Energy & Community

This year, for the second consecutive Festival, the Department of Energy is sponsoring a presentation of an energy-related theme in American folklife. Festival planners are highlighting two kinds of energy production that lately have been much in the news--coal and oil. Consistent with the Festival's traditional concern for occupational folklife, this year's energy component presents lore, lifestyles, and music from communities and families of coal and oil workers. The Department of Energy and the Festival of American Folklife invite you to experience some community folkways of the people who extract these important energy resources from the earth.

Coal miners and their kin from West Virginia share with you their music and their tales about working in the mines and living in "mine patch" communities. Underground miners demonstrate some skills needed in their work and some kinds of equipment that they handle to extract bituminous coal from the mountains. They will help you try on miners' safety equipment and demonstrate the difference between "high coal" and "low coal."