Carolina Music Makers Fund Update, March 2025

In October, we announced the creation of the Carolina Music Makers Fund, an aid fund for musicians affected by Hurricane Helene in the Carolinas and beyond. While the storm’s devastation has since moved out of the headlines, it continues to shape daily life for mountain communities and the artists who keep their traditions alive.

We are pleased to share another update from Olivia Phillips, Artist Outreach Coordinator.

The end of March will mark six months, half a year, since Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina and parts of our neighboring states. The Carolina Music Makers Fund is nearing its halfway point, too. So far, Music Maker has offered around 45 of the approximately 100 grants we plan to extend from the CMMF in support of musicians financially impacted by Hurricane Helene. These include both performance grants, fulfilled by playing a formal or informal gig for an audience of the artist’s choice, and emergency grants, which are offered outright to folks who have been hit especially hard.

We’ve had the opportunity to serve musicians from three states—North Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida—and fourteen counties. Our grantees also represent twenty self-identified genres, with folk, bluegrass, old-time, Appalachian traditional, and country among the most popular. Many of them are working to repair damaged homes and property while others are recovering from weeks’ worth of cancelled gigs, ongoing venue closures, and reduced performance opportunities. 

In interview after interview with impacted musicians, I am continually inspired by the strength of community, mutual aid, and care between family, friends, neighbors, and strangers in the wake of Helene. If I needed any reminders of what a special thing it is to be a Western North Carolinian—and I don’t need them, but I always love them!— that need has been surpassed a dozen fold. 

On the evening of Friday, April 4th, I will travel to Homeplace Beer Company in Burnsville for an evening ballad swap sponsored by the CMMF. 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. Myself a Western North Carolina traditional singer from Beech Mountain and an admirer of the Madison County ballad tradition, I contacted some of these singers early on in my quest to identify traditional musicians experiencing financial fallout from Helene. I learned that since the storm’s devastating hit to their regular venue at the Old Marshall Jail, a cohort of local singers called the Nest of Singing Birds have had to take their monthly ballad swap on the road, traveling beyond the region to raise awareness about their culturally rich singing practice and the place they call home.

Like me, Music Maker co-founders and directors Tim and Denise Duffy were enthused about all that these singers have done to help support this unique tradition and its one-of-a-kind musical community. We asked whether we could help sponsor a swap locally to help reduce travel needs for the Nest of Singing Birds, and we are honored to be part of this upcoming event. I can’t wait to hear ten of Appalachia’s best balladeers, including event organizers Donna Ray Norton, William Ritter, and Sheila Kay Adams, perform together in support of this region’s one-of-a-kind musical heritage and community. We hope this ballad swap will give back to a few of the traditional musicians who have given so much to our state, while reminding singers and audiences alike that there are some things flood waters can’t wash away.

– Olivia Phillips, Artist Outreach Coordinator

Supported by grant funds from Music Maker Foundation’s Carolina Music Makers Fund, Western NC singing collective Nest of Singing Birds will present an evening ballad swap at Homeplace Beer Company in Burnsville, NC on April 4, 2025. Learn more about this event at the link below.