ART ROSENBAUM

Art Rosenbaum of Athens, Georgia, has been collecting, studying, and performing traditional American music for over 35 years. He sings and plays 5-string banjo, fiddle, guitar, harmonica, and mouth bow. His repertoire, much of it learned first-hand in the course of his fieldwork, ranges from Appalachian banjo tunes and ballads through Southern and Midwestern fiddle tunes to blues and spirituals. Rosenbaum began seeking out traditional performers while in his teens, rediscovering and recording the great blues guitarist Scrapper Blackwell and fiddler John W. Summers, both in his home state of Indiana. He produced LPs of Indiana blues and folk music, the first of the over 14 documentary recordings he has recorded and produced over the years. While living in New York City, he was part of the folk revival of the '50s and '60s, performing in as well as organizing concerts of traditional music with the Friends of Old Time Music. An authority on traditional banjo styles, Rosenbaum wrote two instructional books on the banjo, the influential Old-Time Mountain Banjo (Oak Publications, 1968) and The Art of the Mountain Banjo (Kicking Mule, 1975). He was a teacher/performer at all three semi-annual sessions of the Tennessee Banjo Institute. He is also the author of Folk Visions and Voices: Traditional Music and Song in North Georgia (University of Georgia Press, 1983) which also features his drawings and paintings and Margo Newmark Rosenbaum's photographs. Art and Margo Rosenbaum have collaborated on a second book, Shout Because You're Free; The Ring Shout and Its Survival in a Georgia Coastal Community, released by the University of Georgia Press in 1998. Art Rosenbaum is a regular recording and book reviewer for The Old Time Herald and he and his wife were featured in an article in that magazine in 1995. Art was director of the University of Georgia Festival of North Georgia Traditional Music and Dance at the 1996 Olympic Games.