Hear fabulous old songs from the mountains and the Piedmont when the Happy Valley Pals take the stage on Sunday, Dec. 9, at 3 p.m. at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh. During the free performance, Gail Gillespie, Dwight Rogers, and Wayne and Margaret Martin will focus on the mountain holiday tradition “Breaking Up Christmas” and the dance tune by the same name. The catchy tune was frequently played in the Round Peak section of Surry County and in Virginia.
The Happy Valley Pals share deep family and musical roots in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. The band’s bluesy fiddling, pulsating guitar, growling bowed bass, and lively fingerpicked banjo reflect the group’s shared sense of time and place. The Martins, Gillespie and Rogers have played southern string-band music for decades. They all learned fiddle, banjo and guitar tunes directly from elder musicians, as well from wonderful 78 rpm recordings from the 1920s and 1930s.
The Dec. 9 performance, part of the museum’s Music of the Carolinas series, is presented with PineCone, with support from the N.C. Museum of History Associates, Williams Mullen and WLHC-FM/WLQC-FM.
Bring Canned Food: Make Someone Happy
Spread holiday cheer by bringing at least two canned-food items to the Happy Valley Pals performance. The N.C. Museum of History and PineCone are holding a food drive to benefit the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. Child-friendly items such as pop-top cans, cereal bars, fruit cups, and juice boxes are particularly needed. You can also refer to the Food Bank’s list of most-needed items. Holiday food drives are a very important part of the Food Bank’s year-end efforts, and your help is greatly appreciated!
More than 545,000 people in central and eastern North Carolina are at risk of hunger, and of these, approximately one-third are children. When school is out, students who usually receive free or reduced-price lunch at school cannot always be assured a meal each day.
The Food Bank is a nonprofit organization that provides food for people at risk of hunger in 34 counties in central and eastern North Carolina. The Food Bank distributed more than 44 million pounds of food and nonfood essentials last year.
For more information about the N.C. Museum of History, call (919) 807-7900, access the museum’s website or connect with the museum on Facebook and Twitter. The N.C. Museum of History is a unit of N.C. Department of Cultural Resources. For more information on North Carolina arts, history and culture, visit Cultural Resources online.