Event

Author Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth in Charleston at Taylor Books, June 21

Posted by West Virginia Folklife Program on
Author Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth wears a bright blue jacked and stands outdoors among several conifer trees.
Dr. Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth, author of Finding the Singing Spruce.

On Friday, June 21, 2024 at 5:30PM, State Folklorist Jennie Williams will host a conversation with author and folklorist Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth about his new book Finding the Singing Spruce: Musical Instrument Makers and Appalachia’s Mountain Forests at Taylor Books, located at 226 Capitol St, Charleston, WV 25301. This free event takes place as part of an exciting calendar of events during FestivAll in Charleston.

Wooden pieces of a violin are laid out on a wooden workbench.
Two men, one in a red shirt and the other in a gray shirt, and both wearing sound-canceling headphones stand over a log at a lumber mill and examine how they will cut it.
A man wearing a green baseball cap holds a piece of an acoustic guitar in progress and holds it close to his ear as he makes adjustments to its braces.
A man wearing a vest and goggles on his head sits smiling beside a work bench and a large green machine for instrument making.
Man in a black shirt stands by a work bench for guitar building. Tools, drills, hammers, and more line the walls.

About Finding the Singing Spruce: How can the craft of musical instrument making help reconnect people to place and reenchant work in Appalachia? How does the sonic search for musical tone change relationships with trees and forests? Following three craftspeople in the mountain forests of Appalachia through their processes of making instruments, Finding the Singing Spruce considers the meanings of work, place, and creative expression in drawing music from wood.

Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth explores the complexities and contradictions of instrument-making labor, which is deeply rooted in mountain forests and expressive traditions but also engaged with global processes of production and consumption. Using historical narratives and sensory ethnography, among other approaches, he finds that the craft of lutherie speaks to the past, present, and future of the region’s work and nature.

Finding the Singing Spruce is a 2023 Weatherford Award Finalist in Nonfiction. It is available now and published by WVU Press.

Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth is the Director and Archivist at the Center for Folklore Studies at The Ohio State University, as well as Visiting Assistant Professor in Comparative Studies. He currently teaches the Ohio Field School course, where he partners with former coal communities in Appalachian Ohio to think through intergenerational, environment, and economic succession in place-making. He has researched musical and material craft traditions in global contexts through his work with the Smithsonian Institution’s Asian Cultural History Program and the University of Kentucky Department of Anthropology and Appalachian Center, where he earned his PhD in 2019. His recent research interests have involved craft economies and production in global mountain forests, with a focus on Carpathia and Appalachia, and collaborative methods. His recently-released book, Finding the Singing Spruce: Musical Instrument Makers and Appalachia’s Mountain Forests explores the connections between the meaning of craft work and forest environments in the craft of musical instruments in West Virginia.

For questions, contact state folklorist Jennie Williams at williams@wvhumanities.org or (304)346-8500.

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