Ballad Swap (supported by Carolina Music Makers Fund)

Supported by grant funds from Music Maker Foundation’s Carolina Music Makers Fund

Western NC singing collective Nest of Singing Birds presents an evening ballad swap at Homeplace Beer Company in Burnsville, NC on April 4, 2025. This event is sponsored by Music Maker Foundation’s Carolina Music Makers Fund.

This ballad singing tradition, rooted in nearby Madison County, is among the country’s oldest non-Indigenous, unbroken oral traditions, dating back at least nine generations.

Singers include:

Sheila Kay Adams

Donna Ray Norton

William Ritter

…and more!

About Nest of Singing Birds

A “nest of singing birds” was the name Cecil Sharp gave to the Sodom Laurel Community of Madison County, NC when he visited the area in 1916 to collect the ancient ballads that had survived there, being gently passed from hand to hand and knee to knee. The county is still known for this rich tradition that goes back at least nine generations.

The moniker has now been adopted by a cooperative of singers in the region that are keeping this art form alive. Centering around Sheila Kay Adams, the matriarch of the traditional music community in Western North Carolina, the group is led by her daughter Melanie Rice and her niece Donna Ray Norton, the 8th generation of their family to keep alive these songs of love and loss and the stories surrounding them. Through activities like Ballad Night at the Old Marshall Jail, and through performances at festivals and performing arts center across the US and the world, these a cappella songs are shared between the singers and also the wider community, offering exposure to a viable living, breathing tradition not yet lost to time and technology.