The 11th annual Cowan Creek Mountain Music School was this past week, bringing together some of this countries finest old time musicians along with students of all levels, for a week of learning and fun.
Grow Appalachia was proud to host the Wednesday night dinner for music school students, Grow Appalachia participants and community neighbors. During the music school folks on Cowan know something good is happening and can hear echoes of mountain music, but aren’t always sure when to visit.
The intent of the GA hosted dinner is to welcome guests and make new friends, not to mention, have a good meal, hear excellent music and end the night with a square dance for all. Dinner was prepared by Grow Appalachia participant, Heather Lind. We served a fine tomato soup, fresh vegetable pasta and garden salad. Donations from the dinner will be donated back to Cowan Creek Mountain School and provide two Grow Appalachia scholarships for the music school. A goal of Grow Appalachia at Cowan is for neighbors to know each other and we just took it one step further when we consider our neighbors from Chicago, Baltimore, New York and further who met and shared dinner and dance with our Grow Appalachia participants. It’s always good to know your neighbors, no matter how far apart you live. Our Grow Appalachia intern, Jamal Edwards also got some fiddling lessons in and is taking a piece of the Mountain tradition back to Duke with him.
Grow Appalachia certainly is helping Cowan Creek grow our community in more ways than one.
More people from Cowan visited the Center during music school this week than ever before.
Well over 100 people were there Friday night for the student recital and it was wonderful to see that most of them were local. I was so pleased when Coleman Day one of our Golden citizens came down and enjoyed some of the music and meeting new people on Wednesday.
He had heard through the grapevine that it wasn’t just for kids. So thanks Valerie and GA.