Published in Verve Magazine | By Katy Nelson | Photos by Caroline Voagen Nelson
There’s something electric about Saro Lynch-Thomason’s voice, though her mode of singing goes back at least 400 years. A transfixed audience at a September performance swayed, clapped, stomped, and sang along, as Lynch-Thomason taught them parts. They were learning “knee to knee,” an expression Lynch-Thomason picked up from renowned Madison County ballad singer Sheila Kay Adams.
“There’s a lot of patience and reverence that is learned through the oral tradition that I think should be revived,” Lynch-Thomason says. In her performances and through Asheville Community Sing, a bimonthly meeting she founded in the summer of 2010, she’s on her way.
But reviving the oral tradition isn’t the only mountain she’s climbing.
To read more, click here for the PDF.