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Donavan Cain

Donavan Cain to perform at the Black Mountain Wildflower Weekend at Pine Mountain Settlement School

Donavan Cain's traditional mountain music will carry the rich heritage of old-time mountain music into the 21st century at the Black Mountain Wildflower Weekend at Pine Mountain Settlement School in May.

Hailing from the hills of eastern Kentucky, Donavan is an accomplished banjo player and singer, playing in the traditional clawhammer and two-finger styles of the Southern Mountains.

Donavan is the son, grandson, and great-grandson of Appalachian coal miners from the Laurel, Knox, and Bell County areas of Southeastern Kentucky. He has spent many years collecting and learning the coal mining and protest songs native to his Kentucky hills and to the Central Appalachian Coalfields. Singing the ancient mountain ballads along with the old union songs of the 1920s and 30s mixed with more contemporary mountain music from West Virginia, Kentucky, and Southwestern Virginia, Donavan's voice tells the stories of mountain people from the coalmining communities and company towns of Central Appalachia.

Donavan has performed and offered workshops at numerous festivals throughout the mountains and around the Eastern United States, including: the annual Homecoming at the Highlander Research and Education Center, New Market, Tennessee, the 27th and 28th Annual Celebration of Traditional Music at Berea College in Berea, KY, and the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School, in Letcher County, Kentucky, where he teaches banjo, singing, and guitar.

In recent years, Donavan has played at festivals and events in Upstate New York and in New York City, where he performed in a special concert in Harlem alongside celebrated Kentucky novelist Silas House, National Heritage Fellow and Kentucky music legend, Jean Ritchie, and guest speaker, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to raise awareness of the effects of Mountain Top Removal coal mining in Central Appalachia.

Register now to attend the Black Mountain Wildflower Weekend at Pine Mountain Settlement School May 1-3.

http://pinemountainsettlementschool.com/events.php?view=details&id=62

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