Alan Jabbour & Ken Perlman

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Alan Jabbour was playing classical violin at age seven in Florida, but an interest in traditional fiddling emerged while he was a graduate at Duke University. Tunes he collected from West Virginia fiddler Henry Reed defined the repertoire of the Hollow Rock String Band, whose recordings in the early 1970s have influenced countless old-time musicians in the U.S. and the world. His distinguished career in folklore includes day jobs he just couldn't give up: director of the Archive of Folk Song in the Library of Congress, director of the National Endowment for the Arts folk arts program, founding director of the American Folklife Center and teaching at UCLA. A beneficiary of Alan's work in old-time music, Ken Perlman went on to pioneer the "melodic clawhammer" banjo style and has arranged tunes never before played on the instrument. He has spent more than a decade collecting tunes and oral histories on Prince Edward Island, and currently directs banjo camps throughout the year and throughout the U.S.