Dolly Parton's America

Jad Abumrad sits down with host Ana González to talk about her new podcast, Our Common Nature, a musical journey with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. As the conversation reveals, Jad actually helped connect Ana with Yo-Yo Ma!

When the world stopped in 2020, Yo-Yo Ma started thinking about how music can reconnect people to the natural world. In this limited podcast series, Yo-Yo goes around the country to places where people have deep connections to the earth.  Host Ana González joins him to uncover stories of how culture binds us to nature, from Maine to Appalachia and Hawaii. The result is a seven-episode series that fuses music, personal narratives, and local histories from across the United States.  

Subscribe here to listen to more episodes from Our Common Nature series.

In a world that’s on fire, what do we do with art? Like, what can music actually do? 

Today, Jad Abumrad is back with his first major project since Dolly Parton’s America. 

Fela Kuti: Fear No Man is a twelve episode exploration of the life, work, and legacy of the Nigerian singer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, one of  the most important musical artist of the 20th century. 

Back in the 1960s and 70s, Fela invented a new style of music that was part jazz, part funk, part African polyrhythms and instrumentation. And it had resistance baked into its core. 

Today, Fela has been forgotten by many. Almost erased. 

Fela Kuti: Fear No Man excavates his life’s work and finds it says as much about today, this moment, as it does about the past. 

Find Fela Kuti: Fear No Man on Audible and wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Hi, Dolly Parton's America fans!

We're sharing a new trailer for our new 6-part series The Vanishing of Harry Pace -from the creators of Dolly Parton's America, Jad Abumrad and Shima Oliaee - now premiering at Radiolab.

It was Motown before Motown, FUBU before FUBU: Black Swan Records. The label founded 100 years ago by Harry Pace. Pace launched the career of Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, inadvertently invented the term rock n roll, played an important role in W.C. Handy becoming "Father of the Blues," inspired Ebony and Jet magazines, and helped desegregate the South Side of Chicago in an epic Supreme Court battle. Then, he disappeared. The Vanishing of Harry Pace is a series about the phenomenal but forgotten man who changed America. It's a story about betrayal, family, hidden identities, and a time like no other.

To listen to the the new series, search "The Vanishing of Harry Pace" and "Radiolab," wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, Dolly Parton's America fans!

We're sharing a new trailer for our new 6-part series The Vanishing of Harry Pace - from the creators of Dolly Parton's America, Jad Abumrad and Shima Oliaee - now premiering at Radiolab.

It was Motown before Motown, FUBU before FUBU: Black Swan Records. The label founded 100 years ago by Harry Pace. Pace launched the career of Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, inadvertently invented the term rock n roll, played an important role in W.C. Handy becoming "Father of the Blues," inspired Ebony and Jet magazines, and helped desegregate the South Side of Chicago in an epic Supreme Court battle. Then, he disappeared.  The Vanishing of Harry Pace is a series about the phenomenal but forgotten man who changed America. It's a story about betrayal, family, hidden identities, and a time like no other.

To listen to the the new series, click here or search "Radiolab" and "The Vanishing of Harry Pace," wherever you get your podcasts.

As Dolly will tell you, so much of who she is - her creativity, her music, her stance on life - emanates from her faith, but what exactly is that faith? The answer is deeply surprising. In this episode, Dolly tells a story of finding God in an abandoned church filled with X-rated graffiti.  And she speaks of her plans for how she'll be remembered after she’s gone—how her voice will live on for the next 50, 100, 200 years.

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In this second bonus music episode, we play two live songs we recorded, sung by bluegrass musicians Nora Brown and Amythyst Kiah. 

You can find Nora on facebook @norabrownbanjo, instagram @little.nb, and her music at jalopyrecords.org and on Spotify.

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This episode delves into the controversy surrounding Dolly Parton’s Stampede (formerly known as “Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede”)—a dinner theater that presents the Civil War as a friendly competition between neighbors. In the wake of the Charlottesville Riots in 2017, the Dixie Stampede was called out by the press, and then became embroiled in the larger national conversation about Civil War monuments and the white-washing of history. Dolly’s business conglomerate decided to eliminate “Dixie” from the name, which caused further uproar. 

Dolly embodies “a quivering mass of irreconcilable contradictions” in a way very few other American figures do… but has America arrived at a place where such contradictions are no longer defensible or tolerable? 

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At the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, we drop in on a history class called “Dolly Parton’s America.” (We borrowed the name for our series!) Taught by Dr. Lynn Sacco, the class is filled with college students who grew up in rural Appalachia, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college.  Dr Sacco gives the class an assignment: Write an essay that answers the question “What is Dolly Parton’s America?” Lurking just behind that question are thornier ones about Southern shame and identity and hillbillies and football and...well, Dolly.  Is Dolly helping or hurting us? The class splits down the middle.   

Editor’s Note:  We made two corrections to this podcast, originally released on December 3.  In referring to the location of the Battle of Blair Mountain, we changed “Southwestern Virginia” to “West Virginia.” And on the origin of the term redneck, we inserted narration that makes clear that the etymology of the term goes back farther than the Battle of Blair Mountain.  

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Music performed by: 

Justin Hiltner (@hiltnerj, http://justinhiltner.com) Esther Konkara (@esther_konkara) Steph Jenkins (@slhjenkins, http://www.stephaniejenkins.info) Stephanie Coleman (@stephiecoleman) Courtney Hartman (@courthartman, https://www.courtneyhartman.com) Shelley Washington (@shelleyplaysaxy, http://shelleywashington.com) Bora Yoon (@borabot, http://borayoon.com) Caroline Shaw (@caroshawmusic, https://carolineshaw.com)

Recordings from National Sawdust were part of the NationalSawdust+ series: Elena Park is the curator of NationalSawdust+ Special thanks to recording engineer Garth MacAleavey, Jeff Tang, Charles Hagaman, and everyone at National Sawdust.  Thanks also to Alex Overington and Jeremy Bloom for mix engineering.

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One of Dolly’s most iconic and successful songs is “Jolene,” a song that, at first listen, is about a romantic rival trying to steal her man: a prime example of the classic “cheating song.”  But some see it as flipping a popular country music trope on its head. This idea takes shape when Nadine Hubbs, a professor at the University of Michigan, writes a fourth verse to “Jolene," which makes us reimagine Dolly's songs in entirely new ways. 

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