Recently, she attended his memorial service in Westel, and brings us this story of how he came to be known as the Stradivari of the Cumberlands. All fiddle tunes in this piece are played on Jean Horner fiddles.