Webinar highlights dark history of “Swannanoa Tunnel” song

Warren Wilson College professors explore how culture obscured role of convict labor

The Valley Echo
January 25, 2021

A webinar, hosted Jan. 28 by Warren Wilson College professors Jeffrey A. Keith and Kevin Kehrberg, will build on the duo’s 2020 The Bitter Southerner article, Somebody Died, Babe. Image courtesy of Warren Wilson College

Warren Wilson College professors Jeffrey A. Keith and Kevin Kehrberg will blend history and music as they explore how “Swannanoa Tunnel” — also known as “Asheville Junction — obscured the role of racism in an engineering feat that changed Western North Carolina. 

“That’s (Not) My Home: Music, Racism and the Railroad’s Arrival in Buncombe County” will stream live from 1 - 2 p.m, Thursday, Jan. 28. The presentation will build on the success of the duo’s August, 2020 article in the Atlanta-based digital publication, The Bitter Southerner. 

Somebody Died, Babe, which borrows its title from the lyrics of “Swannanoa Tunnel,” traces the song’s beginnings as a hammer song created by the mostly black incarcerated laborers who were forced to work on the project to its rise in popularity as folk and bluegrass tune. Keith, a history professor at Warren Wilson, and Kehrberg, a professor of music, will offer additional context on the Appalachian region in the 1870s, the construction of the railroad and the role convict labor played in its completion and how the thousands of men forced into labor used work songs in the process. 

The presenters will also discuss the racial politics of American folk music.

Kehrberg and Keith met in graduate school at the University of Kentucky where they formed the Kentucky String Band. They learned “Swannanoa Tunnel” long before coming to teach at Warren Wilson, where a 2012 team-taught course they offered on work and music in Appalachia eventually led them to discover its origins.

To register for the Zoom webinar, fill out the form linked here.