On July 7, the final day of the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, activities shifted indoors due to impending inclement weather. Although the storm never came, the cavernous halls of the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building afforded ideal acoustics for a one-time-only round robin of a cappella ballads from the Ozarks region of the United States. Ozarks scholar Brooks Blevins introduced the session by defining ballad, simply, as a “story song.”

Among these excerpted highlights, you’ll hear:

• Chris Brashear’s tornado ballad, “The Greatest Midwestern Fear”
• A riddle song from Willie Carlisle, “I Gave My Love a Cherry”
• Cindy Woolf’s rendition of “Silver Dagger”
• A cowboy ballad from Mark Bilyeu, “Wild Rover”
• A folk murder ballad nonsense song from Marideth Sisco, “Big Yellow Peaches”
• Finally, Chris Brasher leading all the musicis plus the audience in “The Rivers of Texas”