Atlanta Area Friends of Folk Music
(AAFFM)
Special Event October 20, 2023
Atlanta Area Friends of Folk Music and the Frank Hamilton School present:
Sheila Kay Adams and Susan Pepper
Concert
First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta
Friday, October 20, 7:00 PM
Workshops
Frank Hamilton School
Saturday, October 21, 9:30-10:45 AM
One of the best-known living ballad singers in the United States, as well as a fine old time banjo player, Sheila Kay Adams has recorded prolifically and performed at many dozens of venues and festivals in the United States and Great Britain. As a storyteller Sheila also presents her family’s heritage to a world audience.
Susan Pepper shares old and new songs on dulcimer, guitar, banjo, fiddle and voice. She is featured in the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area’s Traditional Artist Directory and has performed ballads alongside North Carolina ballad keepers at Western Carolina University’s Mountain Heritage Day, the Bascom Lamar Lunsford Festival and the Library of Congress.
These activities are funded in part by a grant from SouthArts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Georgia Council for the Arts.
Fiddler’s Green October 21, 2023
SPARKY AND RHONDA RUCKER
Sparky and Rhonda Rucker
Perennial Fiddler’s Green favorites Sparky and Rhonda Rucker perform throughout the U.S. as well as overseas, singing songs and telling stories from the American folk tradition. They are internationally recognized as leading musicians, authors, and storytellers. They accompany themselves with fingerstyle picking and bottleneck blues guitar, blues harmonica, old-time banjo, piano, spoons, and bones.
Sparky and Rhonda are sure to deliver an uplifting presentation of toe-tapping music spiced with humor, history, and tall tales. They take their audience on an educational and emotional journey that ranges from poignant stories of slavery and war to an amusing rendition of a Brer Rabbit tale or their witty commentaries on current events. Their music includes a variety of old-time blues, Appalachian music, slave songs, Civil War music, spirituals, work songs, ballads, civil rights music, and their own original Compositions.
You will hear soulful blues licks, heart-rending gospel, knee-slapping good rhythms, and bottleneck guitar slide. Over fifty years of performing, Sparky and Rhonda have performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival as well as NPR’s All Things Considered, Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, and Morning Edition. Their recording Treasures & Tears was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award, and their music is also included on the Grammy-nominated anthology Singing Through the Hard Times.
Photo by Pam Zappardino
Welcome! This site lists information about folk music and related activities in the greater Atlanta area and the Southeastern U.S. It contains:
- General and recurring information in an expanded directory format
- Links to other folk resources
- See the EVENTS Tab for Fiddler's Green and other AAFFM- sponsored concerts, workshops, and pickin' parties, as well as other events of interest in and around Atlanta.
In email blasts, you'll find details about current events and information on member-only activities like our famous "get-togethers". If you'd like to host a pick-'n-grin, let us know! See the EVENTS tab for upcoming concerts and pickin' parties.
Contact us at membership@aaffm.org to host a pickin' party, join our organization, find out about an upcoming concert, party or workshop, or to submit listings to the website.
See the 'History' tab for the history of the organization.
AAFFM sponsors a local monthly coffeehouse, Fiddler's Green, that features concerts that included traditional music, singer-songwriters, poetry and storytelling. As of August, 2016, it is held at First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta. AAFFM Membership benefits include the email blasts (our mailing list will always remain private) and discounts on AAFFM sponsored concerts. Annual membership dues are $15 for individuals and $20 for families, $35 sustaining members. E-mail membership@aaffm.org for membership information or click HERE for our Membership Application.
AAFFM Needs YOU
Chris Moser, President
AAFFM
John McCutcheon
Smoke Rise, GA
April 7, 2019
Dear Friends,
I got a call, early on in my years of performing, from Betty Smith, a friend I’d met at the Folk Festival of the Smokies, inviting me to come do a show in Atlanta. A follow up call from Don and Laeta Smith sealed the deal and, sometime in the 1970’s I appeared in Atlanta for the first of many times. My host was a freshly-formed group, The Atlanta Area Friends of Folk Music. What I found was a devoted clutch of folk music lovers who not only presented concerts, but sponsored all sorts of events that encouraged people to play music themselves, to share the love of this music that is the root of all the world’s music. To get involved with the music, with one another, with the world.
Having this lovely relationship with Atlanta played a part in my decision to move here in 2006. And I thank you for that.
Over forty years later, AAFFM is still sponsoring events that are meeting places for Atlantans of all stripes and a watering hole for that wandering herd of performers still plying the boards out there. I get to see some of my far-flung fellow performing pals as a result of these. And I thank you for that.
But groups such as AAFFM do not magically sustain themselves. Communities must commit to survive. And in this age of hyper-tribalism it’s more important than ever to reach out, to stand up, to say, “This is the kind of community, the kind of world, I want to be a part of.” You’ll never see the musicians AAFFM brings into our intimate gatherings at the Fox or on Netflix. No, you have to go out, sit shoulder-to-shoulder with others and have that experience live and in person. You can learn how to play, how to sing, how to harmonize in jam sessions not sponsored by YouTube. And, in the process, help build a community that improves the lives of individuals and the collective community life of Atlanta.
Pete Seeger would have been 100 years old this year. He taught us what we could feel like, what we could do if we risked adding our voice to the others in his audience, if we dared to harmonize with a roomful of strangers. But we had to make the move.
So, my fellow Atlantans, make the move, risk, dare, and join me in continuing to support the Atlanta Area Friends of Folk Music. And for that I thank you, as well.
Take it easy, but take it!
Become an AAFFM Member!
What's Happening?
Fiddler’s Green October 21, 2023
SPARKY AND RHONDA RUCKERSparky and Rhonda Rucker Perennial Fiddler’s Green favorites Sparky and Rhonda Rucker perform throughout the U.S. as well as overseas, singing songs and telling stories from the American folk tradition. They are internationally recognized as...