Songs for the Mountaintop

Abstract

Songs for the Mountaintop George Brosi On the opposite page and the next two pages are the words and music to three original songs which are on a new cd, Songs for the Mountaintop, just released by the citizens' organization, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. This CD contains 12 original songs in the bluegrass, folk and traditional music styles, all speaking to the performers' love of the earth and their homeplaces and protesting those who would destroy that. In the liner notes, Anne Shelby writes, "Songs for the Mountaintop grew out of rich Kentucky ground. We've a long tradition here of making our own songs when we need them: when miners fought for the right to organize in the 1930s, and later when Kentuckians demanded controls on surface mining and an end to the Broad Form Deed. We need them again, and the songs are coming, some of them collected here. The musical styles are as diverse as Kentucky, and we think you will enjoy the songs. But we have another purpose: to tell the truth about mountaintop removal mining in Kentucky." Artists included on the ed are: Jean Ritchie, The Betweeners, Clack Mountain String Band, Reel World String Band, The Doolittles (Silas House and Jason Howard), Randy Wilson, Kate Larken, Anne Shelby, Ford MacNeill, George Ella Lyon, Tim Gilliam and Brett Ratliff. The CD is available for $15 from KFTC, P.O. Box 1450, London, Ky. 40743. For more information on the CD, see the website: http://www.kftc.org/ our-work/canary-project/people-in-action/musicians/music/ AU the music on this cd is written by people with homes in Kentucky who are concerned about the devastation of the land wrought by those who surface mine for coal using the new mountain top removal (MTR) technique. Two recent books describe the process and the results in detail: Losf Mountain by Erick Reese and Missing Mountains an anthology of Kentucky writing which includes work by Wendell Berry, Silas House, Erick Reese and others, including Appalachian Heritage editor, George Brosi. 76 ...