Residency Artist - Traditional Arts
Residency Artist - Music

Russ Childers

1555 Old St. Rt. 74
Batavia, OH  45103
Phone: (513) 732-2015
Email: RUSSCHILDERS@fuse.net
Website: http://home.fuse.net/russchilders

I am a traditional Appalachian musician, storyteller, and dance caller. My residencies focus on music and its role in the Appalachian community. Moving by story and song through my own family history, I teach cultural history through the vehicle of song, story, and dance. My discussion of the banjo includes its journey from Africa. This complements curriculum standards for American social history and music history. One example shows how the negative stereotyping of the banjo by American whites in minstrelsy led to African Americans putting down the banjo in favor of the guitar and ultimately led to the development of rock and roll. The violin (in Appalachian vernacular “fiddle”) is demonstrated and discussed as the main instrument of the pioneers that settled frontier areas like Ohio. It helped preserve the customs of the British Isles in a new continent. The fiddle becomes a vehicle for a physics lesson in sound and vibration. The Appalachian lap dulcimer is a deceptively simple instrument. It easily models beginning playing technique to novice students as well as basic mechanics of instrument building in residencies that focus on that. Because process is important to children, I am able to use props such as a groundhog skin on a stretcher frame to illustrate how my ancestors manufactured everyday items from the resources around them. Square dancing allows students to explore the spirit of the total Appalachian music experience—calling instruction, dancing, music, and instruments—supplying multiple layers of cultural learning. Dancing underpins and supports math concepts such as patterning and music concepts of time signature and rhythms. Storytelling and song sessions, which enhance the literacy concepts of listening, vocabulary and prediction are appropriate to all age levels. The ideal grade level for the dance experience is 4th and 5th grade. Instrument building is geared for older students, 8th and above.

I work in three musical venues. First, I am the banjo player in a 15-year-old quintet called “Rabbit Hash String Band.” We perform old-time Appalachian string band music in the tri-state area. Second, I play banjo and fiddle with my wife in a 25-year-old musical duet called “Bear Foot.” We typically perform locally but began our musical partnership in a New York City off-Broadway production called “Close Harmonies.” Third, I present solo programming throughout Ohio and Kentucky as a teaching artist. This summer, I went to Liuzhou in China’s Guangxi Province for four weeks where I taught Appalachian culture to Chinese schoolchildren.

I am a self-taught musician making music for more than forty years. I once learned aspects of my eastern Kentucky heritage, singing, and dancing from my parents and grandparents; now I teach others. I continue to study the fiddle playing of Tom Taylor of Northern Kentucky and remember the banjo playing of the late Elmer Bird of West Virginia. My Appalachian music and stories are recycled from an earlier time; in the same fashion, I reclaim them as I demonstrate instrument building from recycled materials. This echoes the lifestyle of my ancestors who often found it necessary to create new uses for old things when materials were not plentiful. I regularly appear at the Cincinnati Appalachian Festival, Tall Stacks Festivals, branches of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County and most of the school systems in the Greater Cincinnati area. I have a deep commitment to the traditional arts as is shown by my affiliations with the Ohio Arts Council as an Artist in Residence, the Advisory Committee of the Cincinnati Urban Appalachian Council, and the Cincinnati Arts Association Adventures in the Arts. I am a master banjo player with apprentices in two states through the auspices of the Ohio Arts Council and Kentucky Arts Council. In May 2000, I was recipient of the Appalachian Heritage Award from the Cincinnati Appalachian Community Development Association. I was recently awarded an ACDA grant to purchase a traditionally made gourd banjo in order to better illustrate to my audiences the pathway of the Appalachian banjo from its African roots to North America.