Folk music on BVA is a living practice, music that carries the weight of tradition while responding to the present moment.

Transmission 02: High Wind Warning

November 9, 2023

Nora Brown, a young banjo prodigy, plays "Darling Cora" with the authority of someone who understands that old-time music isn't about nostalgia; it's about continuity. Jake Xerxes Fussell, a folklorist as much as a musician, interprets "The River St. Johns" from archival sources, letting the song's age speak through his guitar. Molly Sarlé of Mountain Man brings the Appalachian vocal tradition forward.

Transmission 03: The Valley Finds Its Voice

November 23, 2023

"John Henry split my heart."

Songs: Ohia opens the third transmission: Jason Molina's lo-fi folk meditation on the American labor mythology of John Henry, the steel-driving man who died proving a Black man could work faster than a machine. Los Kory Huayras carry Andean folk resistance from Bolivia. Timber Timbre brings Canadian folk noir, haunted, gothic, religious imagery draped over slow-burning arrangements.

Transmission 04: Break Open the Dark

December 7, 2023

The Doc Watson Family carrying Appalachian music down the mountain. Elizabeth Cotten playing a right-handed guitar upside down and backwards. Mississippi John Hurt recording in 1928 and vanishing into farm work for thirty-five years before being found again. Damien Jurado. Bill Callahan. Abner Jay playing a bone. Dave Van Ronk closing with Brecht and Weill. Folk as living memory: what the market forgets, the valley remembers.

Transmission 05: The Longest Night

December 21, 2023: Winter Solstice

Sam Amidon's "Cuckoo": a traditional folk song reimagined by the Vermont-born singer on Nonesuch. Purple Mountains' "Snow is Falling in Manhattan": David Berman's final songs on Drag City, released a month before he died. Terry Allen returns with "X-Mas On The Isthmus," a Christmas song from 1999 that sounds like it was written in a fever dream on the Panama Canal. Folk as the people's music, always.