August 2007

My Grandmother, Edith Bissette, grew up in a musical family in rural Virginia and North Carolina in the 30s and 40s as the changes Mike Seeger describes were taking place. She expands on what Mike describes above as she tells us not only what the advent of radio was like in the rural South, but what life and music were like as well.

Mike Seeger has helped bring the music of the rural South to popular attention. He did this as a folk musician in the 60s, bringing traditional musicians not yet well known to the forefront of popular attention and continues to do so through performances and archive work today.  It is in part through his influence on his own generation that we have the folk-based songs of Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead.