Community Conversation with String Musicians & Makers, Sept. 7

Join folklorist Jennie Flinspach and local string instrument makers and players Kent Buys, Jeff Manthos, Joe Huff, and John Meade for a conversation about some of the cultural traditions of Benton County and the people who practice them. The program takes place Friday, September 7, at 7:30 PM at the Troubador Music Center, 521 SW 2nd St. in Corvallis. This open community conversation invites audiences to connect with local tradition keepers through a moderated panel discussion. Kent Buys specializes in instrument repair and restoration and is the owner of the Troubadour Music Center. Jeff Manthos is a luthier who handcrafts violins and violas. Joe Huff and John Meade, aka Huff and Meade, are an old-time banjo and fiddle duo popular across the region. Each of these artists represent the living traditions that make Benton County unique. Folklorist Dr. Thomas Grant Richardson, an independent folklorist based in New Mexico, spent several days in Corvallis and the surrounding area speaking to members of the community, documenting their traditions, and learning how their occupations shaped their lives as a part of the Oregon Folklife Network’s Willamette Valley Statewide Folklife Survey. Funding for this program comes from the National Endowment for the Arts to the Oregon Folklife Network, Oregon’s designated Folk & Traditional Arts Program. The project sent trained folklorists to meet and interview culture keepers in Benton, Linn, Lane, Marion Counties and at Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde. Jennie Flinspach, OFN Summer Folklife Fellow, received a BA in English from Simpson College and Master’s degrees in Folklore and Arts Management from the University of Oregon. With the OFN, Flinspach has managed the Oregon Culture Keepers’ Roster and interned with the Warm Springs Folklife Fieldschool. As an archivist for the Randall V. Mills Archive of Northwest Folklore, she designed and edited Cooking with Folklore: Recipes from the Archives. Prior to moving to Oregon, Flinspach was a high school English and drama teacher in the Iowa public school system. For more information about public programs in throughout the Willamette Valley, contact Jennie Flinspach at ofn@uoregon.edu or 541-346-3820. Please contact Oregon Folklife Network Director, Riki Saltzman, at riki@uoregon.edu or 541-346-3820 with questions about the Oregon Folklife Network or recommendations for traditions, groups, or individual folk & traditional artists to be documented in the Willamette Valley area. OFN always appreciates contact information for traditional musicians and dancers, quilters, storytellers, cooks, leatherworkers, fly-tiers, wood carvers, silversmiths, taxidermists, basket makers, and more.