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Music of Kentucky is heavily centered around Appalachian folk music; that genre of music—and its associated descendents, especially bluegrass music in the 1940s—has largely developed in Eastern Kentucky. Bill Monroe, the most influential inventor of bluegrass, was from Kentucky.
Musicians from Kentucky include Steven Curtis Chapman, J.D. Crowe, Lionel Hampton, Jackie Dee Shannon, Billy Ray Cyrus, Dwight Yoakam, Ricky Skaggs, The Judds, John Conlee, Rosemary Clooney, and Slint.
Singers gather annually at Benton, Kentucky on the fourth Sunday in May to sing from a tunebook called The Southern Harmony. This event, organized in 1884 and called The Big Singing or Big Singing Day, is considered by many to be the oldest indigenous musical tradition in the United States. It was organized by James Roberts Lemon, a newspaper owner and publisher in western Kentucky.
History
In the 1830s, a Great Awakening of fervent Christianity began, leading to popular spiritual song traditions. During this period, the country was undergoing a religious revival that centered around outdoor worship gatherings (camp meetings), where hymns (camp songs) were sung, as well as itinerant preachers called circuit riders. The period began early in the century, with the first camp meeting occurring in July 1800 in Logan County, Kentucky. This was followed by an 1801 meeting in Cane Ridge, Kentucky which lasted for six days and attracted ten to twenty thousand people.
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