TVG/CRC Video Heritage Project

The project is a joint effort by the Yancey County Cultural resource Commission and the Traditional Voices Group to record for posterity the stories and times of the people of the Toe River valley area of the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains.

The groups pooled efforts to obtain grants to purchase the cameras and video editing equipment for the project which is being housed at the Yancey County Mountain Heritage Center and will work in conjunction with the Riddle Recording Studio.

The TVG/CRC has sponsored a training program for volunteers to operate the equipment with Mayland Community College. These volunteers are in the process of doing the interviews, which are then being collated and archived for a more extensive project which will be presented in a serialized chaptered format.

The mission of the TVG is to collect, document and preserve the stories, art and music of the Toe River valley area. With that in mind, the proposed book with its accompanying DVD will cull from the collection of interviews administered by the TVG that will help to tell the story specifically for use in the present book and DVD project. This enterprise will be very different from the current heritage books that are already on the market. It will feature fictional characters that interact with non-fictional ones in one continuous story-plotline vs. a collection of little stories.

Within the book there will be narrative illustrations that will augment the storyline. Please note this will not be a children’s storybook. And the DVD, which will accompany the book, will follow the story line and utilize actual video footage of interviews along with cutaways that will enhance the stories being told. And intergraded into this mélange will be a voiceover of a young boy, the main character of the book, who will narrate and weave the stories together for the audience.

This will be the first in a collection of books with their companion DVD each dealing with a single theme to exemplify a characteristic that defines the ways of the mountains. This first installment will focus on the importance of music and what its bond is to the people. Since this topic in itself is too vast it will only be possible to include what is fundamental to progress the storyline.

The storyline follows a young boy of 11-12, already struggling with the transition from being a boy with only the cares of a child to an emerging teen burdened with everything and nothing. Having lost his father to the war, the boy and his mother return to the place where his father grew up to live with his grandfather. Feeling lost and resentful over the death of his father and having to move to the mountains away from the life he knew, the boy goes through a period of adjustment and challenges he is not geared up for. Deciding that the best way to help his grandson’s healing and growth is show him how his father grew up to be the hero the boy so reveres. And it is through the boy’s eyes, we the audience encounter life in the mountains.

The idea of this storyline is to appeal to a broader base audience that will include a younger generation. And I believe this younger group is an important key factor in keeping the heritage alive. With an eye to getting a younger generation interested in their own heritage, where ever they may holler from, while they still have the chance to talk to living "libraries" can possibly alter their perspective and enhance their lives in many ways.

Elizabeth W Gibson