News from the Mother Country

The organising team behind the documentary film You gave me a song: the life and music of Alice Gerrard report that it has been chosen as one of forty-six films (out of 1,700 applicants!) to be screened at the Full Frame Documentary Festival early next month in Durham, NC. Funds are still needed to cover the costs of audio post and mix, colour correction, animations, music and film licensing, and festival submission and distribution.

*

Thanks to Devon Léger of Hearth Music for the news that the debut album by Allison de Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves will be released this coming Friday (22 Mar.) on Free Dirt Records. The thirteen songs and tunes are masterful fiddle-and-banjo duets; but in addition de Groot and Hargreaves are

... searching for the deepest sources: the old musicians who played outside Western scales, musicians whose intricate rhythmic sensibilities pushed back towards Africa, musicians whose voices were silenced because they didn't fit the narrative of white, male, Southern musicians playing Appalachian music.

The project has received a good deal of notice on Bluegrass Today, most recently here.