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Nikky Finney and Reel World String Band: A Benefit Concert for the New Opportunity School for Women

Date:
-
Location:
Recital Hall, Singletary Center for the Arts

Tickets:  Tickets $19.  Students $10.  Tickets at the Singletary Center Ticket Office  (859) 257-4929.  www.uky.edu/SCFA/tickets.php.  Ticket office: 10 a.m – 5 p.m. M-F and 12 p.m. – 5 p.m. Sat.

This concert will be interpreted in American Sign Language for the deaf and hard of hearing.

 Sponsored by:  UK John Jacob Niles Center for American Music, Department of Music

Media sponsor:  WUKY-FM

Nikky Finney and the Reel World String Band collaborate for a concert to benefit the New Opportunity School for Women. Arson destroyed the offices of the School in Berea on December, 11, 2011,   and this concert is to help restore this vital organization’s future and to celebrate their 25th Anniversary.  Writer Nikky Finney appears for a rare local reading as she tours extensively since her 2011 National Book Award for poetry for her fourth book of poetry, Head Off and Split.  Reel World String Band is celebrating their 35th Anniversary of performing and activism. Come celebrate the richness of Appalachian and Affrilachian culture with these two Kentucky treasures.

THE ORGANIZATION:  The New Opportunity School for Women in Berea was founded by Jane Stephenson in 1987. The program grew out of an urgent need for women in Appalachia to become better educated and employed.  Women attend a three-week residential program with the goal of becoming more self-sufficient, more confident, and an inspiration to their families and communities.  For 25 years, more than 600 women across Appalachia have learned they have the strength and courage to finish their education and to build the self-esteem they need to find their potential.  The School has received national recognition on Oprah and in People magazine. www.nosw.org

THE ARTISTS:

Nikky Finney was born in South Carolina and she is an award-winning American poet and activist. She is the Guy Davenport Endowed Professor of English at the University of Kentucky and co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets.  As an undergraduate at Talladega College  (Alabama), nurtured by Hale Woodruff’s Amistad murals, she began to understand the powerful synergy between art and history. Finney has authored four books of poetry: Head Off & Split (2011); The World Is Round (2003); Rice (1995); and On Wings Made of Gauze (1985).   The  breathtaking collection of poems, Head Off & Split, was awarded the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry. The poems in Head Off & Split sustain a sensitive and intense dialogue with emblematic figures and events in African-American life: from Civil Rights matriarch Rosa Parks, to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, from a brazen girl strung out on lightning, to a terrified woman abandoned on a rooftop during Hurricane Katrina. www.nikkyfinney.net

The Reel World String Band from Lexington, Kentucky, just reached their 35th anniversary.  Revered as a Kentucky historical treasure in Kentucky Women:  Two Centuries of Indomitable Spirit and Vision, E. Potter,  the five members, Sue Massek, banjo; Karen Jones, fiddle; Bev Futrell, guitar; Sharon Ruble, bass; and Elise Melrood, piano, continue to kick up the dust in their spirited performances.  The band was presented the KCCJ Humanitarian Award in 2011. As Lily May Ledford exclaimed, “those girls have got fire…”  Their list of accomplishments, forever diverse, includes performances at the Lincoln Center, Philadelphia Folk Festival, a tour with the Osborne Brothers, and a tour through Italy.  They support many progressive causes and yearly play at the Kentucky Sierra Club’s annual meeting.  Their numerous CDs ( www.reelworldstringband.com) include a compilation They’ll Never Keep Us Down:  Women’s Coal Mining Songs, Rounder Records.  Reel World collaborated with Hazel Dickens and Florence Reece (writer of Which Side Are You On) in this insightful look at the problems and issues of the Appalachian coalfields.  Paul Jenkins in his article Getting Wise on Old-Time Music:  the Reel World String Band, The Old-Time Herald, 2003, states that “the diverse talents and interest of its members have helped establish the Reel World String Band as one of the top old-time bands in an area of the country already well stocked in that commodity.”