The Tree Above and the Roots Below: Traditional Singing, Identity, and Heritage Narratives in North Carolina’s Beech Mountain Community
My dissertation research examines singing traditions of the past and present as spaces for crafting narratives about heritage and identity in the Beech Mountain Community of North Carolina. I rely on an original folkloristic method I term the ethnography of singing, which examines vocal style and technique and understands the singing voice as enculturated to explore potential influences behind individual and congregational performances.
Artist Outreach Coordinator for the Carolina Music Makers Fund, Music Maker Foundation
This scene from a CMMF-funded performance in Marshall, NC highlights the spirit of resilience among musicians in Helene-ravaged communities. Photo by Olivia Phillips, June 2025.
Between November 2024 and June 2025, Olivia was contracted in a grant-funded position as Artist Outreach Coordinator for the Music Maker Foundation, where she organized the distribution of grant awards to musicians in Western North Carolina and beyond who were financially impacted by Hurricane Helene. Performance grants funded events ranging from formal concerts to gatherings of friends in the spirit of inspiring musical activity, while emergency grants addressed needs for those not in a position to perform. Serving as a cultural ambassador connecting Appalachian people and this Piedmont-based organization, Olivia interviewed dozens of impacted artists about their experiences of the storm and its aftermath to match them with opportunities from Music Maker. The program awarded more than 70 grants valued at $65,000 to musicians in need.
Follow the link below to learn more about the project.
https://www.musicmaker.org/stories/meet-olivia-phillips-our-new-artist-outreach-coordinator/
Southern Studies Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC—Chapel Hill
As a Southern Studies Doctoral Dissertation Fellow at the Wilson Special Collections Library in July 2024, I researched references to ethnicity and “old-world” ancestry in field documentation from North Carolina’s Beech Mountain Community to better understand the roots of scholars’ associations between local ballad traditions, Beech Mountain families, and English, Scottish, Scots-Irish, and German ancestries.
This archival research was followed by fieldwork with musical Beech Mountain families, where I interviewed community members to learn about how they identify their own ancestries.
Folklife Intern, North Carolina Arts Council, Summer 2023
I served as the North Carolina Arts Council’s 2023 Folklife Intern, aiding with the North Carolina Heritage Awards ceremony, the development of a community scholars workshop, and compiling a directory of folklife-related archives in North Carolina.
Everyday Arts in Later Life Project with Traditional Arts Indiana
An old-time jam session in Morgan County, Indiana, July 2022. Photo by Olivia Phillips.
In Summer 2022 and parts of 2023 and 2024, I served as a fieldworker, staff member, and writer for Traditional Arts Indiana’s Everyday Arts in Later Life initiative. Our team worked with elder folk artists in the state’s central region to learn about how Indiana elders stay healthy, engaged, and connected to their communities through traditional expressive practices. My field researched emphasized musicians.
Click here to read the resulting Everyday Arts in Later Life guide.