The combined number of North Carolina recipients for these musical genres exceeds that of any other state in the nation. Twelve ballad singers, old-time fiddlers, and banjo players from Western North Carolina have received the nation’s greatest honor in the traditional arts – the National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts.The Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, started in Asheville by Bascom Lamar Lunsford in 1928, is the oldest continuous folk festival in the United States and is the model for the National Folk Festival.One of the longest unbroken ballad-singing traditions in America is found in Madison County, where English folk-song collector Cecil Sharp first documented singers prior to World War I.Haywood County is the birthplace of team square dancing, which first originated there in the 1930s. Clogging in Western North Carolina is recognized as among the most highly-developed vernacular dance traditions in the country.Musicians from the Western Piedmont and Mountain region – including Earl Scruggs, Charlie Poole, and Snuffy Jenkins, among many – are recognized as the creators and popularizers of modern banjo styles. Few places have had more influence on the development of the banjo in America.Western North Carolina has many distinctions in the arena of traditional music. While traditional music is but one part of all the music activity in Western North Carolina, it is of interest here because it remains a cornerstone of the region's cultural identity. In 2003, this vibrant music heritage spurred the launch of the Blue Ridge Music Trails as a tool for heritage tourism development and helped earn the region a Congressional designation as the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area. The mountains and foothills of Western North Carolina are world-renowned for their living traditions of old-time and bluegrass music.
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