White Top Folk Festival

The White Top Folk Festival was held annually from 1931 to 1939 (except 1937) on Whitetop Mountain, Virginia’s second-highest peak. Organizers Annabel Morris Buchanan, John Powell, and John A. Blakemore sought to celebrate and preserve “old time music” that originated in the British Isles. The festival featured fiddlers, banjo players, ballad singers, and string bands as well as storytelling, theatrical presentations, and clog, Morris, and sword dancing. Thousands of people attended each year, including nationally known academic folklorists, music critics, composers, and in 1933 First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The festival was cancelled in 1940 because of heavy rains and never resumed.