Down the Road BRMT | Episode 5: Bascom Lamar Lunsford Championed Mountain Music and Dance

Celebrated as "the Ministrel of the Appalachians," Bascomb Lamar Lunsford was born in Madison County, N.C. He learned to fashion fiddles from goards at an early age and later mastered the 5-string banjo. A lawyer, teacher, fruit-tree and honey bee promoter by trade, Bascom would record over 300 sides of mountain music from memory for the Library of Congress. Bascom started the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville in 1928, which is now the longest continuing folk festival in the nation.