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MOUNT AIRY – A Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit on American roots music will make the first of six North Carolina stops beginning Saturday in Mount Airy.

"New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music" explores the sounds of many of the country's musical pioneers who helped shape the nation's culture and, sometimes, its politics.

Terri Cobb, a registrar for the Smithsonian, said the exhibit is a walk back in time and a celebration of styles that left their mark on the country's music landscape.

"Sacred music that blended together to become gospel or country music or blues and we go all the way up to the roots revival of the 60s," said Cobb.

And the exhibit explores the origins of those styles

"From different cultures, all that have come into America, African slaves, the European settlers, the Native Americans who were already here and how all of their individual music traditions blended together to form new music traditions," said Cobb.

A partnership with the North Carolina Humanities Council, the exhibit will make five other stops in North Carolina this year, including the Arts Council of Wayne County in Goldsboro and the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City.

"North Carolina has a vast heritage, and from mountains to the sea coast, a quite different heritage and each of the six sites we go to features something a little bit different," said Shelley Crisp, the council's executive director.

The exhibit includes photographs, biographies and musical samples of artists as diverse as B.B. King, Mahalia Jackson and Woody Guthrie.

The museum's executive director said New Harmonies shows the impact of American roots music was felt well beyond the needle of the phonograph.

"These folks really have dramatically impacted the social and political climate, the folk music movement of the 60s, the early gospel hymns,” said Matt Edwards. “All of these things built one on another to create the identity that we see today."
New Harmonies opens Saturday at the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History at 301 N. Main St.

The exhibit runs Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closes April 24.