Kentucky Center for Traditional Music

In addition to studying performance skills, band leadership skills, music business, traditional music history, theory and recording arts in a classroom setting, students have real-world stage experience.

Those enrolled in traditional music band classes and the faculty have represented our cultural heritage at concerts, workshops, lectures/demonstrations, and presentations at theaters, festivals, conventions, school auditoriums and other venues, regionally, nationally and internationally. Students enrolled at the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music have progressed from New York City to as far away as Jamaica, Ireland and China.

This outreach informs students and the general public about Bluegrass, Old Time, Country, Folk and the music of Appalachia, ensures its preservation and continued development, assures appreciation as a proper American art form, and gives students “hands-on” experience working in the professional arena.

The Kentucky Center for Traditional Music maintains the Traditional Music Archives, home to unique, extensive and easily searchable collections of audio recordings, videos, historical documents and photographs of traditional musicians. 

 This repository contains many unique recordings and findings that aren't available even at the US National Archives in Washington or the Academy of Country Music Foundation in Nashville. Materials include unreleased recordings from artists such as Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley (Lonesome Mountain Boys) and Mark O'Connor's extensive pre-Nashville collection of recordings, including his first performances with David Grisman and first rehearsals with Stephane Grappelli, collections from traditional music scholars like John Harrod and Bruce Greene (Kentucky Fiddlers Collection), old-time banjo historian George R. Gibson (Knott County Banjo Collection), and photographs from Molly O'Day and George Lee Hawkins' families.

The digital collection is accessible in the Archival Listening Room and opens to students and the general public for research and listening during regular operating hours or by appointment.