FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 10, 2009
Contact: Danielle Henry 716-432-9455
Still Moving Mountains CD Celebrates Coalfield
Resistance to Mountaintop Removal
Aurora Lights’ second compilation CD complements interactive online map to organize, educate for a new Appalachia
The non-profit organization Aurora Lights will release its long-awaited compilation CD, Still Moving Mountains: The Journey Home, with its multimedia website, JourneyUpCoalRiver.org, at the Mountain Aid concert Saturday, June 20. This unique combination of music, visuals, and community involvement unleashes the passion and urgency empowering the movement against mountaintop removal at this critical moment.
All proceeds from the album will be used for grants and other educational and charitable purposes consistent with Aurora Lights’ mission to raise awareness of the impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining. The first CD, which was released under Falling Mountain Music, raised more than $6,000 for local grassroots work.
The CD combines interviews with local residents impacted by mountaintop removal with a mixture of local and well-known artists: Kathy Mattea, Del McCoury, Blue Highway, Everett Lilly and the Lilly Mountaineers, Great American Taxi, and Andrew McKnight. Interviews from Mattea and Robert Kennedy, Jr. are also on the CD.
An interview with Ed Wiley, who marched to Washington, D.C., to raise money for a new school, and the song “Shumate Dam” specifically address the dangers the coal industry imposes upon the students at Marsh Fork Elementary.
Vince Herman of Great American Taxi described his contribution as an expressive act of standing in solidarity with local activists like Wiley. “I think music is a great way to tell a story that breaks people’s hearts and stirs them to action,” Herman explained.
“My family has a history in underground mining, and I have a deep love of West Virginia from the years I spent playing and studying there. The least I could do is write a song. The least we can do as a country is to stop mountaintop removal in its tracks right now before more of this great country is lost forever,” Herman added.
The courage of coalfield residents like Wiley first drew musician and activist Jen Osha to the struggle against mountaintop removal nine years ago and inspired the first CD. Now a Ph.D. candidate in geography at West Virginia University, Osha is using her research to combine music, local interviews, and information on the CD with multimedia and additional resources on the accompanying website. The result is an organizing tool created by and for the local people.
“The first CD was birthed with the idea that music could help inspire people to stand together through the hard times. What surprised me was how often the music and interviews were used in presentations and for outreach, ” Osha says. “I realized that Still Moving Mountains had to go further to provide people with a way to move from inspiration to education to action. The website is that jumping off point.”
The website adds to community efforts by mapping the Coal River Valley through the eyes of the community itself. On the website, listeners can use the map to pinpoint the setting of a song or issue, and find photographs, videos, interviews and stories to deepen their understanding of the issue, and even get involved themselves. The website was developed with financial support from the West Virginia Humanities Council.
“The multimedia website also serves as a classroom educational tool, providing lesson plans layered in six themes,” says the website’s designer and copy-editor, Charles Suggs. “Professors from both within West Virginia and out of state have already started developing unique curricula based upon the CD and website.”
Still Moving Mountains and the companion website, Journey Up Coal River, will be released at the Mountain Aid concert on June 20th. Jen Osha, CD producer and founder of Aurora Lights, will perform with Vince Farsetta, two-time National Old Time Banjo Champion. They are followed by the Ben Gilmer band, whose most recent album was reviewed as being “tapped into the soul of Appalachia.”
Aurora Lights will hold a release concert featuring musicians and residents from the CD on August 23, on the Capital Grounds in Charleston. Please check www.auroralights.org for more information.
Leave a Reply