Though music and dance in Southern Appalachia during the late 18 th to early 20 th centuries was a mélange of West African, Native American, and European musical influences and was performed by music-loving people of many races and ethnicities, it came to be categorized along largely racial lines – especially in the late 19 th and early 20 th century folk revival movement and commercial recording industry.

That collection is now housed, along with letters, newspaper clippings, a scrapbook, and other ephemera, in the Southern Appalachian Archives at Mars Hill University. His vast preservation efforts include two memory collection recordings for Columbia University (1935) and the Library of Congress (1949) – each comprised of over 300 songs, tunes, and games commercial recordings founding the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in 1928 founding, directing, and advising several other music festivals fostering and encouraging musicians performing collecting dance figures and a collection of the texts for thousands of songs and ballads. Lunsford was responsible for preserving a great deal of music and dance in Southern Appalachia. Next to Lunsford’s own Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, it is the second-longest-running folk festival in western North Carolina. Howard was enamored of the music he heard at Lunsford’s Mountain Dance and Folk Festival and wanted to start another festival honoring the music and musicians who played it at the place where Lunsford was born. MHU’s Lunsford Festival was started in 1968 by Ed Howard, a pharmacist and jazz musician who knew Bascom Lamar Lunsford.

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