New Kid on the Block of Traditional Music Programs
Warren Wilson College
While it has only been around for a short time, Warren Wilson College’s Traditional Music program is well on its way to being a go-to destination for Appalachian culture immersion.
Now offering a major (BA) and a minor in music with a concentration in Traditional Music, the program features “a unique concentration in Traditional Music that emphasizes the multicultural roots, influences, and varieties of vernacular music within Southern Appalachia,” combining “music theory and performance, Appalachian studies, cultural studies, musicology, and ethnomusicology” utilizing group and individual music instruction.
What is also impressive about Warren Wilson College is its location. Tucked away on Rt 70 at the base of the Black Mountains, the institution is a short drive from the live music and craft brew Mecca of the Blue Ridge Mountains that is Asheville and just a 35-mile drive from the famed Blue Ridge Parkway and Mount Mitchell, the tallest mountain east of the Rockies. Found throughout this region is a still-active bluegrass and old-time music scene that goes back hundreds of years.
Heading up the Traditional Music program is Kevin Kehrberg. He grew up about 20 miles north of Wichita, Kansas, which is within easy driving distance of Winfield, which hosts the National Guitar and Banjo Championships. Kehrberg did not discover bluegrass music, however, until he was a teenager. His father was a music professor at Bethel College in Kansas and that meant that Kehrberg’s first introduction to playing music was in the form of years of piano courses while in grade school. “He insisted that we all take five years of piano lessons and then we could all make up our minds as to continue or not,” said Kehrberg. “I was the youngest of the kids so he let me quit after three years. Then I played the clarinet in middle school and towards high school, I was going to play the guitar like all of my other friends, but my Dad was actually the one who convinced me to be a bass player. His reasoning was that there is always a need for a bass player, and for some reason I listened to him and took it up.”
Finally, Kehrberg was exposed to live bluegrass music when he wandered down to Winfield with some friends to experience the famed Walnut Valley Festival. “I think we heard about the festival from some older friends who were in college near there and we decided to go down there and check it out, and it was really the first time I had ever heard or seen anything like that,” said Kehrberg. “At that time, and this was in the early 1990s, there was jamming everywhere and it was pretty magical. It was a captivating environment with all of these musicians everywhere having a good time. I would go back every year after that, so in some ways it all kind of runs together. But, for me, I enjoyed the social setting more than seeing any musician or band in particular. The contests were great and because of the recognition from winning and being able to claim yourself as a national champion, people came there from all over and as a result and there were a lot of great musicians there just playing music. So yes, it was an eye-opener.”
The next thing he knew, Kehrberg was borrowing an acoustic bass from his Dad’s college department and his friends were taking up the mandolin and other bluegrass instruments. When it was time to seek out higher education, Kehrberg began his career at Bethel College where his father taught. There, he became a music major studying classical music and jazz while staying active in the bluegrass scene. After that, he moved to Pittsburgh, PA, to work at an after-school music program where he met a musical mentor named Dwayne Dolphin and became immersed in a new music scene for about three years.
Eventually, Kehrberg decided to go to graduate school and that brought him to the University of Kentucky in Lexington where he pursued a degree in musicology. He lived there for eight years and would travel to places like Cincinnati, Louisville and the Clifftop Festival in West Virginia to immerse himself in even more music scenes. After getting his graduate degree, Kehrberg began to look for full-time teaching jobs and that is when he landed a position at Warren Wilson College in 2010. He has been there ever since, working to expand the music program at this mountain-surrounded place of higher learning.
“Within the overall Warren Wilson Music Program is the Traditional Music program,” said Kehrberg. “We launched a music major program in 2018 that has two different academic concentrations in it and one of those concentrations is in Traditional Music. We do get a lot of students who are interested in studying the fiddle and the banjo, and studying the music of southern Appalachian overall, including bluegrass. We are also able to draw upon the many music professionals who live in this area and as a result, we have a lot of great adjunct faculty who teach those instruments.”
Long before Warren Wilson College developed their new music major in 2018, musician, musicologist, TV host, and perhaps the late Doc Watson’s best collaborator in his later years, David Holt came onboard 40 years ago and made his positive mark on the school’s reputation. “The college always offered classes in fiddle and banjo over the years,” said Kehrberg. “Warren Wilson is a small private liberal arts college so unlike a big state school, we have a lot more flexibility to teach what we want to, and the classes in traditional music really started back in the 1970s when David Holt was a faculty member here at Warren Wilson. David was the one who began to offer classes in those instruments. He would also get students to work with him and go out into the community and make field recordings of older musicians in this region. When David left, basically because his professional career as a performer was taking off, Wayne Erbsen took over. Wayne has published a ton of instructional books on playing the banjo, fiddle and mandolin. Then, about 20 years ago, Phil Jamison came onboard and began teaching music while concentrating on the old-time side with Wayne concentrating on the bluegrass side of the equation.”
With that traditional music base in place, Kehrberg and others worked to up the ante and create the current, full-blown degree program. “The Traditional Music major that we started four years ago has been going well and is expanding,” said Kehrberg. “We’re hiring more faculty to teach as we get more students, and now more students are coming here to get their Bachelor of Arts degree in Music with its focus on Traditional Music and it has really been a great success for us so far.”
The list of current faculty members includes Kevin Kehrberg, the aforementioned Phil Jamison, Ben Krakauer, Katie Cilluffo, Jason DeCristofaro, Adama Dembele, Parrish Ellis, John Engle, Dan Keller, Ben Nelson, Suzanna Park, Bob Strain, Travis Stuart, and Natalya Weinstein. Many in the bluegrass world will know Weinstein as a member of the band Zoe and Cloyd, which includes her husband John Cloyd Miller, who is the grandson of the great bluegrass fiddler Jim Shumate.
A couple of years ago a wonderful anonymous donor donated one million dollars to Warren Wilson College with an emphasis on creating scholarships for students, so it is worth looking into to see if your potential music major goal can benefit from one of the available awards. Again, all of this wonderful schooling happens in the thick of the western North Carolina experience of nature and music, from exploring the wilderness area of Linville Gorge to checking out the Thursday night bluegrass jam at the Jack of the Wood pub.
“It is great for the students that we are close to Asheville, which is a wonderful place to be,” said Kehrberg. “There are a lot of places where you can get experience playing professionally here, and there are a lot of professional musicians who live here. And, there are a lot of music venues and multiple open jam sessions in town where you can play. So, to me, the location of Warren Wilson College has been one of the keys to the success of the program, along with the quality of instruction. We have great faculty and we have had some impressive students come through the program who will go on to do great things after they leave here. One alumnus of the music program here is Mason Via, who created a recording and touring career of his own before recently joining the multiple Grammy Award-winning group Old Crow Medicine Show.”
More information can be found at
www.warren-wilson.edu/programs/music.
