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SPOTLIGHT
ON THE ARTS - June 2003 by Deanna Mascle Folk Heritage Revivalist Dr. Lynwood Montell has spent a lifetime preserving and sharing Kentucky’s rich folk heritage as a teacher, scholar, and writer. In March, he was recognized for that work with the 2002 Governor’s Awards in the Arts Folk Heritage Award, which recognizes Kentucky artists who have made an outstanding effort to perpetuate and promote Kentucky’s unique artistic traditions.
“I have studied the Kentucky-Tennessee Upper Cumberland for 43 years. This is a 19-county area that relied on the Cumberland River and its tributaries between Burnside, Kentucky and Carthage, Tennessee, especially from 1830-1930. I have written several books that zoom in on local life and culture in this area. I interview local people, then use their oral accounts in my books after I have documented what they tell me by searching through census records, court records, newspaper accounts, etc.” His sense of humor and dramatic storytelling make Montell a highly admired lecturer among scholars and schoolchildren alike. Montell has served on Kentucky’s Oral History Commission since 1982 and served as its chairman for seven years. Montell’s avid interest in local life and culture is a natural product of his childhood. “I cherish my memories of growing up in a rural setting that was filled with family and community storytelling situations on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons before the advent of radios during my early years and certainly before television became a part of everyday life.” Montell attended the University of Kentucky, Campbellsville College, and Western Kentucky University, earning a degree in history and minors in Spanish and geography. During his last semester at WKU, he enrolled in a folklore course. “That was it, for now I knew… I wanted to be a folklorist and teach folklore courses.” Along with folklore, his master’s and doctoral degrees from Indiana University included social and cultural history and cultural geography. His teaching career has included positions at Campbellsville College, Western Kentucky University, UCLA, and Notre Dame. He started writing in the early 1960s as a PhD student at Indiana University and has written almost continuously since, authoring 15 books and serving as editor for four additional books. His favorite book is The Saga of Coe Ridge: A Study in Oral History. “It is the first book published by a university press about a rural black community after the Civil War. It is also one of the very first books that relied extensively on oral history interviews - something that historians were extremely critical of back at the time this book was published. But believe it or not, the Coe Ridge book was given the Award of Merit prize in 1971 by the American Association of State and Local History, and portions of the book have been translated into German and published there.” He is also especially proud of Killings: Folk Justice in the Upper South. “It describes what local life was like back in the days when the local sheriff was seldom notified when a local killing occurred. Killings took place in defense of personal property, thus local inquest committees were formed to go to the scene of the killing to determine not the question of guilt or innocence, but motive instead. Was it a proper motive that the killing occurred? If so, the killer was forgiven on the spot and the local sheriff was frequently not notified. This book is/was used in a few law schools as required reading. The schools wanted their students to understand what a local code of justice was like at one time in history, and still is like that in some geographical areas.” Although proud of his work to preserve our heritage, Montell knows there is so much more history lost every day. “What you need to do while you still have an ancestor alive who can tell you some personal or family or community stories is record those while [your ancestors] are still here. When they have gone, so much of your heritage disappears.” In addition to the Governor’s Award, Montell has also received the Outstanding Researcher Award from Western Kentucky University; was elected to lifetime membership in the Folklore Fellows, an international association of professional folklorists from around the globe; was portrayed as one of three “Kentuckians Who Make A Difference” in The World Around Us: Kentucky Activity Program for public school teachers and students; and was inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame in Renfro Valley, primarily on the basis of Singing The Glory Down, his book that studies non-professional gospel music groups in southcentral Kentucky. While proud of his honors, it is the work itself that gives his life meaning. “I want to be remembered as a person committed to the study of human equality and cultural pluralism; as a person who wanted to help people perceive themselves by listening to and recording the things they talked about when they came together in family and community groups.” You can visit his web page at http://www.theborderlands.org/Montell.htm.
Deanna Mascle is a
staff writer for The Lane Report. |
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A
Kentucky native and retired Western Kentucky University professor, Montell
has published more than a dozen books on folk life in Kentucky and the
Upper Cumberland region. He also established Western Kentucky University’s
Folk Studies Program as one of the leading folk life programs in the
nation.