Elizabeth LaPrelle remembers the first time she heard Appalachian ballad music. She said was sitting at a music camp on the first night and a woman came out and belted out the most beautiful song she had ever heard.
That was the day she said she decided to start her career in Appalachian ballad singing.
“She started to sing this song, ‘Black is the Colour,’ and I had never heard anyone do songs in that style in person before,” LaPrelle said. “To be in the same room as she reared back and closed her eyes (and as) this very loud, strong voice came out telling this beautiful story about lost love, (I) was like, ‘Wow, I really want to do that.’”
LaPrelle performed Wednesday night as part of the Fall Series, put on by MSU’s Center for Poetry. sang ballads for the event, while Anita Skeen, the director of the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities Center for Poetry, performed some of Skeen’s poetry.
LaPrelle said Appalachian ballads are similar to traditional poetry, except they are sung instead of spoken.
“They’re story songs that came to mountains with especially Scots-Irish settlers,” LaPrelle said. “Songs themselves come from the British Isles, and they’re hundreds of years old in many cases.”
Many of the songs, according to LaPrelle, are about love.
“They’ll talk about crimes of passion, (like) soap operas of the day,” LaPrelle said. “A lot are beautiful lyrical songs from the mountains that people in the mountains used to call love songs — whether (they were) about love or not, even if it was some tale about some ship sinking in the deep blue sea.”
Skeen said she was very excited to meet LaPrelle and was very honored she could come to MSU.
“She’s great,” Skeen said. “I was astounded when I found out how young she is because she sounds like one of those old Appalachian singers that there aren’t very many of anymore and who sing in the old ranges with the kinds of rhythms and styles of the traditional ballad singers of 100 years ago. She and her mother have both really been committed to preserving those songs that were passed down through families for 100-200 years.”
Sometimes, LaPrelle said she will use crankies — a scroll in a box that creates images as she cranks it — to help tell the stories she sings about.
“The images (of the crankie) help to tell the story,” LaPrelle said. “It’s not an Appalachian thing. It’s not traditional; it’s just a way for me to help tell the story.”
General management sophomore Kelly Riegler said she will be attending the concert tonight and that she’s very excited to get to hear LaPrelle in person.
“I heard about her through one of the brothers in my fraternity,” Riegler said. “She’s so great. Normally, young people aren’t really into that stuff, but she makes it fun, and I love listening to her.”
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