Culture

Stuart’s Opera House presents the second Happy Hollow Hootenanny next week

By: Emily Votaw
Posted on: Thursday, May 23, 2024

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NELSONVILLE, Ohio (WOUB) – Next week the Happy Hollow Hootenanny returns, boasting an even wider variety and greater number of classes, workshops, and musical performances than the inaugural 2023 “Hoot.”

The “Hoot” (as it is colloquially known) is a four-day cultural education event dedicated to the celebration and preservation of the region’s Appalachian heritage organized by Stuart’s Opera House Arts Education Department.

Earlier this week Stuart’s announced that thanks to a donation from Creston Stewart and Sarah Helfrich, admission to the weekend full of classes, workshops, and concerts is free.

Stuart’s Marketing Director, Dylan Telerski, says this does more than just make a fun weekend free to attend.

“This major gift will go a long way in supporting the intergenerational transfer of the cultural traditions that have grown in our unique region,” she said. “ [it will encourage] community members of all ages to become active stewards of Ohio and Appalachian heritage for future generations.”

Enabling that generation-to-generation cultural communication is a core part of the Hoot’s mission.

Joe Burdock is the Hoot’s Artistic Director. He says events like the Hoot safeguard aspects of Appalachian culture that might otherwise fade away.

“We just don’t have as much support for preserving those arts as some of our close by neighbors do,” Burdock said. “Even though it has been a very big part of rural life in our neck of the woods.”

Burdock emphasized that time is of the essence when it comes to this kind of preservation, reminding us that the “torch bearers” of these traditions are aging and we won’t have them around forever.

Each morning of the Hoot opens with music.

Specifically, lessons dedicated to four of the instruments integral to the sound of Central Appalachia: fiddle, guitar, mandolin, and banjo. Both advanced and beginner lessons are available.

In the afternoon, the Hoot shifts focus to workshops in the traditional crafts, dance, and folkways of Appalachia. The workshops are about topics like percussive dance forms such as flatfooting, clogging, and buck dance; quilting, and broom making.

Not every part of the Hoot is so structured – after all, if it was, could it really be called a “Hootenanny”?

Devin Sudman, Stuart’s Education Director, says “ […] there’s a lot of informal, spontaneous jamming that happens at the event.”

Sudman recalls a scene from last year’s Hoot that defined this spontaneous “intergenerational transfer” in real time.

A “jam” had formed, a cluster of people spontaneously and simultaneously playing music together. Among them was the event’s headliner, multi-instrumentalist Hubby Jenkins, plus several of the seasoned musicians who make up the event’s instructors.

On the outside of the circle, Sudman noticed a few of the younger high school aged fiddle players trying to figure out exactly what their musical elders were playing, so they could join in.

“It just felt like a perfect little snapshot of passing that torch,” he said. “Of the older folks playing this music and younger people learning from it. It was really beautiful to watch.”

Find more information about the 2024 Hoot, including information on the 2024 headlining performers, at this link. Registration is required.