The Ozarks

The Brockwell Gospel Music School teaches choral and instrumental techniques using shape notes. Teachers Loyanna M. Everett, Beverly A. Meinzer, Natalie Stephens, and Justin Wilson help students of all ages improve ear training, sightreading, conducting, and composition skills. The school’s slogan reads “Teaching the Do, Re, Mi’s since 1947.” Find them also in the Creative Encounters program!

The Creek Rocks, a folk music duo comprised of husband-and-wife Mark Bilyeu and Cindy Woolf, has deep roots in Ozark old-time music and folklore. Woolf was raised in Batesville, Arkansas, along the southern foothills of the Ozarks Mountain region, and Bilyeu hails from Springfield, Missouri, atop the Ozarks Plateau. They have been making music together since 2003.

The Ozark Highballers is a four-piece string band that has brought music to square dances, farmers markets, festivals, workshops, as well as street corners and front porches since 2014. Their music reflects the spirit and drive of the rural Ozark string bands of the 1920s and ’30s. This old-fashioned ensemble features Roy Pilgrim on fiddle, Seth Shumate on harmonica, Clarke Buehling on five-string banjo, and Aviva Pilgrim on guitar.

Sad Daddy, formed in 2010, is comprised of Brian Martin, Joe Sundell, Rebecca Patek, and Melissa Carper. All members sing, lead, and write original tunes, and the combined sound is truly a mix of American roots music. Sounds of early blues, jazz and jug, early country, folk, old-time, bluegrass, and classic soul combine to create an indefinable genre they like to call Sad Daddy.

Sylamore Special is a five-piece bluegrass group featuring Mary Parker on vocals and fiddle, LillyAnne McCool on banjo, Turner “Turnip” Atwell on guitar and vocals, Gordon “Sugarfoot” Parker on mandolin, and Crystal McCool on upright bass. They are best known for bluegrass performance but perform gospel, americana, and a twist on old rock and country.

The Williams Family is a gospel music group based out of the Emmanuel House of Praise. While rooted in traditional gospel music practices, they also borrow sounds from popular music and experiment with electronic instruments. Their band consists of Pastor Leroy Williams, Dewayne Williams, Latoya Williams, and Annie Williams.

David Scrivner, Nathan McAlister, and David Cavins have spent decades bringing old-time Ozarks music to life. With a style heavily reliant on fiddling, the musicians perform for dances and other events throughout southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas. They collectively play fiddle, guitar, mandolin, and banjo, helping bring a repertoire of hundreds of legacy tunes into the present.

As an interdisciplinary artist, musician, educator, and curator of Native art at the Philbrook Museum of Art, Kalyn Fay Barnoski uses their arts to build bridges of understanding and find intersections among people. Drawing on their Cherokee heritage, Kalyn’s weavings, storytelling, music, and contemporary craft focus on community, collaboration, reflection, and empathy. They are joined on stage by Matt Magerkurth, a well-known cellist from Northwest Arkansas.

Pam Setser started out as a singer with her parents’ family band, which she sang in for sixteen years and played in both gospel and secular settings. A singer-songwriter in her own right, she plays a variety of instruments, including autoharp, spoons, guitar, upright bass, and—her favorite—mountain dulcimer. She plays with The Pam Setser Band, Apple & Setser, Leatherwoods, and Ozark Granny Chicks.

Singer-storyteller Marideth Sisco has performed nationwide in venues large and small. Her big break came when singing in the 2010 film Winter’s Bone. Her talent and the songs of the Ozarks helped earn the film four Oscar nominations. A career journalist and born storyteller, she brags about her Ozarks home on her radio journal These Ozark Hills on KSMU.

Entertainer Terry Sanders is an Ozarks native. An initial desire to become a mortician morphed into a life of comedy in college, when he began working at Silver Dollar City, a theme park designed around the 1880s Ozarks. Four decades later, Terry still brings a variety of characters to life at the park and stage shows and events throughout the region.

Bob Zuellig is a stream biologist by day, fiddler and dance caller by night, and husband and father 24/7. Born and raised in Missouri, he has studied Ozarks fiddling as well as various square dance traditions of the region for over a decade. He and his family currently reside in Fort Collins, where they organize music gatherings and dance events.

Big Smith started as a family project in 1996 with two sets of brothers: the Bilyeus and the Williamsons, all of whom are cousins, as is soundman and fifth member Rik. Inspired by the Appalachian gospel and dance music they were raised on, they began as a “hillybilly” quartet and incorporated over time more of the horns, keyboard, and other rock elements that make them the Ozarks staple they are today.

MARK Harmony is a four-piece Marshallese boy band. Members Matthew, Arsi, Raygon, and Kairo grew up in Northwest Arkansas and graduated from Har-Ber High and Springdale High School. Starting in 2018, MARK Harmony’s mission is to raise cultural awareness of the Marshallese people, its shared nuclear legacy, and climate change through music and songwriting with the Marshallese youth in the community.

Formed in Springfield, Missouri, circa 1971, the Ozark Mountain Daredevils are often described as “a ragtag collection of hippies, bohemians, and musicians of no fixed ambition.” Their sound—ranging from electric bluegrass to melancholy country rock—has always been just as idiosyncratic, with chart-toppers like “Jackie Blue” and “If You Wanna Get to Heaven” lining a distinguished career that, at its height, rivaled the likes of the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac while staying true to its Ozarks roots.

Formed in the Smoky Mountains, the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys are a bluegrass group made up of CJ Lewandowski (who grew up in the Missouri Ozarks), Jereme Brown, Jasper Lorentzen, Laura Orshaw, and Josh Rinkel. They take pride in being ambassadors of their genre, bringing their music from rural bluegrass festivals to European rock clubs and even the GRAMMY Red Carpet. The Boys are well on their way to becoming the quintessential bluegrass band of their generation.

Folk musician Willi Carlisle harnesses poetry to tell tales of community in the Ozarks. A product of the punk-to-folk pipeline, he began examining the full spectrum of American musical history after falling for the rich ballads and tunes of the Ozarks. Touching on matters from water rights to queerness and class consciousness, his music paints a picture of a diverse region.

Melissa Carper is a vocalist and upright bassist from Arkansas. She began her music career when she was a kid, playing upright bass and singing in her family’s traveling country band in rural Nebraska. Her music influences include jazz, country, bluegrass, and old-time music from the Ozarks. She plays with Sad Daddy and performs in the Festival’s “An Evening with Ozarks Women” evening concert.

Singer and songwriter Carolina Mendoza has been mentored by generations of traditional folk music performers in her short time. Her nickname, “Voice of the Mountain,” was bestowed on her for her rich, pure tones. Mendoza’s signature sound combines her traditional Mexican roots, a deep influence of country, bluegrass, Nordic folk, and old-time Ozark music.

Pura Coco, a rising star in the music world, brings a fiery passion to her unique blend of alternative R&B with her Latin roots and Arkansas upbringing. Pura Coco’s music is a melting pot of influences that create a sound all her own. Her music conveys a multitude of emotions and further connects with people of different backgrounds.

DJ Raquel is multifaceted. Her music fuses EDM, house, and hip-hop genres, and her infectious beats move people to dance. Raquel has played all over the Northwest Arkansas area, collaborating with fellow Festival participants like Pura Coco and Pink House Alchemy.

Grace Stormont is a nineteen-year-old folk singer-songwriter. A multi-instrumentalist, she plays guitar, clawhammer banjo, mandolin, fiddle, autoharp, and mountain dulcimer. An avid performer, Grace released her debut album, On Your Own, in 2021. She continues working on her music.

When Nico Albert Williams’s family relocated to northeastern Oklahoma, she began a journey of reconnection to her Cherokee roots through studying and preparing traditional foods. She is now the founder and executive director of Burning Cedar Sovereign Wellness, a community-driven nonprofit that focuses on offering cultural resources and re-establishing ancestral foodways among Tulsa’s Indigenous community.

Susan Belsinger is an herbalist, author, and educator; her work focuses on herbs, gardening, creating recipes using seasonal foods and wild edibles, and living an herbal life. Her new book, The Perfect Bite: Focus on Flavor contains over 200 tried-and-true favorites featuring local and seasonal herbs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans, and grains. She currently lives in Maryland, but Arkansas is her second home.

Josh Jansen grew up in Pocahontas, Arkansas, where he started learning the tradition of butchering and meat cutting from his dad at the age of seven. His father, Judge David Jansen, worked as a butcher for over thirty years and served as the county judge in Randolph County for many years. Josh is the owner and operator of his own business, Jansen Plumbing.

Bo Brown is founder and director of First Earth Wilderness School and author of the Falcon Guides books Foraging the Ozarks and Foraging Central Grasslands. He has worked all over the United States and Belize as a songbird biologist and has led courses on foraging, stone-age wilderness survival, and nature education for over three decades. He is also a professional musician.

Rob Connoley is a chef, master forager, and three-time James Beard Award semi-finalist. He is also the owner and chef of Bulrush, a contemporary, zero-waste restaurant in St. Louis, focused on serving Ozark-themed cuisine made with hyper-local, hyper-seasonal ingredients. Part of its mission is to use food to educate guests about Indigenous, enslaved, and Euro-Appalachian people who have historically shaped Ozark cuisine.

Sasha Daucus is an herbal teacher and director of the Golden Light Center in Missouri, focusing on the natural beauty and ecological well-being of the Ozarks. Her career as a midwife and clinical herbalist began when she moved to the region in the 1980s. She aims to teach more thoughtfulness between the land and people who live on it.

Bradley Dry is a Cherokee chef who grew up cooking Appalachian food—a cuisine deeply influenced by Cherokee foodways—with his grandma. He has spent more than a decade working in popular Tulsa restaurants. During the pandemic, he transitioned to working for himself and traveling to food festivals and special events. Today, he is driven to expand people’s perspectives on Indigenous food.

Pat Johnson is the founder and director of the Eddie Mae Herron Center and Museum in Pocahontas, Arkansas. The museum is dedicated to preserving and honoring the history and culture of African Americans in Randolph County. She worked for over thirty years at the Arkansas Department of Health and then later for the Arkansas Department of Human Services. At the Festival, she is joined and supported by Eddie Mae Herron Center board member Mary Clark.

Xue Lee-Vang has resided in Gentry for the last nineteen years. Although she is presenting farming and cooking traditions at the Festival, her professional career includes more than ten years in higher education, and she is a certified career and life transformation coach. She actively seeks out opportunities to share Hmong culture and advocates for holding space and representation to amplify the voices of marginalized and underserved communities.

Shoua Vue immigrated to the United States with her husband, Youa Vang Lee, and their eldest daughter, Xue Lee, in 1980. Shoua and Youa moved to Gentry from Wisconsin in 2004 to pursue their poultry business. Farming and gardening have always been a traditional way of life for her since the age of ten. She is also a self-taught herbalist. 

A fourth-generation Ozarks farmer, Maile Auterson is the founding executive director of Springfield Community Gardens, which she has expanded into eighteen gardens and a hospital farm. Her work uplifts the needs and contributions of farmers through relationships with institutions and community.

Mia Jones is an activist, community builder, and owner of Soul Fresh Farms. She is the CEO, president, and founder of the social justice organization United Community Change, which she runs along with her mother, Sharon Jones. They hope to increase access to healthier food for marginalized communities by demonstrating the benefits of home and community gardening and pursuing farming careers.

María Cristina Moroles (aka Águila) is the matriarch of Arco Iris Earth Care Project, a five-hundred-acre wilderness preserve in the Ozark Mountains. Moroles—also known by the ceremonial name Águila—incorporates her Indigenous and Mexican American heritage in her work as a curandera, master massage therapist, and shaman.

Artemis Diaz is a Puerto Rican Taíno woman from New York City with a background as an art and ceramics teacher and union organizer. She now lives at Santuario Arco Iris in the Ozark Mountains and is an apprentice to Sra. Moroles. Artemis is passionate about spiritual transformation through nurturing a sacred connection with our Mother Earth.

Military veteran Rafael Rios was born in the San Joaquin Valley in California and grew up mostly in Michoacán, Mexico. He is the founder and executive chef of Yeyo’s Mexican Street Food, which includes a flagship restaurant, Yeyo’s Mezcaleria y Taqueria, and two food trucks in Northwest Arkansas. Additionally, he and his family founded the Rios Family Farm in Little Flock, Arkansas.

Phyllis Speer grew up fishing and hunting in the Arkansas wilderness. Today, she is a wild game hunter and cook, as well as an expert in open-air cast-iron cooking. She is well known for co-producing and appearing on AETN’s Arkansas Outdoors and its spin-off show Cooking on the Wild Side. She was inducted into the Arkansas Outdoor Hall of Fame in 2007.

Raised in Texas, Rachael West has lived in the Ozarks for over a decade, and she has devoted her career to educating others about identification and use of the edible and medicinal plants that grow wild throughout the region. She is the owner, lead instructor, and founder of Eating the Ozarks, which offers foraging classes, wild infused meals, and special event catering in southwest Missouri.

Tina Marie Wilcox is the head gardener and herbalist at the Ozark Folk Center State Park’s Heritage Herb Garden. She teaches, coordinates educational events, and cultivates native and exotic herbs. She is president of the International Herb Association and co-author of The Creative Herbal Home, a reference for using herbs and essential oils in everyday life.

Long-time quilters Martha Alsup and JoEtta Gleason are active members of the Arcola Quilting Club, established in the 1930s and one of many quilting clubs throughout the Ozarks. Their quilts display their precise hand-stitching skills and their commitment to traditional, geometric, and older designs. Ask them about their quilts and the club!

Louise Sheridan has been quilting for forty years. A member of the Doniphan Quilt Circle that gathers at the Current River Fabrics & Quilting shop, she creates traditional and mixed-media quilts, incorporating fabric art and painting. Lately, she has been inspired by the beautiful Ozarks environment, working on quilts connected to nature.

Danielle Culp is a Cherokee Nation citizen who carries on her family’s basket-weaving tradition. She also practices fingerweaving and loom weaving and enjoys teaching these art forms to others. Her love of promoting her culture is reflected in other works like pottery, traditional storytelling, and Cherokee song and composition. Try your hand at basket patterns and fingerweaving!

Forester Aaron Holsapple is known as “the tree guy,” fitting for his love of the “tree-to-basket” tradition. He credits three Missouri Ozark families for guiding his craft, starting with the Uhlmanns of Drury and later the Dudenhoeffers of Linn, who spent decades learning from the Currys of Salem. In 2018, Aaron refined his skills with the Dudenhoeffers through the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program.

Second-generation basket maker Billy Owens follows in the footsteps of his father Dale, founder of Owens Oak Baskets and a long-time demonstrator at Branson destinations like Silver Dollar City. As his father taught him to, Billy personally selects, cuts, and hand-splits his materials. Today, Billy is a popular workshop instructor at basket guilds and folk centers around the country.

Seth Gebel got hooked on mountain biking in high school and, ever since, has been finding creative ways to make the experience exciting and challenging with Backyard Trail Builds. His builds incorporate elements of the natural environment, turning woods into thrilling trails for the biking community. See for yourself on Seth’s YouTube channel.

Dave Schulz helped establish a new chapter of the all-volunteer organization Gateway Off Road Cycles. GORC Gravity guides Ozark area community leaders in revitalizing their towns by developing bicycle-focused public parks and sustainable trail systems, preserving natural environments while drawing tourism from around the world.

As a child, Anthony Martin played near his grandfather’s workshop, where the elder Martin turned out forged gigs, used for night fishing on Ozark riverways. Anthony mimicked his grandfather’s actions then, but the elder died before he could teach his grandson. Anthony now eagerly apprentices with a master gigmaker, who did learn from the elder Martin in the 1990s.

Nick Nichols first found an interest in the distilling world through coppersmithing and a natural fondness for whiskey. As a hobby distiller, he is interested in both the tradition and history of distilling as well as its growth and continuation in the modern Ozarks.

Matthew Sloan is a hobby distiller, focusing on keeping the tradition alive with an appreciation for the time when moonshine wasn’t just a way of life but a necessity for many. Here, you can watch the process of making moonshine the way it has been handed down for generations in the Ozarks.

Cory Perry explores the relationship between textiles and the body. Some textiles, like quilts, tell stories of the hands that sew them. Others—like curtains—conceal, shelter, or even expose communities, depending on the point of view. Their work asks how textile arrangements and textures create safe spaces for Black queer people.

Jacob Archer is a nature-loving video game enthusiast with a profound appreciation for art and animals. An Arkansas native, he finds joy in exploring the Ozark landscape and recreational floating down the Buffalo and White rivers. He aspires to become a compassionate grade-school guidance counselor and, until then, dedicates his spare time to volunteering at local charitable organizations, fostering a sense of community.

Aviva Pilgrim learned her craft from Todd Cambio of Fraulini Guitar Company in Madison, Wisconsin, and started making her own guitars in 2013 under the name Preservation Guitar Company. Inspired by rural American folk arts of the early twentieth century, she builds mostly small-bodied guitars using American hardwoods. An accomplished musician, hear Aviva as she makes her guitars sing.

Alan “Toxic” Rodriguez is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist, known for his vibrant public murals. These masterpieces can be found throughout Northwest Arkansas and often depict images from his Mexican heritage. Alan’s partner Kayleigh “ktana” Tolman is an amateur photographer, collagist, and digital media guru, and credits Alan for bringing her into the world of mural painting and graffiti arts. Check out their work at the Mural Trailer.

Olivia Trimble is a second-generation sign painter and muralist. Her work meets at the intersection of art and urban justice. She has worked with a variety of local organizations, including Community Clinic, Second Helping NWA, Fayetteville Arts Council, and the Arkansas chapter of the National Organization for Women.

Jennifer Northorp is a working artist and art education student, currently focusing on ceramics, oil painting, and finding blank walls for murals. With a bachelor’s degree in social work, she aspires to combine her love for people and making art through teaching. When she’s not studying, you can find her painting or sculpting in her studio with her tabby cat/assistant, Kiwi.

Formed especially for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Rijerakrök (“navigators” in the Marshallese language) presents traditional dances from the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific. Their city of Springdale is home to the largest population of Marshallese in the United States.

Master carver Liton Beasa has built more than fifty outrigger canoes, most of them race winners. His skills and knowledge come from having built canoes (kōrkōr) with his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father in the Marshall Islands, starting at age eight. This canoe was built by Liton and team in 2021 at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Clara Beasa, weaver
Tie Matthew, weaver
Lilen Gushi, weaver assistant, dancer
Miriam Pedro, weaver assistant, dancer
Shemi Sham, weaver assistant, dancer

Liton Beasa, canoe builder
Troy Boaz, canoe builder assistant, dancer
Tirja Bokna, canoe builder assistant, dancer
Witner John, canoe builder assistant, dancer
Wilfred Lawin, canoe builder assistant
Abraham Moore, canoe builder assistant, dancer

Litha Ralpho, coordinator
Lewisa Lawin, presenter, dancer

Deborah Bailey is the folk arts specialist at the Missouri Folk Arts Program, centered at the University of Missouri. She coordinates the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, working with artists in every stage of the project. She also provides technical assistance for artists, festivals, and organizations. A Chicago native, she has called Missouri home for decades.

Barry Bergey grew up in a small Missouri town on the north edge of the Ozarks. He was a co-founder of the Missouri Friends of the Folk Arts, an organization dedicated to the documentation and presentation of traditional artists of the region. MFFA sponsored the Frontier Folk Festival in St. Louis and released an album, I’m Old But I’m Awfully Tough: Traditional Music of the Ozark Region. In 1985, he moved to Washington, D.C., to work at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he retired as irector of the Folk and Traditional Arts Program in 2014.

Brooks Blevins is a historian and the Noel Boyd Professor of Ozarks Studies at Missouri State University. A native of the rural Ozarks of Arkansas, he is the author or editor of a dozen books, including the recent History of the Ozarks trilogy published by the University of Illinois Press.

Chris Brashear is a professional musician, producer, teacher, and recording artist. He plays fiddle, mandolin and guitar, and he is also a songwriter. He has taught at numerous camps and festival workshops across the country

Curtis Copeland is a sixth-generation Ozarker and the current chair of the Society of Ozarkian Hillcrofters, an organization dedicated to the preservation of Ozarks history, culture, and ecology. Curtis is an author of books and articles on the topic of the Ozarks.

Simone Cottrell, the owner of Rachhana Creative Consulting, is a multi-hyphenated creative whose medium is justice. Her most recent creative work has included: She is proud to continue the Khmer tradition that artists are divine vessels for communication between the divine and community, and she wholeheartedly believes that every person can be the advocate of their own story.

Lisa Higgins directs Missouri Folk Arts, a statewide partner of the Missouri Arts Council anchored at the University of Missouri’s Museum of Art & Archaeology. She works at grant writing and reporting; developing and supporting projects; fundraising; assisting Folk Arts grantees, engaging artists, and mentoring student workers. Higgins spent the first half of her life in the “Mid-South” and has called Columbia, Missouri, home for thirty years.

Marjorie Hunt is an education specialist and curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Since joining the Center in 1982, she has curated numerous Folklife Festival programs and produced and directed several documentary films. She holds an MA and PhD in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania.

Emily Lawson is a culinarian and the founder of Pink House Alchemy—a “flavor house” which is cleverly abbreviated to “pH.” She oversees the development and production of simple syrups, bitters, and shrubs made from roots, barks, fruits, herbs, and botanicals. She is a fifth- generation Ozarks native and works closely with her regional food system to improve accessibility to farm foods.

Kaitlyn McConnell is the founder of Ozarks Alive, an online project dedicated to the documentation of local history and culture.

Rachel Reynolds is a folklorist, fiddler, community-based organizer, and pie champion living in the magical forest in Stone County, Arkansas. She is the head project steward at Meadowcreek, a 1,600-acre nature preserve, where she leads programmatic efforts with an emphasis on creating and supporting the sustainable and equitable development of rural futures through the lenses of art and culture.

Kholoud Sawaf is an award-winning theater director and filmmaker. She was born and raised in Damascus, Syria, and has worked and trained in theater and film in Syria, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. Her work is focused on investing cultural depth, authenticity, and representation.

Virginia Siegel, professor of practice, is the state folklorist of Arkansas. She coordinates Arkansas Folk and Traditional Arts, Arkansas’ state folk arts program housed in the University of Arkansas Libraries. She also serves as the oral historian for University Libraries Special Collections Division. Previously, she worked as the folklife specialist for the Kentucky Folklife Program. She holds an MA in folk studies from Western Kentucky University.

Lauren Adams Willette is the folk survey coordinator and oral history assistant for Arkansas Folk and Traditional Arts, the state folk arts program housed in Special Collections at the University of Arkansas. She is a heritage studies PhD candidate at Arkansas State University, where she has focused her studies on the Ozarks, Arkansas, local foodways, public folklore, and popular culture.