The New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music exhibit is a cultural history of America’s Musical Landscape. It’s the story of a diverse mix of people interacting with the New World, a world where cultures and customs met, mixed, and mingled to create new sounds. The distinct cultural identities of all these peoples are carried in song – both sacred and secular – and the music that emerges is known by names like blues, country, western, folk, and gospel.

New Harmonies tracks the unique history of many peoples reshaping each other into one incredibly diverse and complex people – Americans. It also promises a fascinating, inspiring, and toe-tapping listen to the American story of cultural exchange with its multi-media components. As a unique traveling exhibition, it is full of surprises about familiar songs, histories of instruments, the roles of religion and technology in shaping new sounds, and the continuity of musical roots from the colonial period to modern day punk and hip-hop.

New Harmonies will display from December 11, 2010 through January 23, 2011.

Library Hours: Mondays – Thursdays from 7:30 AM – 8 PM, Fridays from 7:30 AM – 5 PM, and Saturdays from 9 AM – 1 PM

For more information, please contact the Chillicothe Public Library at 309.274.2719.