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.

This exhibit will display at the Galena History Museum between March 18 – April 28, 2007. For more information or a calendar of events surrounding the exhibit, please contact Nancy Breed at 815.777.9129 or visit the Galena History Museum’s website.

Museum Hours:

Daily: 9:00a – 4:30p

Museum Admission:

Adults: $4.50

10-18: $3.50

Under 10: Free

Members: Free