_ Every so often, just when you think the well is dry and the tradition is dead, you are gratefully reminded that there is still water down there and that the tradition was only sleeping. Morgan O’Kane from Charlottesville, Virginia is one of those reminders. A virtuoso banjo player, shouter and activist now based in New York City, Morgan recalls two other transplanted legendary southern artists; Reverend Gary Davis and Aunt Molly Jackson. Like the reverend, Morgan honed his skills making a living as a busking street artist. Like Aunt Molly, he has kept his connection to his Appalachian home and its issues, taking part in the campaign to ban mountaintop removal mining, which destroys the land and the people who live on it.
_ “If Jimi Hendrix played the banjo, he might resemble O’Kane, a high-intensity musician who looks like a mechanic in a rural gas station, sings like a man possessed and plays mountain music like it was an avalanche” - Robert Reid, The Record
While Morgan O’kane clearly knows his way around the old tunes, he is more interested in creating his own. That’s how the tradition survives – new songs being created on old foundations. This ain’t no revival; this is a contemporary artist who knows where he comes from.
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