An interview with Rising Appalachia's Leah Song

​By Tamra Testerman

It’s an eclectic lineup – Indy pop, Rock, Chillwave, and World - infused folk music at the Ghost Ranch Music Festival this weekend — Blossoms and Bones is a two-day celebration of all things Georgia O’Keeffe, the woman who inspired generations of artists to be fiercely independent, loyal to the vision, and ever restless. 

I am resilient
I trust the movement
I negate the chaos
Uplift the negative
I’ll show up at the table
Again and again and again, 
I’ll close my mouth and learn to listen
These times are poignant
The winds have shifted
It’s all we can do
To stay uplifted.

​Rising Appalachia

Sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith, known as Rising Appalachia, have carved a musical career influenced by their southern roots and world travels. Atlanta, New Orleans, their Irish ancestry and the southern Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia are the emotional sound palette that influenced their music. Unwavering, no compromising, activists, and truth-seekers, the sisters have birthed their own je ne sais quoi weaving vintage jazz, global influences, folk, bluegrass, spoken word, and hip-hop. I spoke with Song by phone outside of Asheville preparing for the trip west. Smith couldn’t join us, she’s on“the schedule of the baby” (new mother) "which rules."
The sisters were raised in a family of artists. “Our father is a prolific painter and sculptor. He used to say ‘you are a creator because you cannot imagine being alive without it, I make art not because I want to but because I have to, to get through the day.’ If it’s in your bloodline, then you cannot escape it. It’s in your cooking, it’s in the way you put on your shoes in the morning. And so we grew up with a lot of different visual arts references and a big Georgia O’Keeffe book prominent in our family home. So we knew her, her work, just the beauty of her paintings and the incredible, stunning and stark imagery of herself in all the portraits that were taken of her – She seemed stoic and like a pretty serious, bad ass.”

Holding the lines of tradition, yet ever evolving is the bedrock of Rising Appalachia. “I feel like we’ve always wanted to hold a foundation of traditional folk music—out of the South, which is the region of our upbringing, but also a lot of traditional music at large. So we’ve been students of traditional songs and traditional instrumental projects since we were kids. We grew up with an Appalachian and Irish folk playing family. But we grew up in the middle of downtown Atlanta, Georgia so the neo soul movement influenced our lives as well. – And contemporary folk cultures, which was the underground hip hop movement. Front porch storytelling,

Contemporary music of the people, the music of the streets. And so all of that is already an unusual melting pot –I think continued from the foundations of this music tradition and wrote our own, to collect ways where we can write contemporary songs and merge them with old traditional fiddle tunes or old traditional ballads we’ve brought in the incredible musicianship of traditional Irish and West African players into our project who play the music of their origins. It’s the same. It’s been, like you said, kind of ever evolving. A study of the intersection between traditional folk music and contemporary songwriting.”
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Song and Smith have spent the last couple of years getting closer to their Irish lineage. "We have a lot of Irish on both sides of our family. There’s a lot of intact folk culture in Ireland, which I think is the benefit of it. The arts in Ireland reflect the hardship in its history, and the people's survival has helped preserve much of the culture intact. You can still find it. 10, 15 generation ballad singers and the tradition of the wailing the songs that held the grief. There’s a boat building culture. The sound of fabric being washed on the rocks that’s integrated as a rhythm and percussion into some songs – you don’t even have to imagine it. You can still kind of catch glimpses of it in the living, which is a wonderful, wonderful feeling. We all have access to that in our lineages and in our ancestry. Some of us are closer and some have to dig further. But, you get that texture still in the traditional Irish folk music. A lot of those songs and tunes have been circulating in the public domain for hundreds of years. So they don’t have authorship. Much of the music that we grew up in, being sung and played by groups of people. passed down in the oral folk tradition for hundreds and hundreds of years. We’ve studied singing styles from hill country in Bulgaria and ballad singing from rural Ireland and discovered places with music that has carried that on for generations. And that’s a real big inspiration for us. We look forward to sharing our musical journey, seeing other musicians, immersing in the ancient and dramatic landscape of Georgia O'Keeffe, and meeting the people at Ghost Ranch.

Blossoms and Bones showcases a “progressive female-centric artist lineup in honor of O’Keeffe’s legacy as a leading female voice in American Art, but features male artists as well.

Friday, August 25 music starts at 5:00 p.m. and features Taos’ Natural Lite, folk duo Ocie Elliott, New Zealand rockers, The Beths, Alt Rock Legends, the Breeders with headliner the Indie Pop darling, Japanese Breakfast.

Saturday, August 24 music begins at 4:30 p.m. with Native singer-songwriter Raye Zaragoza, world-infused folk with Rising Appalachia, Chillwave pioneer Toro Y Moi, Grammy award nominees for Best New Artist, Yola, and headlining is Austin Texas Indie Rockers, Spoon.
Friday and Saturday nights feature after-show DJ sets with New Mexico’s own DJ and the art collective Team Everything.

Two-day and single-day passes are available with extras like camping, glamping and VIP deck, special meals, and more.There will be a special welcome night “campfire” concert on Thursday. For details about the artists visit the website https://ghostranchmusicfest.com/artists/ and to purchase tickets https://ghostranchmusicfest.com/tickets/

Photographs of Rising Appalachia by Melisa Cardona courtesy the artists
All others artist courtesy Ghost Ranch Music Festival Blossom and Bones.
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