I am just a southern boy of the old school...raised before the great yankee migrations of the 60's and beyond.
A strange land...amidst all of the angst about past race relations, our food, music, and culture became a melange of African and European as the two societies borrowed from one another.
My cooking is very african influenced as most traditional southern cooking is...and I am a pretty good cook.
Here in the mountains of western North Carolina, the culture is very different....these mountains do not have black folks...the mountain areas were isolated from society and populated by subsistance farmers of Scot-Irish-Cherokee descent. No large cities or major industries to draw black workers after the emancipation...and no pre war plantations.
The Scot-Irish appalachian culture is now being eroded by all of us newcomers, but it still has a strong sway.....especially in our music.
We hang with our musician friends ( I play guitar and sing some myself). And Americana rules...but we have a some fiddle, some banjo, but primarily guitars...we don't sing bluegrass but our songs often have a strong mountain celtic influence...and sometimes southern blues.
I have attached a youtube of a couple of our friends
Rob Tiger and Wyatt Espalin...both song writers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N_ZaO1pjDc
