When Wayne came to Reinhardt in 2007, he organized half a dozen more hootenannies but kept kicking around the idea of organizing a professional bluegrass festival, something Mark also supported when he became acting president of the university in 2020. Jessica Akers, who works in development and marketing at the university, helped plan the festival and secured performers. “We were planning to do the first bluegrass festival in 2020, but it didn’t happen,” Mark recounts. “Since we couldn’t hold indoor events, we bought an outdoor stage and set it up in the middle of the campus, and in 2021 we had a three-day bluegrass festival. People really liked it, so we are going to do it again and make it a tradition.” Tradition keeps bluegrass music alive and gaining new audiences all the time. Bluegrass is the sound of authenticity, the sounds of Appalachia. Even if we feel removed from that region, the music still touches us in a unique way. Acclaimed bluegrass musician Alison Krauss explains our connection best: “For most of its life bluegrass has had this stigma of being all straw hats and hay bales and not necessarily the most sophisticated form of music. Yet you can’t help responding to its honesty. It’s music that finds its way deep into your soul because it’s strings vibrating against wood and nothing else.”
[www.EnjoyCherokee.com]
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